How are you?
Oh I’ve been so busy with work; I’m all tied up…
Reading the Parable of the Wedding Banquet this past week I was considering the plethora of lessons across those 14 verses of Matthew’s gospel account. Why is it so important to come to a banquet? Even more, why is it important to wear the right clothes? Should one be bound and thrown out simply for a fashion faux pas let alone towns burned for brushing off an invitation?
It’s telling the kings of this parable are not Medieval Kings as we might imagine today but farmers and merchants returning to their fields and businesses; rulers in the smallest sense of the word. Jesus perhaps wanted us to put ourselves in the shoes of royalty. After all, He can’t be the King of Kings, if there are no kings.
What is worth considering then?
Any one willing to celebrate is deserving of attendance.
Any one willing to carry an invitation risks their life.
Who are we, especially when so much of our lives are tied up in our work, that we won’t celebrate what life is all about?
What is the point of my life or citizenship if I hold them by the grace of Caesar?
-Pompey
It’s telling the following parable is the famous “render unto Caesar that which is Caesars and render unto God what which belongs to God”. We may claim we are working for the glory of the Lord but ghost on invites ad infinitum. If we live to work, we’ve burdened ourselves with the heavier yoke. When we work to live and willingly experience the celebrations of life, we render unto the Lord that which is the Lords.
What truly is the point of your life and citizenship in the kingdom of heaven if you hold them by the grace of Caesar? Where are we murdering messengers of good things if not in the streets, then in our own hearts?
C.S. Lewis would sum it up in a way only a well educated Englishman could:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
As I prepare to attend a family wedding in Mexico this year, a simple request from my Aunt, the mother of the bride, has stuck with me: “Cut your hair”. And what has taken nearly two years to grow will be groomed for a day in the land of my ancestors as I join my family in honoring a new union. It is written there is nothing new under the sun and as I get older I have more evidence to which I would have to agree.
I sat with this verse a day longer than I normally would have and thought about how dangerous unions are. I thought about Isabella and Ferdinand riding across Spain in disguise as they sought to marry and unite their people against their oppressive invaders. I thought of Tsar Nicholas II and his cousin Kaiser Whilhem II. Their ancestors dared unite their families yet both houses would succumb to revolution following their demise and destroy their countries from their inside out.
When we invite someone to the kingdom of heaven, if truly it is like a wedding banquet for his son, we are not simply inviting one to a party, we are asking for witnesses of a union in the greatest force of economic, political, and spiritual rebellion the Earth has ever seen. It isn’t surprising some are destroyed, cities are burned, and even those unwilling to dress for the occasion are removed.
-SF