Playing with Fire: SALT's Commentary for Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A): Exodus 32:1-14 and Matthew 22:1-14
Big Picture:
1) As we saw last week and the week before, Jesus has been making quite a public scene in the Jerusalem Temple: riding into town (just yesterday, as Matthew tells it) on a donkey, driving vendors from the Temple grounds, setting up a healing and teaching operation, and criticizing (and offending) the temple authorities. With each audacious parable he tells, the authorities become more and more outraged, and the crowds (no doubt) more and more astonished and delighted. Can you believe this guy? From the donkey on down, there’s a kind of raucous, almost carnival-like atmosphere to all of this.
2) Religion is often a solemn affair, and Christians typically take Jesus’ teachings very, very seriously. But his parables are frequently playful and mischievous, and there’s an outlandish absurdity to this week’s parable, almost a zaniness — and if we overlook it, we’ll misunderstand what he has in mind. It’s not that Jesus is doing stand-up comedy here; but he is painting with a very broad, madcap brush, as if creating a grand caricature or a daring work of graffiti. As we’ll see, Jesus is playing with fire — but he is nonetheless playing.
3) Matthew wrote his gospel not long after the brutal Roman defeat of a Jewish rebellion against the imperial occupation, during which the Roman army laid waste to the Jerusalem Temple. Part of what’s going on in this parable is Matthew and his community wrestling with how to make sense of that traumatic, world-shattering catastrophe.
4) This week’s story in Exodus is a paradigmatic biblical portrait of idolatry: impatiently waiting for Moses to return from atop Mount Sinai, the Israelites take matters into their own hands.
Scripture:
1) Many of Jesus’ parables have a freewheeling, hyperbolic style, but this one is in a class by itself. Think of it: a king holds a grand royal banquet — and nobody comes. Through his messengers, he pleads with the invitees, promising the finest food and drink, but they’re too busy with their everyday affairs (really?), but not too busy, it turns out, to abuse and then kill the king’s messengers (what?). The king is enraged — and sends an army (an army?) to kill the murderers and then burn down the entire city (OK, now you’ve really lost me…). Meanwhile, the party is still on (of course it is!), and the king orders his attendants to bring anyone and everyone, “both good and bad,” into the palace to celebrate (Matthew 22:10).
2) And then things get even stranger. The king, seeing a guest without a wedding robe, orders him removed and cast into “outer darkness” — “for many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:13-14).
3) These extravagant zigs and zags make clear that this parable should be taken not as a realistic morality tale, but rather as a highly stylized, symbolic story — a kind of allegory in big, bold strokes. The original invitees represent supposed insiders who fail to listen to God, and instead let themselves be distracted by worldly idols. The messengers likely represent the historical Hebrew prophets, many of whom were ignored, mistreated, or killed. The destroyed city likely recalls the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, framing that ruin as a consequence of ignoring and persecuting the prophets. And the “open invitation” to all likely evokes the opening up of the Christian community to include Gentiles as well as Jews. Finally, the fact that these new wedding guests are ordinary folks, “both good and bad,” underscores the idea that salvation isn’t given as a reward for good behavior, but rather is an unearned, gracious divine gift.
4) These basic contours are familiar; Luke includes another version of the banquet parable (Luke 14:16-24). But then Matthew zigs (zags?) in a surprising, distinctive direction. What to make of the banishment of the man not wearing a wedding robe?
5) Within the wacky world of the parable, the guests are corralled in from the street with no notice, so the king’s attendants must have given them all wedding robes at the door — which means the man without one must be refusing to wear it. What could this represent? That the man isn’t taking the event seriously? That he has contempt for the king? That he refuses to celebrate the feast as a festive occasion, in effect refusing to participate (even as he eats and drinks his fill)?
6) Jesus leaves the allegorical symbol of the robeless guest unexplained, presumably so it can represent each of these possibilities (and more). But running through them all is the theme of self-importance. Imagine being suddenly, graciously invited to a wondrous royal wedding feast; being given a robe to wear on the way in; and then refusing to wear it. Would that refusal indicate not taking the event seriously, having contempt for the host, or refusing to celebrate in what is, after all, a grand celebration? Yes, yes, and yes. At bottom, it would indicate impudent self-absorption, putting yourself above your benefactor. And if the benefactor is God, it would indicate idolatry. On the surface, it looks like the man is attending the feast; but his actions tell a different story. In truth, he’s as “absent” from the gathering as the original invitees are. If they were caught up in the self-important idols of their everyday responsibilities (“farm,” “business,” etc.), the man without the robe, too, demonstrates his own idolatry, his own presumptuous, upside-down priorities.
7) Which brings us to the final, iconic declaration: “many are called, but few are chosen.” Particularly in the context of such a wild, extravagant parable, it’s clear that this formula is meant as an exhortative warning, not a literal description. It’s tantamout to saying, Watch yourself! Just because you were graciously invited to this feast doesn’t entitle you to hubris! Put on your robe of humility, joy, and thanksgiving! There’s more than one way to miss out on this celebration: to refuse the invitation in the first place, yes, but also to accept it and attend, but then refuse to celebrate!
8) The Exodus passage illustrates how idolatry comes in a convincing disguise. In the story, the Israelites don’t hold “a festival to the Golden Bull” (“bull” is a better translation than “calf,” because one of the central ideas here is the vigor, power, and vitality a “bull” represents). Rather, they explicitly call the occasion “a festival to YHWH” (Exodus 32:5). That is, the golden bull is passed off as God, not an alternative to God; the bull is presented as the very one who “brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). An idol is always incognito. On the surface, it always looks like a good and respectable and righteous thing: like the everyday demands of work (“farm” or “business”), for example. Or it looks like religious piety, an impressive festival to God. Or it looks like dutifully attending a divine feast.
Takeaways:
1) In this two-day Temple occupation, Jesus has been boldly critiquing the temple authorities, calling on them to change their ways — and here, too, in this third parable, we may well imagine those authorities are included among the banquet’s original list of delinquent invitees. But by the parable’s end, the spotlight has shifted. If the second set of wedding guests, “both good and bad,” represent the newly diverse, Jewish-and-Gentile Jesus movement, then the man without a robe, the one threatened with the most severe punishment in this outlandish parable, isn’t among the temple authorities at all! He’s in the second group, the ones corralled in from the streets. Jesus is holding court in the Temple, debating the authorities with the crowds looking on, no doubt nodding their heads in agreement — but at the parable’s conclusion, in the blink of an eye, he turns and issues a stern word of warning meant not for the authorities, but for the crowds: I’m ushering you into the banquet, but don’t you dare take this invitation as a cause for arrogance! On the contrary, put on your robes of humility, joy, and thanksgiving…
2) As it turns out, then, like last week, this is a parabolic trap — and the crowd is caught (and we’re in the crowd, too!). Lest we look down our noses at the temple authorities, or indeed at those in the parable who initially refuse the invitation, Jesus starkly admonishes us to leave our idolatrous hubris at the door. For the moment we look down on “them” and thereby think too highly of ourselves, we shed our robes of humility, joy, and thanksgiving. We celebrate ourselves, and not the wedding. We refuse to take part in the party.
3) And pssst: want to know a really great way to think too highly of ourselves, and therefore alienate ourselves from the celebration? By thinking we’re among the “few” who are “chosen”! Indeed, even Jesus’ parabolic warning against arrogance (Watch yourself!) can be twisted into an occasion for (wait for it) arrogantly imagining ourselves as part of a “few” who are superior to others. So long as we do that, we shed our robes, and we’re lost in “outer darkness.” But when we instead see ourselves as among the undeserving many, “both good and bad,” who’ve graciously been invited to the feast — we joyfully, humbly, thankfully come back into the light. Thanks be to God!
4) Finally, given this week’s events in Israel and Gaza, another aspect of the parable worth focusing on is the heart, the upshot, the culminating point of Jesus’ outlandish story: namely, the extravagant invitation to everyone — “all whom they found, both good and bad” — to join the wedding celebration. The parable’s clear implication is that God’s grace is similarly inclusive, embracing “both good and bad,” leaving aside entirely any questions of “desert” or “punishment” or “recompense,” and instead looking ahead together in hope and joy. In times of violence, the temptation is indeed to divide the world into “good” and “bad” — but God’s grace calls us, even as we unequivocally condemn specific acts, to refuse that kind of divisiveness, calling upon all of us (ourselves included) to take constructive steps toward peace and neighborly love. As Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, inclusive love is not “emotional bosch”; it’s strong and realistic, even and especially in times of violence. For the alternative — exclusive condemnation and anger and vengeance — only begets more of the same. A love that rules out terrorism in its many forms; refuses to carve up the world into “good” and “bad”; and invites everyone back to the banquet table of peaceful, respectful life together is the only way forward, a path both difficult and indispensable.