Might as Well Have Stayed Home

When you’re a bishop you get a lot of interesting mail.  Some of it is angry.  Some of it is humorous.  Some of it is angry and unintentionally humorous.  This is about a letter of the last sort.

I can’t remember what I said that set my correspondent off.  Something heretical about grace or the unconditional nature of God’s love, or I suspect, God’s call on the church to respond with unconditional acceptance and inclusion of everyone, absolutely everyone.  Someone who didn’t see it quite the same way wrote me what was intended to be a rebuke.  “If the Kingdom of God is as inclusive as you say it is,” the email read, “why would anyone want to be a part of it?”  I guess some people would rather just stay home if the wrong people get invited.

Well, there you have the basic problem.  It is one Jesus addressed in a parable about a king who gave a wedding banquet (Mt. 22:1-14).  The invited guests responded badly.  Some made flimsy excuses.  Others ignored the invitation.  Still others responded violently.  (It’s interesting that invitations to God’s banquet not infrequently result in violently negative reactions.)

When the original guests failed to accept, the king was not deterred.  He sent his messengers into the streets to invite everyone and anyone they could find.  They did so, to both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  I guess the original invitees wouldn’t have wanted to be there anyway, especially if they knew who eventually showed up.

But then, as Matthew tells this story, there’s one more curiosity.  Among the guests was a man who showed up not wearing the proper wedding garment.  With this, the king was not so pleased and has the man cast out. 

Scholars will tell you these two parts of the stories were completely separate sayings as Jesus actually told them, and that Matthew put them together simply because they both involved wedding banquets.  Who am I to argue with scholars, and I have no doubt they’re right. 

Still, if we’re lucky enough to get an invitation, I think it would behoove us to show up with our party clothes and dancing shoes on.  Otherwise, we might as well have stayed home, and in that case we deserve to get thrown out.

Peace,