MT 22:1-14 

Matthew in the Margins…19th Sunday after Pentecost…Revised 2017 

However we discern we should preach this parable / riddle / allegory, & focus on prepared-ness, ex / inclusiveness, light & darkness, whatever, it’s vital, life-giving, that we bring it out of 1st C. Palestine & into today where we live. Vital to bring God out of that Palestine,  out of this Book & freed into our own world, into our lives now. MT starts off, ‘God’s Rule is like…” & essentially that’s what it’s all about. But there are inconsistencies. Not least that God, the King, ends up acting as violently as the earthly rulers whose ungodly acts regularly court God's indignation & condemnation! Perhaps what JS originally says has been tweaked in the telling before it takes the shape we know today? In both LK 14, & TH 64 (it’s often worth checking TH) it’s simply a person giving the feast, & neither contains the ‘throwing out’ bit!

Let’s look at the wedding garment. In an earlier edition of these notes I suggested Jesus Himself is our invitation to His own wedding & that it’s Him we’re being invited, required, to put on; Him we need to be wearing all the time. To reject Jesus, God’s gracious invitation to us, then, is to throw ourselves into outermost darkness. A form of Hell, surely, is meant. Excluding ourselves from loving God & celebrating God day by day is to live in a darkness of our own choosing. But I’m grateful to our son, Andrew¹, for illuminating that approach further based on Augustine of Hippo’s Sermon 90. Augustine equates the missing ‘garment’ with ‘Love’. Not any old common or garden love, but the self-giving Love of the Gospel. Agape Love, Augustine tells us love is both our invitation to the feast & the way we’re to come prepared to join in. To ‘put on’ the wedding garment is to clothe ourselves in love. Let’s be clothed in love all the time. Love isn’t something to be donned only for special occasions! To act like that would be to bring love itself, Love Himself, into disrepute. 

When we give God the brush-off, we’re putting ourself outside God's gracious presence. That is outer darkness indeed. God doesn't put us outside; that’s a choice we make for our-selves! (After saying this I still find myself questioning whether there is anywhere outside God's presence, God’s grace.) Maybe one way to experience outer darkness is just to think we're outside God. We can fool ourselves into thinking we are. But we can’t fool God! In the midst of so much darkness & depression today - outwardly & inwardly - is there a clue here, for how to mount a spiritual counter-attack against the pain such darkness brings? 

It’s been well said that God's wrath is simply God's love experienced from the wrong side! Also worth pondering is the question of whether there’s any evidence God invented outer darkness, or Hell, under any guise. Compared with a great deal of evidence we go on re-inventing it over & over again, for ourself or for someone else. Best to take up the invitation to the great feast - & turn up! Fittingly clothed in love! 

¹ Preaching in All Saints, Margaret Street, London, Oct. 12th 2014