Oscar Wilde once said that a sentimentalist “Is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." Which seems like as good of definition as any. I thought about this today because our parable is sort of a tonic for any sort of sentimentalism. Certainly it all starts well enough; you have the generous king inviting all of the people of the town to a fabulous wedding feast. I mean if you added a little snow and a fresh cut Christmas tree you would be 90% of your way to a Hallmark Christmas special. It could all end with a non-threatening looking homeless man offering a slightly grammatically incorrect toast to the King before they all link arms and sing “Away in the Manger” together. But Jesus does not let us off that easy; he does not allow this to be a simple, warm-hearted sentimental tale. The King is certainly generous and the marginalized and outcasts all are invited and come to the glorious feast, but then we have this; “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” The whole groovy kind of love vibe that we had going gets abruptly derailed. So what is going on?
If the King is representative of God why does he get so upset over a piece of clothing, I mean its not like he was wearing white slacks after Labor Day. To answer this question there are really two pieces of God’s personality that we must understand. The first comes with the invitation. That is when God says, “Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” This is God saying that all are welcome to come, which is very true; God is a welcoming and loving God. But God is also good and so wants us to be good too. And as a result God asks for us to change – which in this case was to quite literally change into a wedding garment. However I am not sure we always put these pieces together. We either confuse an open invitation with no expectations of us once we actually show up, or we make the opposite mistake and get real excited about God’s exclusivity that we forget that all were welcome in the first place. And actually, to maybe go out on a bit of a limb or paint with too broad of brush (you can take your pick of clichés) I think much of our church wars these days are grounded on a partial or incomplete reading of this parable. What I mean by that is we have one group that is a first half reader and a different group, which is a second half reader. What this means in practicality is that one group wants to talk mainly about the inclusiveness of God while the second group wants to talk about the exclusiveness of God vis a vis certain behaviors. And I have to say that intellectually either of these positions is easier to understand than what Jesus spells out today. It is not hard to think of a god with no standards like a fun-loving uncle who goes around giving people noogies and making sure that their wine glasses are full. It is also not hard to conceive of a god with very strict standards and a system of tallies, who is constantly judging and telling us what we are doing wrong. But to conceive of a God that simultaneously welcomes all while distaining sinful behavior is a little harder because the lines are not so distinct. When does the welcoming everybody God turn into the “throw them into the outer darkness” God? I mean can we get a schedule so that we know when to behave? Well I am not sure if that is the right question to ask because I think there is another dynamic at work here, which has to do with the fact that people tend to pick sides in this parable based on what fits with their personality by either ignoring the welcoming side of God or the “throw them into the outer darkness” side of God.
I was listening to a podcast the other day, which I know makes me sound quite hip, but don’t be fooled. Now please stick with me for a minute because this eventually gets back to the parable. Anyway the topic of this podcast turned to what is so often on everyone’s minds these days and that is what is wrong with us, why do we have so much trouble getting along with each other. The hypothesis that arose was rather interesting. The person said that they blamed the coming apart of our society largely on the breakdown of institutions. What he meant by this was the institutions that civilized societies had so often relied on to create cohesion were breaking down and not functioning the way that they were intended. He said every generation is invaded by barbarians, which we call children, and our job and the job of institutions within our society is to turn those barbarians into productive and valuable members of our society. But he said institutions these days are not doing that because we do not view institutions as larger than ourselves but rather as extensions of ourselves. So rather than going to a school or a church to be changed by it, we instead go to change that school or church into our image, or better yet save time and find one that it is already in our image by the time we get there. And so we go to institutions that only validate what we already believe and are not transformed but rather encouraged in whatever it is that we believe. Some of you may have seen the Babylon Bee, which is a kind of Christian version of The Onion. Anyway they once had a headline that read, “Local Family Commutes 700 miles to attend Church that meets their exact Specifications.” The article goes onto detail how this family almost found a church 400 miles away but its racquetball program was subpar so they had to keep looking. And while I know this is satire there is a piece of truth, which marks all good satire. We want institutions to cater to us.
Now take this mentality and look at it in terms of today’s parable. If inclusiveness is your bag you kind of stop before the expulsion of the wedding guest, or chalk it up to a typo. However, if you are a neo-puritan exclusionary type you get really excited about the ability to kick people out because they are not acting correctly and view the story as just one big build up to the exclusionary moral. But, if we do either of those two things, are we allowing the institution of the church to do its work? Shouldn’t the church transform us? I mean there should be parts of Church, in general and in this parable specifically, that make everyone a little uncomfortable and that is not a bad thing. If we like to be friendly and welcoming but are afraid to correct a friend this should push us a little. If we love to tell people they are heretics and that they are going to spend eternity in the extra crispy section, this parable should also give us pause. A life in Christ while being comforting is also going to be stretching because it asks something of us.
Jesus today is saying that, of course, God welcomes all. You are not chosen based on your social class, your profession or who your parents were, but once you come, you are expected to change. If there are things about you that are repugnant to God, he is looking for those things to end. God’s goodness is both welcoming and correcting. Our life on this earth is not a call to sentimentality but is rather a call to grow, to stretch up to God. Some of this may come easier than other parts, but we must never lose our focus so that we may be God’s both now and forevermore.