+ The Nineteenth Sunday
after Trinity +
Isaiah 25.1–9;
Psalm 23; Philippians 4.1–9; Matthew 22.1–14
He will swallow up death for ever! That’s quite an image isn’t it? While we feast on a banquet of the finest foods and wines, God, somehow, feasts on death itself! God will, at a point known only to Him, swallow up death, wipe every tear from every eye, and banish disgrace forever.
In Christian iconography the Devil, Hell and Death are often presented as a huge mouth that is never satisfied. The more it eats, the more it wants; the more it devours, the hungrier it gets. Here in Isaiah the tables are turned and God does the swallowing; the Devil, Hell and Death are the ones that get devoured.
I’ve noticed that dynamic at work in my own life at times, haven’t you? I notice it especially when I eat foods of low nutritional value and high in sugar; the more I eat the hungrier I get and the more I want.
This doesn’t only apply to hunger for food alone. It applies to all kinds of hunger: hunger for intimacy; hunger for money; hunger for power.
This is how addiction works. The very thing you indulge in gives you a rush and a little relief to begin with, but then it leaves a hunger in its wake that can only be filled by another dose of the thing itself.
Only God can satisfy the hungry human heart. Without God our desires will continue to seek satisfaction in all kinds of substitutes, and we will always be looking for something to ‘devour’.
This is actually the perfect definition of what the Bible calls sin: seeking satisfaction or relief in everything but God, who alone can provide the genuine satisfaction our hearts seek.
So now for our Gospel reading: a King gives a banquet for his Son, but it’s not just an ordinary banquet. It’s actually something more than the banquet promised in the passage from Isaiah: it’s a wedding banquet; a nuptial banquet; a banquet during which, in ancient times, the groom prepared a chamber in which he and the bride would consummate the marriage, and then return to the party.
So you see, the food and the wine and the music and the dancing are a precursor to the main event, which is the union of bride and groom in an act of the most sublime intimacy.
Jesus refers to himself as ‘the Bridegroom’ on several occasions in the Gospels, and St Paul in his letters and St John in the Book of Revelation refer to the Church (that’s us folks!) as the ‘Bride of Christ’.
So we are not here just for the food and for the wine, we are here for a Person. We are here to allow him, by the Holy Spirit, to unite himself to us in the deepest, most secret chamber of our souls.
And if this needed to get any clearer perhaps you might call to mind the fact that what we are about to eat, later in the service, is not just Bread. What we are about to eat is the Body of Christ.
What we are about to take into ourselves is Christ himself, and if that isn’t a nuptial image and an image of consummation I don’t know what is.
So what of the poor man who gets ejected from the banquet because he’s wearing the wrong clothes?
The King manages to fill the house with guests in spite of the fact that lots of people have turned down the invitation, and then he spots him, the man with the wrong clothes on: “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”
I imagine that he’s been eating and drinking and socialising with the rest of them, but there’s something missing isn’t there? He’s not yet in his wedding clothes, by which we might understand that he’s not yet at the point where he is ready for love.
He might be at the feast for all sorts of reasons. He might well be hungry and thirsty. He might just enjoy a party. It might just be that going to the party gives him something to do. It may alleviate his loneliness. He may be there out of a sense of duty, or maybe he’s there because his parents took him when he was younger, and it’s how he was brought up. Maybe going to parties like this one is just a habit after all these years (can you spot that I am actually talking about going to Church here?).
Now these are all perfectly valid reasons for going to the party but the man is missing the heart of it, so there really is a sense that he doesn’t belong at the party at all.
So the King commands him to be thrown out, back into the darkness of the world, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (It may interest you to know that the ‘gnashing of teeth’ is an ancient symbol used to describe the severe frustration, rage, and resentment caused by an unsatisfied desire).
You see, I don’t think the King banishes this man to an eternity in Hell as has often been suggested; I think he is leaving the man to his own desires.
We
have proof of this from elsewhere, when St Paul tells the Corinthians to
excommunicate a brother who is committing serious sexual sin, so that he can
reflect on his life, repent, and come back into the fold (1 Corinthians 5 and 2
Corinthians 2)
St Paul didn’t banish him forever, he excluded him in the hope that he would come to his senses and return with his desires ordered towards the love of God and neighbour, rather than the objects of his lust.
Our Gospel story is about the same thing. The purpose of putting the man out of the banquet and back into the world is educational: the man hasn’t yet learned that the banquet is not just about doing his duty; not just a place for bread and wine or tea and cake; the banquet is a place for love.
So he’s handed back over to the mercy of his own desires until he can learn that the longings of his heart can only be satisfied in one Way, and that way is also a Person, the King’s Son, Jesus.
And so we are obviously talking about ourselves here and about the reasons why we might come to Church.
I
remember reading this story for years and feeling some confusion and some anger
when I did. Under that confusion and anger was fear (that’s often the case)
that in some way that I didn’t quite understand, I was the man with the wrong
clothes on.
I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t know what those clothes represented; neither did I know how to go about getting the right clothes on if I ever found out what ‘wedding clothes’ were in the first place.
I think I now know what those clothes signify, and I think, that after all these years as a Christian, I might just be beginning to put those wedding clothes on for myself.
I think I might be beginning (we are all beginners here) to understand, in my heart, the extent of God’s love for me and the lengths to which Jesus went to win my love.
I hope, with all my heart that you are too. I hope and pray that you are all in a place where you can see that what we are doing here today is actually all about him and his desire for us; his love for us; his intention to unite himself to us and to satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts.
If that isn’t you, and there’s a niggling fear that you are like the man with the wrong clothes on, then you are in good company; many of us have been there. And those of us who have been there will tell you that there’s only one thing to do about it, and that’s to talk to him and tell him.
We are told that when the King asked the man why he wasn’t wearing a wedding robe he called him ‘friend’. We are also told that in response the man was ‘speechless’.
Well we are here to learn how not to be speechless. We are here because when we feel that question is addressed to us we might say: ‘Lord, you are my friend. How do I get such a robe? Will you help me to find it and teach me how to put it on.
Let’s pray: Lord, cleanse the desires of my heart by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that I may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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