Standing Under the Scriptures
October 19, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Exodus 33.12-23: The account of this encounter of Moses with the Lord, though anthropomorphic, conveys the Lord’s irreducible otherness.

Matthew 22.15-22: Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ question about paying taxes to Caesar.

Note: As you are mostly aware, after this Sunday I will be away for the following three. In my absence John Beckwith has undertaken to lead the class but will be glad, I am sure, of assistance from other members.

In our first reading last Sunday (Philippians 4.4b-9), we could discern as in our previous readings from this letter the warmth of Paul’s feelings for the church which he established in Philippi. This had already been made explicit the first verse of the chapter.

“Therefore, my brethren whom I love and long for, my joy and crown….”

Out of this warmth comes his fervent desire that they should have what has been most precious to him, namely his relationship with Christ and what this brings. We saw this in terms of a feast that he was spreading before them as before his other churches---and would have wanted to spread before us too. An element of this feast is the rejoicing in the Lord that comes out of knowing Christ. Another is a freedom from anxiety (cf. Matthew 6.25: “Be not anxious…”) enabling them to ask God to grant of their needs not out of fearfulness or concern for themselves but “with thanksgiving.” They are enabled to keep their minds instead on whatever is just, pure, lovely, gracious, and worthy of praise. And they have the promise of the peace of God which surpasses understanding will be with them, in the hearing of which there is already fulfilment.

Thinking in terms of a feast enabled us to relate the Philippians passage directly to our second reading (Matthew 22.1-14), which was the parable of the king’s marriage feast for his son. God’s feeding of his people is an important New Testament motif, as when Jesus feeds the multitude and when in the Epilogue to John’s Gospel he exhorts Peter to feed his sheep. And we saw the feast here offered by the king to be of the sort that Paul in our Philippians passage was talking about. But in the parable the reception of it is not at all like that of the Philippians. Instead, when the king sends his servants to tell the invitees that the marriage feast is ready, they disregard it in favor of their own pursuits: a farm, a business. This of course is what people, including ourselves, are to prone to do today (cf. in the parable of the sower the seed falling among thorns, which represent the cares of the world and the lures of mammon: Matthew 13.7 and 23.) But some of the invitees go so far as to mistreat and kill the king’s servants. Such a reaction may seem incongruous here; perhaps there has been a conflation with the wicked tenants in the parable immediately preceding. Or perhaps the spurning of the invitation is really not so different from the elimination of those who bring it. At any rate the king’s judgment upon the spurners is severe: he destroys them and burns their city, somewhat as Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians centuries earlier and as it was to be destroyed by the Romans decades later. On this basis we may take the parable as referring to Israel’s characteristic rejection of the prophets and also to Jesus’ own rejection by it. (Cf. Jesus’ lament in Matthew 23.37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.”)

In the parable there is a sequel. The king, finding that those invited were not worthy and having already prepared the marriage feast (marriage also is a significant New Testament motif), sends his servants into the thoroughfares to invite as many as they find. And they gather all they find, both bad and good, so that the wedding hall is filled with guests. Here the focus seems to shift to the church in the latter part of the first century, when Matthew’s Gospel was apparently written down and when many, perhaps mainly Gentiles like us, came into the church. This suggests that among us as church members there may also be bad as well as good. But if we are concerned about our falling into the former category, we can find comfort in the tendency of the good to think of themselves as bad and of the bad to think of themselves as good (cf. Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25.31-46). Or as Luther put it more starkly in connection with his Heidelberg Disputation, “When a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks.”

The parable has also a sequel to the sequel. The king, viewing the guests who have been brought in, spots one without a wedding garment. And he accosts him: How did you get in here without one? The guest is unwilling or unable to reply. The king then has him bound and cast into outer darkness. We considered at some length what the wedding garment might represent: were the guests required to have one of their own or was it conferred on them as they arrived? In connection with the former possibility I recalled that in my college days I had no tuxedo (and still do not) and so wondered about getting in to dances. But we decided that only the latter possibility made sense. A class member helped us by noting that today at the entrance to a synagogue there may be yarmulkes for those coming without one. Stanley Hauerwas in his Matthew commentary suggests that the wedding garment represents baptism (I have not checked this point in other commentaries). In any case the Lord confers it; we do not have it in ourselves. And forgetting this, we concluded, means lacking a wedding garment and being subject to casting into outer darkness, which we took to be essentially separation from the Lord.

The parable says finally, “For many are called but few are chosen.” This also may seem harsh, like the above. But it is to be regarded as reminding us that being chosen is not something that we determine or can earn but is instead comes through God’s free bestowal of his grace.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted