Wedding Garment and Non-violence

Archbishop Wynn Wagner is Regionary Bishop of Southern Province USA of the Old Catholic Church. This homily was delivered at St. Mychal Judge Old Catholic Church, Dallas Texas.

The Gospel is Matthew 22:1-14: the parable told by Jesus about a king who invited his subjects to a wedding banquet. The subjects didn't want to come. Maybe they had to change the batteries in their smoke detectors or something. For me, if somebody with the title of "king" invites me to a big feast, I'm there: free food, the works.

The king's servants returned, saying Sorry, nobody wants to feast. The king is ticked. He send his servants back out, explaining that he has already killed oxen and plans a big To-Do. This time, the invitees not only say No, they kill the messengers.

We are in the presence of people who REALLY don't want to come to the wedding banquet. It is like you are Sarah Palin with an invite to Barack Obama's White House. Not no how. Hot no way. When the kings hear about how his servants were killed, he did two things. First, he sent his army to kill those who killed his servants. Then, he sent whatever servants he had left out to the streets. If he can't get Lords and Dukes, he will invite all the street people to the wedding banquet.

Then... get this... then at the wedding banquet, he found somebody not wearing a wedding garment. The king orders this guy tossed out onto the street. The line is "Many are called, but few are chosen."

Okay, that's the setup. Anybody have problems with this parable? Jesus is the speaker, and nobody claims that He is telling a story that actually happened. It is a parable, and that means we are supposed to look for a MESSAGE.

This is in Matthew, which was written as the story of Jesus for Jewish readers. Other Gospels were written for Gentile (non-Jewish) readers. This in in Matthew, just a few chapters after Jesus gives the famous Sermon on the Mount. We went from "Blessed are the meek" into a king with a total attitude. Matthew has Jesus telling us that the king forcibly ejected a street person because he didn't wear a wedding garment (after being rounded up to attend at the last minute).

Some Christian groups use this passage to beat up non-believers and scare the pants off those who do believe. The book of Revelations uses "wedding garment" to mean purity, with the message here that if you are not pure, the king (i.e., God) will boot you out of his banquet (i.e., heaven).

Yeouch.

I have all kinds of issues. It could be that Matthew didn't "get it." He first wrote "Blessed are the meek" and then went all Leviticus on this poor street guy because he wasn't up to the king's standards.

The story is a kind of weird one in that Christianity was strictly non-violent for the first three centuries. The historian Josephus (AD 37–100) and others who lived back then agree that Christians were known for their lack of violence. Members of the Roman army were expected to quit the military as soon as their enlistment was up. Violence of any kind was a No No to early Christians. It wasn't until the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion that violence became okay.

And yet, here we have Jesus telling a story where people killed the king's messengers, and where the king answered by slaughtering the killers... not to speak of the king kicking out the poor guy who didn't wear (or didn't even own) a wedding garment.

Here's what I think: the wedding garment is something that is worn internally. Rather than representing God, I think the king is supposed to represent all that is bogus in secular power. The king can't see internal purity (wedding garment) and insists on everyone being pure only at the surface.

And the lesson that I take away is this: the street guy was tossed back out to the street, and he didn't fight back. He didn't call the king names that we know of. He took the road of peace and love and went on about his business, letting the king and the other party-goers do whatever they wanted.

The street guy isn't the loser in this parable. He is the one with the message. He responded to violence with non-violence. Our marching orders are complete and completely consistent: there is no just war, no morality in violence.