TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
11 OCTOBER 2020
The
prophet Isaiah speaks to a people whose daily diet barely sustains their lives. He promises that on this mountain, the Lord
of hosts will provide a wonderful banquet, including rich food and choice
wines. On this mountain, he will swallow
up death and wipe away the tears from every face. On this mountain, people will recognize the
Lord who will save them.
When Isaiah
speaks of “this mountain,” he refers to Mount Zion where the temple, the dwelling
place of God is, built. Today, Jesus
continues to speak to the chief priests and elders of the people on this
mountain in the temple. He tells them
another parable to explain the dynamics of the kingdom of heaven.
A king
invites guests to a wedding feast for his son.
Like Isaiah’s banquet, this wedding feast is lavish and beyond the means
of most inhabitants of his kingdom. In
2005, Oprah invited hundreds of rich and famous people to a fabulous
banquet. They all came! In this parable, the guests refuse to
come. So the king graciously sends out
his servants to invite other guests. These
guests ignore the invitation and mistreat his servants, killing some of
them. Enraged, the king burns their city
and sends his servants to invite anyone they encounter, good and bad alike.
Throughout
the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus has been inviting everyone to be part of the
rich and gracious feast that is the kingdom of heaven. The chief priests and elders have refused the
invitation. Their ancestors had murdered
God’s servants, the prophets, who had repeatedly invited them to repent and
embrace the Covenant. Now, they are
refusing to accept the invitation of God’s only Son. After they have had him killed, he will be
raised from the dead and form a new temple.
This temple will not be built of stones.
It will be formed from his risen body and include all those who have
been invited to participate in the wedding feast of the Son.
You and I
have accepted that invitation. The Lord
has invited us, not because we have deserved to be invited, and not because we
have been good, but because he loves us and wants to include us in the kingdom
of heaven. As members of his Body, we
are gathered here at the wedding feast of the Lamb, fed by the finest food
anyone can imagine. By participating in
this Eucharist, we are being formed into a temple made of living stones.
However,
the parable has a warning for us today.
And that warning has nothing to do with a “dress code” in the Kingdom of
heaven. In a wedding feast at the time
of Jesus, the king would have provided the guests with wedding garments. He addresses this guest who is violating the
dress code as “friend.” His lack of
response shows that he has no intention of changing. In the parable of the workers in the
vineyard, the owner addresses as “friend” the last one paid who complains that
he got paid as much as the ones who worked for only one hour. When Judas is about to betray Jesus with a
kiss, Jesus calls him “friend.” The Lord
addresses us as “friend,” because he loves us and wants us to repent and be
part of his kingdom.
This
parable challenges us to do more than simply show up at the wedding feast of
the Lamb. We must wear our baptismal
garments and carry the values of the kingdom out of this church and into the
world in which we live. We are more than
invited guests of the Bridegroom. We are
actually his bride, the Church. Wearing
our baptismal garments means that we take our faith seriously. Mother Theresa said it best: “We are all called to be contemplatives in the heart of
the world — by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all
the time, and [God’s] hand in every happening; seeing and adoring the presence
of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing
disguise of the poor.”
No comments:
Post a Comment