Fat Calf
Matthew 22:1-14

October 9, 2005

The one thing about the history and practices of Thanksgiving, on both sides of that long border, is that is full of legends and confusion. The Puritan Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving with the Wampanoag nation in 1621 and the details of what really happened are happily beyond reach - except that they didn’t do it again. Perhaps in an attempt to outdo the Americans, Ernest Frobisher’s thanksgiving celebration in Newfoundland in 1578 is noted by some as the first Canadian Thanksgiving.

One thing for sure, nobody for sure knew when to observe Thanksgiving. Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November in 1863, but Franklin Roosevelt wanted to stimulate the Christmas shopping economy and pushed the holiday back one week in 1939. There was a great public outcry, but finally the US Congress established the southern Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November only in 1941, while it has been officially the second Monday of October since just 1957 in Canada. It used to be held in Canada on the same weekend as Armistice Day, making it a little late for the harvest celebration it is supposed to be now.

Matthew describes a different kind of meal. God’s kingdom is like a king who threw a wedding banquet, a party, for his son. No fooling - this is what it is all supposed to be about in the real world, God’s world. Fat calves all over the place. The serious business of faith is a party.

The story is not unfamiliar. The king sent out messengers to tell the guests already invited that the time had arrived. But they refused to come. Maybe his messengers did not present it in the most appealing manner. So the king sent out another squad of messengers, perhaps more endowed with the gift of gab. And if you like banquets and free food, you couldn’t have resisted their delicious lure of words. “Look, everything is on the table; the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!”

Yet, they just shrugged their shoulders and went on their way to do the most routine of things - working in one’s shop, weeding the garden. Couldn’t they get excited about anything? Or was it that they were taking care of business, not wasting time on a dumb party?

But then, there were some who had nothing better to do, so they started beating up the messengers, and ended up murdering them. The king was outraged, and who would blame him? He sent a third batch, and this time it wasn’t messengers, but soldiers. The soldiers ended up destroying that band of thugs and leveling their city - a wonderful Biblical ending. This wasn’t the end of the story.

The Gospels of Luke and the recently discovered Thomas both tell roughly the same story, but with no murders, either by disgruntled invitees or soldiers. A violent tone rummages through Matthew’s tale that does not sit well with most readers. There may be a good reason, but not a pleasant one. When Matthew was writing his Gospel, the church found itself under constant attack and persecution, a certain segment coming from the synagogue, for the Christians were perceived as a fringe group of heretics who were undermining the fragile status of Judaism as an exceptional religion in the Roman Empire. So it doesn’t take much to place that personal sense of oppression and denigration right into the parable. The king invited his invited people, his chosen ones, to the royal wedding feast and they thought they were too good for that kind of affair. They killed the king’s messengers, his evangelists, and in Matthew’s eyes what result could there be other than the punishment of these knaves.

It’s not anti-Semitism, but dangerously close. Most readers didn’t remember the circumstances of Matthew’s church and puzzled like we are, they generalized those who snubbed the invitation to mean anyone who thinks they are too good for the Gospel. Regretfully, some always want to make it the Jews - or any other group they currently despise and hate. We underestimate our own ability to be ingrates.

The tactic changes. The king had tried the honourable of the community, the powerful movers and shakers of the culture and government, but they had outgrown God and had no need of the kingdom. Now you didn’t have to be somebody to be invited, you just had to be anybody - anybody who wanted to eat. And so they came - the less honourable, the less than honourable, the dishonourable; the unpowerful and the powerless. These were not the invited elite who deigned to mutter haughtily, “No thanks!” They were thankful that a king had finally recognized them, brought them up to sit at his table and eat his food. Thank God, we’re finally considered good enough! And what are we good enough for? Not a dignified worship service or ceremony, but a party where there’s indiscriminate drinking and eating and laughing and being happy to be with other people. We are good enough for a wonderful time to waste time. God, after all, knows better than us how to rest and waste time. This is a royal waste of time.

Yet no party is without its pooper, and the final scene of this parable is a downer, just when we thought we had regained a gentle and gracious God. The king comes all smiles into his wonderful party, but his eye is caught by someone not dressed right. Out with him, without a second thought, and we are shocked. Isn’t God’s kingdom a place where outer appearances don’t matter, where it doesn’t matter what label you are wearing? You don’t even have to put on a tie or Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

But we have to keep going back to the first words of this and most of Jesus’ parables, “the kingdom of heaven is like....” When you and I come into the party, no matter when and how we were invited, it’s not just a pretend, make-believe occasion, but the real thing. You have to change somehow, for what you were out there outside the party can’t always come in here with you. You can’t bring with you into the party prejudices against this or that race, a religion or denomination you look down your nose upon, against a group of young adults whose way of life you think is disgusting, people who aren’t as well educated as you are, or people who are better educated than you are, prejudices against politicians or businessmen or doctors or lawyers. You can live a pretty rough and uneven life prior to the party, and you will be ushered into the festivities, but then you can’t keep on behaving the same way.

Jesus pictured this for us by a fellow with a dirty shirt that stuck out like a sore thumb. The guy figured he didn’t have to do anything different or special, but when you’re brought inside for the wedding feast you are required to live a new life. You’ve got to put on a clean shirt, you’ve got to be different. That doesn’t mean you have to walk around with a serious religious frown on your face or behave piously and conservatively - this is a party, after all. Yet now you who are just anybody are called to be somebody, and when you are somebody in the kingdom, then you are no longer the centre of the universe, but your universe consists in serving everybody and anybody. You cannot be thankful for anything more.

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