Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time
October 9, 2005


Have you ever turned down an invitation to a really good party?

Presuming that the Cardinals move on to the World Series this year, imagine that it is now game 4, and the Cardinals are looking for the sweep. Chris Carpenter is on the mound, and if they win, the final game ever to be played in Busch stadium will win the World Series. The national anthem is sung. It is time for the players to take the field, so they come out of the dugout, and take their places on the field. Then they look around – and there is not a single spectator in the entire stadium. All the people who had tickets to the hottest game in town decided to not to show up. All the people who were “invited” to the game, who had purchased their tickets well in advance, decide that they have more important things to do. “No way!” you think. It just wouldn’t happen, not in a million years. People would not refuse such an important opportunity. It is a must see event!

Yet, that is precisely the scenario Jesus would have us contemplate in the parable of today’s gospel. The people are invited to the hottest ticket in town. The host is not just anyone, any random figure, but the king himself. And the party was not just any party, any celebration, but the royal wedding of the king’s son. Not to mention that the king has the power of life and death over his servants, you would not miss this gathering because it would be THE opportunity to see and be seen. Yet, as Jesus unfolds the parable, that is precisely what happens. People refuse to come to the feast. And it is not like there is a conflict of interest here – just work, just the family farm, just people going about their daily business – there is simply no interest at all… And to make the story even more absurd – they actually mistreat the hawkers giving them game day tickets for free. What could these people have been thinking?

And then Jesus has them. His listeners are thinking “Of course they are absurd to refuse the invitation given, not just once, but twice. Of course they are idiots to refuse free tickets to the World Series in a luxury box. What kind of nuts were they? They deserve being destroyed and their city burned.” And comes the answer – those nuts are you. I am the king’s son, and the banquet is prepared – yet you refuse to believe and refuse to come into the feast. But the feast will happen, and the unworthy will get in the door because the king would have a party even if none of the invited show up.

And just to make sure that we, 2000 years later don’t make the same presumptive mistake, to make sure that we don’t smugly conclude that we are part of those gathered from the highways and the byways, Matthew adds that little story about the wedding garment. About not being ready to do ‘what the banquet does’ – to celebrate and live the feast God has prepared for us. Just because you have been invited to THE BANQUET this Sunday, just because you have shown up, doesn’t mean that you are a candidate for sainthood. You have to be willing to do what this feast calls you to – to imitate the sacrificial love that is at its heart.

As we have been looking at the Eucharist these weeks, today’s readings invite us to reaffirm two truths about this celebration. First, that it is a communion, a Koinonia of fellowship – a feast of rich fare and blessing for us all. We are fed here with the finest of wines, the richest of foods. To dine together at the same table bonds us inseparably to one another. And secondly, that there is work for us to do at this table – a putting on of a wedding garment as Matthew tells us. We have to be willing to live the communion we celebrate here at the table. We can’t receive from the same table and then play demolition derby out in the parking lot in our rush to get out of here. We are invited to enter deeply into the cares and concerns of one another. The feast we celebrate bonds us together into a sacrificial community – willing to pray for one another, to feed and clothe one another, to work for justice for one another. To do anything less is to be caught not wearing the proper attire.

I wish I had tickets to the world series. I am pretty sure I would move about everything in my schedule to attend, it would be that fun and that important. What I do know, this evening, is that I do have an invitation to the hottest ticket in town – THIS BANQUET. I have been invited by a generous God to the feast of His love. I pray that I may have to good sense to live well the feast I share in – in sacrificial love for the entire world.