As
she put the liturgy together for today’s service, Pam commented that I’d chosen
a grim passage to preach on, and that in fact, all of the lectionary choices
this morning were kind of on the bleak side.
I protested: “Hey,” I said “it’s the wedding
banquet . . . How grim can it be?” It
was then I noticed that this is Matthew’s
version of the parable, not the one from Luke, the version Karen read, with
the host going out into the highways and hedges, but the one where the
host—elevated to King—(a) responds with retributive violence to the killing of
his emissaries and (b) invites people off the streets, but when he sees one of
them without the proper clothing—who just found out he was invited, and thus
would’ve had no opportunity to change—he condemns him to a place where there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (and, presumably, inadequate dental care).
“Oops,”
I thought, “wrong parable,” and prepared to choose another, but then I thought
“Hey, it’s the passage you were given, so buck up and preach it.” (My inner voice often says stuff like “buck
up.”). And what I discovered was that the interpretation of this parable
depends, as so many of them do, on how it is read.
First,
however, we need to acknowledge the thing that first led me to choose it—no, not my inclination to preach the easier
version, or that I’m easily confused,
but that there are indeed two versions of this parable. It seems that Matthew and Luke had access to
written sources that neither Mark or John had, and this parable was one of
them. A lot of scholars think that the
one in Luke is the earlier version, maybe a little closer to the original, but
both have been edited to fit the theological agendas of their authors.
Luke’s
is a hands-across-the-water version that is in line with the inclusive,
world-stance of that gospel. Matthew’s
rendition is, as you can see, a completely different kettle of fish, tailored, we
think, for his audience of upper-class Jewish Christians. We also think that they might have been
smarting from being ostracized, shunned by
their fellow Jews for following this upstart guy named Jesus. It might be that Matthew’s editing of the episode
reflects these facts.
The
most noticeable difference is the violence—there is none on Luke’s
version. Matthew, on the other hand, has
two instances: first, the King’s slaves are set upon and mistreated, and if
that’s not enough, they’re killed by
some of those who are invited. Talk
about an abrupt RSVP. The second violent
episode is the King’s retribution for the killings, when he sends in his troops,
kills the killers, and burns the city to the ground.
Another
big difference is the guy—one of the good and bad that the King’s slaves have gathered
in from the streets--who the King consigns to the outer darkness for not being
dressed appropriately. It’s not even in Luke's version, it has been added by
Matthew, apparently to bolster his interpretation
of Jesus’ parable.
So. Just what is
that interpretation? What is Jesus—in Matthew’s version, at least—trying
to say? Well, it’s likely that Matthew
read it allegorically—that is, as having a one to one correspondence between
elements in the story and elements in real life. And in this reading, the King is God, his Son
is Jesus, and the banquet is a representation of the new reality, called the
Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God.
And the King/God sends various prophets
to the Jewish people—who, remember, are already
God’s people—to come and partake of the riches of the new reality available
through the King/God’s son. But they
refuse to come, saying they’re too busy with their homes and businesses, and some are downright hostile and kill the
prophets. This riles the King/God up,
and he sends his troops, kills the offending Jews, and destroys their hometown
which, of course, stands for Jerusalem.
And
this last is thought to be a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
CE, when the Roman army came in and savagely put down the Jewish revolt that
had been brewing for decades. And so
Matthew’s version of this parable, in an allegorical reading, explains the
destruction of Jerusalem as divine retribution, through God’s trusty instrument
Rome, for God’s people killing God’s messengers and refusing to participate in
the Kingdom of Heaven available through Jesus Christ.
So. After killing all those people and burning
all that real estate, the King/God worked up quite an appetite, and there was
still that wedding feast, all ready to go, so he sends his slaves out to the
main streets, as Matthew puts it, and they gather up the good and bad and bring them to the banquet. So to get gathered up into this wedding feast—symbolizing,
remember, the Kingdom of Heaven—you don’t have to be an angel, you just have to
be there, you just have to have a
pulse. Or, in our allegorical reading,
you don’t have to be a Jew, you don’t even follow the Law.
But
wait . . . there’s more—in Matthew's version, anyway. God shows up at his son’s
banquet to survey the guests, and sees one of them—are you sitting down?—without a wedding robe! And the monarch is enraged, he’s flabbergasted. He can’t even speak he’s so mad, and he immediately
banishes him to the outer darkness—which, in spite of everything you’ve heard,
is probably not New Jersey, and where
there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
So
there you have it. An allegorical
reading of the parable of the wedding feast, embellished in Matthew’s version
to picture a violent deity who gets the Romans to do his dirty work, to punish
a whole people—and destroy an entire city—for the deeds of a few. A deity who is capricious enough to banish a
guy to the outer darkness for not
wearing a tux, even though he’d just been hauled in off the street and wouldn’t
have had time to go home and change into one, which he probably didn’t have
anyway.
And
you know what? That’s pretty much how
interpreters over the succeeding centuries have read it, even though a lot of
them have claimed not to like it. But a
surprising consensus is to kind of say “oh, well . . . that’s God for you. Never can tell what that deity’s gonna do. After
all, our God is an awesome God, who
reigns from heaven above, and that
God is not bound by our puny mortal ideas of what is right. Our God
can be capricious if he wants, he can be arbitrary, and besides . . . the Jews did kill our savior, they did kill God’s only begotten son . . . And
you know what? Jesus said it, I believe
it and that settles it.”
And
it’s that last little bit, the thought that this refers to the consignment of a
whole race to Hell—which is how most interpret outer darkness—that has been
tremendously damaging over the years.
Wave after wave of Christian violence against Jews, from Crusade to pogrom
to holocaust—has been fueled by passages like this. And here’s the thing: Matthew and his
congregation—smarting from being shunned by their own people—might have viewed
it that way, too, given the way he edited the original.
But
here’s the good news: the very fact that there is another reading of this
parable, preserved in Luke's more grace-filled version, clues us in that Jesus
probably didn't tell it that way . . . there’s a rule in literary criticism
that says when faced with two versions of the same story, the simpler is likely
the older. And besides: is it not out of
character for Jesus, who healed the centurion who came to arrest him, and
wouldn’t use violence to save his own life?
Isn’t out of character for a God who we believe is the absolute
embodiment of love?
Well. As theologian and pastor Michael Hardin
commented about this passage, if that’s what this passage is about—a violent
and retributive God whose will will be
done . . . or else, maybe we’d just
better quietly move along. I thought about doing that, I thought about
making this a lesson in Biblical interpretation, and leave it at that. But what if this parable can be
redeemed? After all, it is still, somehow, God’s Word, and it hurts
my little pastor’s heart to think that we can’t learn at least something from it, and the key into that
is the first thing out of Jesus’ mouth: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to,” he says, not the
kingdom of heaven is like. The latter “is like” implies similarity, but
“may be compared to” is much more neutral, much more inviting of
ambiguity. What if Jesus is making a negative comparison? What if he means to say you can compare the
kingdom of heaven with this counter example, the way they all know things can
be in the world, where kings are violent, vengeful and not a little capricious?
That
way, the king would not be God, but almost the anti-God, perhaps the Emperor, who violently crushed the Jewish
revolution by killing everybody and burning an entire city for the deeds of
what were doubtless only a few. Who
demanded everybody eat and drink his way, who kept them oppressed with little
room for free will, demanding that they regard himself—and his son—as
divine. And who singled out a
scapegoat—Jesus Christ himself—who wouldn’t submit, who wouldn’t bow down, who
wouldn’t wear the Emperor’s new clothes?
Well. I guess I should have called this “a tale of three
readings:” Matthew’s, Luke’s and, now, mine.
And the interesting thing is, two of those readings—Luke’s and
Matthew’s—are both together, in the same Bible.
Two contradictory versions of the same parable, left in by the folks who
determined the canon, that list of books that became our scripture. In fact, the bible is full of contradictions:
different versions of the same story, incompatible stories, and incompatible
theologies, all put together to make our Bible.
And us moderns, we have to know which one is true, which one is right,
even us liberal preachers, who tend to avoid Matthew’s reading like the plague.
But
you know what? We don’t have to choose. As Pam told me this morning, it’s not a
contest. Both readings are there, both
are scripture, and both—as I hope I showed with my poor offering—have something
to teach us. I say these things in the
name of God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Comforter, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment