October 12, 2008
(Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 23)
Showing Up and Changing Your Clothes
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Exodus 32:1-14 • Psalm 106:1-6,
19-23 • Philippians 4:1-9
• Matthew 22:1-14
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Heirlooms come in all shapes and sizes. Most require regular dusting which is why I’ve found that the heirlooms I’ve come to treasure most are the stories that my parents told and re-told of their parents and grandparents. Among my favorite stories are those my dad used to tell of his grandmother, Lucinda Mae Lewis. Grandma Lewis lived well into her 90’s but for about the last twenty years of her life, was convinced that death lay just around the corner. Periodically, she would call up Dad, and ask him to take her shopping. “I need new clothes to be laid out in,” she’d say. So Dad would get in the car and drive 60 miles, pick up Grandma and take her shopping. She’d buy new underclothes, hosiery, dress, and shoes and set them aside for her burial. But inevitably, some occasion would soon warrant her needing a new dress, and so she’d get out her burial outfit. And then that would be it. It longer qualified for burial once she’d worn it, and so pretty soon, she’d be on the phone again with Dad. It was a source of family amusement, but for Great Grandma Lewis, this was serious business. She knew what awaited her, and by God she intended to meet her maker in garments worthy of the king.
Being suitably dressed for the Great Banquet is one of several themes presented in today’s gospel passage. It is a parable packed with shocking and discordant details and as many times as I’ve heard it, the ending never ceases to take my breath away.
So it might be helpful to know several things upfront. First, whenever we hear banquet or wedding imagery in Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, we’re generally hearing symbolic language for the heavenly banquet in the fullness of time, when God will gather all creation together to feast at the supper of the lamb. Second, by the late first century, when this gospel was written, the mission to the Gentiles was well underway. Jewish Christians struggled with the role righteousness played in salvation, now that obedience to the Law had become secondary to faith. But the Gentile Christians struggled with the opposite issue, namely, how much righteousness was expected of them. After all, if Christ died for all regardless of whether you obeyed the Law of Moses, did that then mean that anything goes? In other words, can you hang onto your Gentile ways and still tuck into that plate of barbecue at the Heavenly Banquet?
It’s an interesting question, one that we descendents of those Gentile Christians do well to ask. In the parable, the king wanted the banquet hall filled. It wasn’t a matter of who deserved to be there or how oddly mixed the group was, or how last minute the invitation was. The breadth of grace of the invitation was and is staggering.
Staggering, but not cheap.
And maybe that’s the most important aspect of this parable for us today. Like our first century forebears, we too are invited to struggle with our response once we realize we’ve been invited to the banquet. The parable suggests that two things are asked of us by way of response: showing up and changing our clothes. That is to say, having accepted God’s amazing invitation of grace by virtue of our baptism, we then commit ourselves to living fully into that relationship with the whole of our lives. Both components are crucial. The invitation comes from God and is pure grace. We are loved unconditionally, unreservedly, by God AND we are invited to live the whole of our lives in a way that reflects that reality.
This requires thoughtful intention, perhaps even intentional change. And therein lies the rub for many of us middle class educated folks. Many of us have been formed from infancy in cultural values of self-sufficiency, problem-solving, competency, getting the job done. To admit that we need God’s saving grace in our lives can be just about the hardest thing in the world for many of us. We want to hang on to our “Gentile” ways of being in control. We spend vast portions of our lives spackling over the cracks in our armor, lest our vulnerability – our dis-ease if you will – be revealed to others. This parable issues a stunning challenge to us latter day Gentiles. Baptism is God’s gracious invitation into a relationship that carries us into eternity. It is initiated by God, but we must respond. The grace of the banquet invitation is free, but by no means is cheap. The cost to us is the newness of life that we put on in response to the invitation. Don’t get side-tracked by the shocking parable imagery. Jesus is not trying to intimidate us into relationship to God, but rather show us how much our full response matters. The invitation to the great banquet remains open to all, but our only chance to respond is with the life we have been given while we have that life.
In a few moments, we will embark upon a public service of healing. We confuse healing with curing all the time. To cure a disease is to invoke a medical model whereby pathogens are diagnosed and then removed or neutralized through surgery or medication. To be healed, however, involves restoring a right relationship with God, to lay before the Giver of Health our infirmities and our vulnerabilities and to seek a renewed sense of God working in us and through us, in sickness and in health. In presenting ourselves for healing, we are in a sense showing up and changing our clothes. We present our selves, our souls and our bodies to God and ask for what we need. We’re dong something that is neither medical nor magical. It’s sacramental – we enact with our bodies what we know to be true of ourselves and of God – that we need the assurance of God’s grace in our lives, that we belong to him forever and that God’s desire for all humankind is health and wholeness.
My Great Grandmother Lewis read her Bible through a far more literal lens than most of us, myself included. But I like to think that we have within us to take this parable seriously. God has begun a good work within us all. May we seek to avail ourselves of that banquet invitation daily.
Oh yeah, and bring a change of clothes.
