Twenty eighth Sunday in Ordinary time – Year A
INVITED TO DANCE WITH GOD
Introduction
The Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ preaching. He begins his public life by announcing: “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). Then, using many parables, he gradually reveals ‘the mysteries’ (Mt 13). One of the workers who came at the last hour (Mt 20:1-16) is certainly the most puzzling. Jesus told it to emphasize both thegratuitousness of the call and the commitment required of anyone who enters the Kingdom of God. It cannot be denied that it is tiring to remain faithful to Christ. But if being a disciple involves considerable effort, how could the workers' grievances hired at six in the morning and paid like those who arrived at five in the evening not be justified?
Suppose you set the relationship with God in terms of unequally remunerated work and regret that the reward received in heaven is not proportionate to the accumulated merit. In that case, you may think that those who set foot in the kingdom of heaven at the last moment and are lucky enough to ‘die in the grace of God’ after ‘enjoying life’ away from him are blessed.
This is the mentality that creates the careless (one who is indifferent to the calls tofaith), the latecomer (who puts off doing good as late as possible), the unruly (who keeps the commandments under stress and fear of hell), and the shabby (the baptized person who continues to act as a semi-pagan). Only those who understand that the Kingdom of God isa feast, a banquet, enter without delay because they do not want to miss even a moment ofjoy that is offered to them.
“Standing on the threshold of your house, O Lord,
give more joy than to dwell in the palaces of the wicked.”
First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-10a
In ancient times only important people could afford a great banquet. Kings often organized them for political reasons: inviting those they wanted to form alliances orstrengthen bonds of friendship. The banquets celebrating certain recurrences or victory over enemies were particularly sumptuous (cf. Es 1:1-8; Dn 5).
In today’s reading, the prophet presents himself as the herald of a sensational announcement. Not a ruler of this world, but it is God will give a banquet, for which he lists the menu: rich food, all kinds of tasty meats, fine and choice wines (v. 6) ... stuff to overload the imagination of the poor people of Israel, who used to eat only once a day andnot always.
Even the rabbis are delighted to quibble about the courses offered in this banquet.Starting from the fact that the Bible is reminiscent of a sea monster called Leviathan, who was killed by God and given "as meat to the people who lived in the wilderness" (Ps 74:14), they concluded that the main food of the righteous will be the meat of this mythicalfish. It is for this reason that in Israel, even today, at the Friday evening dinner, when the Sabbath begins, it is customary to eat fish, to remind all pious people of the heavenly banquet that awaits them.
Who will be the guests?—the eager listeners anxiously asked. All the peoples of the earth, without exception, is the answer. All of them will be called to the same table. The people who hated each other before, who committed violence, who struggled to subjugate the land and the goods, will rejoice together.
Not only will they eat. They will witness extraordinary events, and unheard-of things will come to pass. The Lord will drop the veil, he will destroy the pall cast over the people(v. 7), and everyone will be able to contemplate him, seated at the table next to them. Thenhe “will destroy death forever and will wipe away the tears from all cheeks and eyes ...” (v. 8).
The prophet was not so naive as to think that one day biological death would no longerexist; instead, he announced the demise of what is human death and defeat: life without meaning or ideals, the mockery of failure and pain, hunger, disease, exclusion. Anything that is ‘non-life’ will be eliminated, “for Yahweh has spoken” (v. 8). In no other text of the Old Testament are such extraordinary promises found.
The banquet, of course, will be enlivened with music, song and dance. The readingconcludes with the text of a hymn seemingly composed to be rendered by the guests in chorus: “This is our God. We have waited for him to save us, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For on this mountain the hand of Yahweh rests” (vv. 9-10).
The prophet alludes to the Messianic times but does not realize the extent of the promises that he was making in the name of God. He never imagined that one day the Lord would indeed destroy death forever. Paul, enlightened by the events of Easter, will instead understand it. He will write to the Corinthians: "When our perishable being puts on imperishable life, when our mortal being puts on immortality, the words of Scripture will be fulfilled: Death has been swallowed up by victory” (1 Cor 15:54).
The seer of the Apocalypse will understand that, at the appearance of the new heavensand the new earth, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev 21:4) as Isaiah had predicted.
Second Reading: Philippians 4:12-14,19-20
With today’s passage, the letter to the Philippians concludes. There are a few moving lines from which profound feelings of friendship that bind Paul to that Christian community transpire. The apostle recalls first the hardship, deprivation, and the oppositionthat he endured for the sake of the Gospel: “I know what it is to be in want and what is to have plenty. I am trained for both: to be hungry or satisfied, to have much or little” (v. 12).
He is imprisoned in Ephesus, not for ordinary crimes, but for having served Christ.There, he received the gifts sent to him by the Philippians. Paul is an austere man and is accustomed to a hard life, persecution and starvation. However, in front of their generous gesture, he is moved and says: thank you for doing right in sharing my trials (v. 14).
Whoever risks his life for the sake of the Gospel remains a person with all emotion and feeling. He is hurt by ingratitude but rejoices in the expressions of esteem and affection. Above all, he who has given up everything for the sake of the Kingdom, to form his own family, feels this need for friendship deeply. Whoever appreciates the message of salvation that he proclaims must in some way manifest his gratitude. At the end of the letter, Paul ensures us that God loves and protects his envoys and will reward the gestures of generosity done to them superabundantly (v. 19).
Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14
In Jesus’ time, the Gan Eden—Garden of Eden—was fabled among the people as being where the righteous would enjoy every happiness. In the light of Isaiah’s well-known prophecy that we found in the First Reading, it is imaged as a sumptuous banquet where‘wine stored in the cluster of the six days of creation’ would be served as the beverage. It isrepresented as a place where there would be no need to spread the aroma of perfumebecause ‘a wind from the north and the south blowing between the aromatic plants of GanEden would spread its fragrance everywhere.’
The rabbis continued with promises of even greater joy. They asked: ‘Can a guest prepare a banquet for travelers without sitting at the table with them? Can a groom preparea banquet for the guests without sitting next to them?’ Their answer was: ‘In the afterlife, the Holy One, may He be blessed, will dance for the righteous in Gan Eden and will sit intheir midst, and each will point to him saying: behold, he is our God, as we expected him, we will enjoy his salvation.’
It is against this cultural background that the parable proposed to us today is projected.However, we immediately notice that the perspective of the Kingdom of God preached byJesus is considerably different from that of the rabbis. They announced a Gan Edenprepared for the afterlife, the banquet of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus speaks of asladen in the here and now. It is the new condition, into which he who welcomes the gift of his Spirit, who believes in his proposal of joy, who trusts his beatitudes, enters.
In the whole parable, the atmosphere is one of joy and celebration. Still, there are alsotwo unexpected, dramatic moments: in the center, there is a city in flames, and in the epilogue, a victim is thrown out into the darkness. We will try to grasp the meaning of these two scenes, but we begin first by identifying the characters.
The wedding feast is the biblical image of the encounter of love between the Lord and Israel. In the parable, the bridegroom is Jesus, he is the Son, and the bride is the whole of humanity. Although presenting many unattractive aspects (hate, war, injustice, tears of the innocent, and so on), Israel is madly loved by God.
The banquet is the happiness of the Messianic era. Whoever accepts the proposal of the Gospel and enters the Kingdom of God experiences the most authentic and deep joy. In the Bible, the Kingdom of God is not compared with a chapel where everyone prays devoutly and attentively. It is not imagined as a convent where not even the slightest noise is heard, where nobody disturbs the meditation and ecstasy of others, but it is a banquet, where people meet, eat and drink their fill and talk as they party.
In the First Reading, the prophet promised that God would organize a banquet to celebrate the victory over death. Easter is the time of God’s triumph and the day on which the indissoluble marriages between Christ and humanity are celebrated. From then on, they no longer sense sadness, mistrust and despair; all deaths were overcome; all the graveswere opened wide. The servants who have the task of taking the call are divided into three groups. The first two are the prophets of the Old Testament, up until John the Baptist. Theyhave carried out the task of preparing Israel to welcome Jesus, the bridegroom. They have not been successful. The third group indicates the apostles and all of us; their results are much better.
The first to be invited did not come to the party; they didn’t have the heart to abandontheir interests, the field and business enterprises (v. 5). They did not need a banquet; they felt satiated, believed that they already had what was necessary for a life without problems.They represent the spiritual leaders of Israel, satisfied with the given religious structurethat offered them security before all and before God. Those who are not aware of theirpoverty, who do not feel hunger and thirst for a new world, will never enter the Kingdomof God. They will adapt to the meanness with which they usually live. Only the poor canunderstand the gratuitousness of God’s love.
The guests, gathered along the streets and squares, are people of the whole world. It is no coincidence that, in the original text, the good and the bad are not spoken about—as inour translation (v. 10)—but of the bad and the good, without distinction. It gives priority to those who do not have merit. It is a subtle way of alluding to the complete gratuitousnessof God’s love and the fact that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly”(Rom 5:6).
The presence of good and evil in the Church is a theme taken up again by Matthew.Those who enter into the Kingdom of God do not immediately achieve perfection. Theybring with them all their miseries, weaknesses and moral infirmity. The people of God are made up of those who are bad and good. It is a field where they continue to grow with the wheat and tare, or a sea where a net brings together all sorts of marine life. It is an invitation to cultivate an understanding of human weakness and keep the doors open to allin our communities. The poor, the marginalized, those who feel rejected in the Churchmust find a place to feel accepted, understood and valued.
Before moving on to the second part of the passage, the detail of the city on fire (v. 7)should be clarified. It was certainly introduced to Matthew in the parable told by Jesus. In fact, the verse interrupts the story, and if we omit it, the story will flow more logically. It is difficult to imagine a banquet that begins in the middle, it then makes war, and at the end,the dishes are still ready on the table and the guests still waiting.
The evangelist wanted to make a theological reading of the destruction of Jerusalem, which had already occurred when he wrote his Gospel. The early Christians consideredthis tragic event to have been a punishment from God for the rejection of the Messiah by Israel.
We are faced with an interpretation that strikes our sensibility. We know that God is not responsible for the disasters caused by our nonsensical behavior. It is quite an archaic way for them to express themselves. It is derived from the language of the Old Testament,where it is often called a chastisement by God, but in reality, it is the consequence of sin.Here, for example, Isaiah explains the disasters with which Israel met: “For they have rejected the law of Yahweh Sabaoth and scorned the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore, the Lord, his wrath burning against his people, raises his hand against them and strikes them down” (Is 5:24-25). It would not be in fidelity to the sacred text to repeat these expressions today, which would have a completely different meaning in our culture; it would be foolish fundamentalism. It is, therefore, necessary to transpose and reformulatethe image to make it understandable to our contemporaries.
Here is how the message could be proposed today. Those who reject the Lord’spressing invitations to take part in the banquet of the Kingdom of God, condemn themselves to destruction, will see their lives reduced to ashes, and all that they have builtwill go unnoticed as like fuming waste. (1 Cor 3:13).
God always uses even the disasters caused by sin to bring forward a project of goodness. He lets them realize what his plan of salvation is. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the rejection of the Messiah by Israel have facilitated the entry of theGentiles into the Church. “You did not belong to the community of Israel; the covenants of God and his promises were not for you; you had no hope and were without God in this world” (Eph 2:12). They now can rightfully sit as guests at the banquet. The conclusion is as simple as touching: “And the room was full” (v. 10). Not one is missing; all the childrenare gathered around the table of the Father; the party can begin.
The curtain could fall on this sweet and charming scene. Instead, here the parablecontinues with an episode that seems to ruin everything. The king enters the room, browses around at the guests, and gets angry with a victim who did not wear the proper attire. Hetreats him with unprecedented harshness, even unjustified, considering the venality of his sin (vv. 11-13). Those who joined the joyful feast cannot but be stunned. How do youexplain that?
It soon becomes evident that this part of the story is disconnected from the previous one. It does not agree with what has been said. Why wonder over someone without a wedding dress if the people were gathered on the street, in the fields or the squares? It would be more surprising to find someone wearing formal attire. But what is out of place is the split personality of the sovereign. He acts like a person with schizophrenia: at first, he is generous and kind to the most unfortunate, then, suddenly, he gets upset, becomes wrathful, even cruel.
The explanation is quite simple. The second part of the parable is not the continuation of the first. It is a new parable that is isolated and should be interpreted without reference to the previous one. The theme that the evangelist wants to focus on is the possibility, even for those who have accepted the invitation to enter into the Kingdom of God, to turn awayfrom the logic of the Gospel. They risk the same failure as those who declined the invitation.
The new life of the Christian is often compared in the New Testament with a new dress worn on the day of baptism. It is not enough to have received the sacrament; we need to assume the appropriate behavior. We cannot present ourselves in the rags of our old lives: adultery, dishonesty, disloyalty and moral evil. We cannot be content to put a new patch on the old garment. We need a complete change of kit. We must set our lives on analtogether new set of values.
As for the punishment inflicted on the guest without wedding attire, it should be noted, above all, that this rough way of expression is typical of Matthew. Only he uses theexpression “thrown out into extreme darkness” (Mt 8:12; 23:30) and “where there will beweeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 13:42-50; 23:30; 24:51 ...), and he does it often. The other evangelists do not use such language.
Matthew is writing to the Jews, who are used to being encouraged and reprimanded bytheir preachers with these strong expressions. These images are linked to the time and culture of the people of Israel. This fact should be kept in mind to avoid having an absurd and even blasphemous idea of God, a God without heart and mercy. The evangelist's purpose is to remind Christians—of his and our communities—of the seriousness with which they should assume and carry out their baptismal commitments.
The last sentence: “Many (i.e., ‘all’) are called, but few are chosen” (v. 14), is not related to any of the two parables that precede it. In them, the elect are many (almost all),and few are refused (only one).
We are faced with a saying that Jesus spoke in a different context. Matthew has inserted it here to shake some Christians of his community out of their lethargy and apathy with an affirmation. It is often interpreted as an indication of the limited number of those who will enter paradise. However, here Jesus is not speaking of heaven, but of the Kingdom of God, the new world into which we enter by adhering to his challengingproposal of life. All are invited, but few dare to take the decisive step. The majorityhesitates, dithers and slackens. They are uncertain, not entirely convinced that inside they will find a laden table. They falter at giving up the security that comes from what they already have. Jesus warns against the risk of losing valuable time. We could arrive latewhen others are already having their cake or their fruit.
READ: Jesus elaborates on the gratuitous banquet with the imagery of a wedding reception. The invited guests did not come preferring to attend instead to their own affairs.Some even did violence to the servants sent by the king and killed them. In anger, the king retaliated, and having annihilated the ungrateful guests, he sent his servants once again to invite anyone who cared to come. But one had to be in festal garments when entering or risk the chance of being thrown out of the banquet hall.
REFLECT: The invitation to the banquet of the Kingdom is freely offered to all.Everyone is invited. However, not everyone accepts it. And those who accept must play by the rules of the Kingdom. That is why the one without the wedding garment is thrown out. Sometimes we have an erroneous understanding of God’s mercy – that he forgives everything and, therefore, everything goes. It doesn’t.
PRAY: Today might be a good day to say a prayer of thanks to God who befriended us.Let us also pray for all people in the world to accept the invitation to the Kingdom.
ACT: What qualities should we develop to be more effective in the mission entrusted to us. Let us do something good to someone today as an act of gratitude to God.
