Isaiah 25:6–10a; Philippians 4:12–14, 19–20; Matthew 22:1–14.
Dear brothers and sisters,
It is said that when you are good at making excuses, it’s hard to excel in anything else. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a king who invited people to his son’s wedding banquet, but they all failed to turn up, making excuses. Some even seized, maltreated, and killed the messengers. Understandably, the king was furious. In a fit of rage, he killed the people and burned down the city.
The king might be seen as overreacting, and it can be difficult to associate him with God as the parable intended. But, in the land of the deaf, you have to shout to be heard. Such exaggerated narratives are necessary to shake up a society that has lost the sense of God.
The Gospels often use the imagery of a wedding feast to talk about God’s relationship with humanity. Jesus, who was himself a guest at the wedding feast at Cana, is, in himself, the wedding of heaven and earth; the coming together of divinity and humanity.
On this occasion, the king is God the Father, who is giving a banquet for his only Son (Jesus) whose bride is the Church. In other words, we, the invitees, are not just guests; we are being proposed as the bride to this outstanding groom. It is a state event. Honouring the invitation is a way of expressing one’s loyalty to the throne while declining suggests rebellion.
Isaiah, in the First Reading, describes the menu at this banquet as containing the choicest of foods and wines. He also discloses that here, death is destroyed forever. In other words, eternal life is the wedding souvenir – just as people leave with pens and notepads as souvenirs from wedding ceremonies, here, people take away eternal life! If you are invited to such a banquet, you don’t start checking your diary to see if you are free. You can’t get a better invitation. This is what is on offer in Christianity.
No other religion has ever proposed a more extraordinary opportunity to humanity. It is a marriage that is meant to offer us a share in the divine life. Yes, God took human nature so that we could share the divine nature. In giving his son in marriage to us, God ultimately gives us His very self. God’s anger in the parable is a metaphor for His burning desire to see humanity respond to this invitation to ‘get a life’.
When God calls, there is always a sense of urgency. Jesus told this parable in the days running up to his death on the Cross. He wants his listeners to recognise him for who he is, to choose life, to choose conversion. Now, imagine the incomprehensible disinterestedness of the invitees.
Even more telling is that they have gone about their legitimate businesses; one to his farm, another to his business. Yes, it is not as if they are involved in wrongdoing. In other words, oftentimes, it is not sin but preoccupation with the necessities of life that keep us away from the joy of the kingdom. Some work round the clock ‘to make ends meet’ – no time for God and for others. At the end of the day ‘ends’ never meet. Why? Because unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build (Ps. 127:1).
As Jesus will instructively note, “Life is worth more than food and the body more than clothing!” (Luke 12: 23- 25). The parable thus underscores what strange priorities we tend to have and the bizarre extent we can go to in resenting the bearers of the Good News. Aggressive secularism is determined to push God out of public consciousness and violently too.
The tragedy of this culture is the suggestion that we might be satisfied grasping onto the goods of this world; career, pleasure, money, success, honour, etc. These, by the way, are not bad in themselves. We are meant to take advantage of them but they are important to the extent that they can advance our response to the invitation to participate in the divine life; to enter into intimacy with God, to be married to Christ.
We should not pursue them as ends in themselves, as having ultimate value, nor should we because of them, compromise our relationship with God and people.
Meditation
“Often times, it is not sin but preoccupation with the necessities of life that keeps us away from the joy of the kingdom.”
Originally published on SPIRITANS AFRICA AND ISLANDS on Substack.