Bad Rags
Matthew 22:1-14

October 12, 2008


A parable, like the ones that Jesus tells, is supposed to be an unreal story that sounds so real we really have to pay attention. I have a real story to tell, an illustration of a parable, so does that make it unreal? At any rate, I am violating all my own principles of preaching by telling a story about my wife and me one May week several years ago. We are almost parabolic.

Late one Monday afternoon I returned to the church office to find an invitation waiting to attend a dinner. This was the occasion of the investiture of the Earl of Wessex, Prince Edward, into the Order of Saskatchewan at Government House. I know he is not a king, but maybe he will be; but it’s the best I can do for a king in the parable.

So, we were invited to a dinner by the king who might be, and when I showed it to Molly we both laughed and said, “Right, we are going to go to some event with hundreds of other guests, half of them climbing the social ladder over us.” We went to bed with ignorance in our minds, that is, we would politely ignore the invitation.

But since this is a Biblical parable, it was fitting that in the night there were dreams. Well, at least a nagging and in the early morn Molly checked out the Government House website and realized that the rooms where all this was taking place were not that large. “Maybe we should think about going,” she said, “after all, Lorne Calvert invited us.” Sure enough, when I came to the church a phone call came in from the protocol office apologizing for the delay in delivering the invitation, and would we be coming? Yes, we would.

in a parable is best done when you don’t know you are in a parable. We had avoided the pitfall of declining the king’s invitation because we had something better to do, though we came close. But now there was a practical problem: a little note typically in such invitations said something about “black tie.” My God, I don’t even own a black tie! We knew what it meant, that dress would be formal, tuxedos for men perhaps, something elegant for women. And the two of us knew we did not have the proper attire.

After all, when you are both ministers, people of the cloth, you can hide under the cloth or clergy robe or gown a host of bad rags. We couldn’t wear our robes to Government House, so we went hunting for new clothes, preferably black, which we did. When we arrived that Friday night we were properly attired, we had on the appropriate wedding garments and they let us stay. There was that woman in the bright yellow dress, but they let her stay too.

First there was the investiture, then a social time when we were introduced to the Earl of Wessex by Lorne Calvert and Lynda Haverstock, and finally, a wonderful banquet with filet of bison. Nice dessert too, death by chocolate. Must have been what they ate in Matthew and Luke. We returned home at a decent hour as well.

That’s what it’s like eating with a king, and just like in the Gospels it is full of grace. We couldn’t pay for it, we didn’t earn it, we were completely and utterly guests. As far as we were concerned, we were summoned from the streets, somebody else must have bowed out and we were substitutes. The way the Gospel sees the dinner applies to all of us - if you believed you have earned your place at the king’s dinner you don’t deserve it. At least we wore the right clothes.

That feast was only a facsimile, a pale imitation of the meal Jesus was talking about, which once again is what the kingdom of heaven looks like. For one, the parable was a wedding feast for the king’s son. The king was as in a number of Jesus’ parables the King of the Universe, the Lord God. And who was the Lord’s son, but Jesus? Who was Jesus marrying? Lots of people want to know that one, but the parable never mentions the son again and focuses upon the guests.

It’s almost a perfect, transparent story looked at from a historical angle. Those who refused to come were the various people of Israel, who even killed the messengers, the prophets. Their city is burned, just as Jerusalem was by the Romans in 70 A.D., right before the Gospels were being written. The riff raff brought in off the street to dine at the banquet were the Gentiles. By the way, that’s us, the Gentiles or the riff raff or both. God’s grace is the one thing that must be accomplished, not the human pecking order we have convinced ourselves is the purpose of our life. Somebody has to get a free meal. It’s a nice way to end a parable of grace.

But then there’s the clothes, the wedding garments, the robes. The king spies one person who doesn’t have one on - no, it probably wasn’t yellow - grabs him or her by the scruff of the neck and throws him out unceremoniously into the dark and stormy night amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth. This doesn’t sound like a gracious king. After all, if this improperly attired guest were someone from the streets he was poor and couldn’t afford a fancy robe. Forget about grace, where’s the justice in all of this?

There is a certain kind of justice here, for after receiving grace it is cheap grace, wasted grace, if you do nothing but eat it up. You can start with thanksgiving, but it’s more, you now have to change your life. Now that the king has fed you, what are you going to do with that nourishment? The ancient church used the imagery of putting on new clothes. Paul used that imagery and talked about taking off the old person of sin and putting on Christ. You have to take off those bad rags and put on the glad rags of a new life. This, by the way, is not a rationale for dressing up in your Sunday finest to come to worship; it’s about how you wear yourself after the banquet.

Who are you going to feed? Who are you going to invite to your dinner? Who are you going to visit who is sick and lonely, ignored and unloved? You and I have been fed, most of us have our assigned seats around the table. Are you really thankful? Now what clothes have you put on, what colour should you wear?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan