Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Pentecost 19, 10/15/2017
Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14, by David Zersen
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” (NIV)
SERIOUS BUSINESS
I confess to having too much fun telling my grandchildren stories that shade the truth. When the children were younger, they gaped wide-eyed at me as I told them something which their parents, should they have been standing near-by, knew to be an exaggeration or perhaps even a falsehood. As they grew older, however, they became smart enough to know my tricks and would say, “Oh, Opa, that’s not possible.” I came to understand, as many of us have understood with respect to our children, that there’s a danger in playing fast and loose with facts. A time may come when those with whom we want to have a trust relationship no longer believe us.
What I’m describing is true not just for playful relationships with grandfathers and grandchildren. It is also true for those situations in which a more careful attention to language might be appropriate. This is meaningful in politics and in religion, for example. News pundits, who think they are responsible for keeping politicians honest, have spent a lot of time questioning whether Donald Trump’s tweets can be trusted. And theologians who like to believe they are dealing with ultimate truths sometimes try to embellish their truth-telling with talk about angelic hosts or hordes of demons. The difficulty for us modern types is that we begin to wonder when and if we should trust anyone or anything. Some people I know are so angry with “lying politicians” that they no longer pay any attention to the news or politics, and some people believe that religion has so lost itself in the never-never land of hyperbole, that they want nothing to do it.
Both politics and religion, however, deal with serious business. In a democracy, citizens have great responsibility for helping to chart the course for life in a free and just society. And in a religious community, believers have responsibility for addressing issues of meaning, justice and hope. There are similarities in the responsibilities of both groups. And while Jesus once carefully balanced those two issues by telling his listeners to “render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt. 20:21), in today’s Gospel lesson some question whether he wants to talk serious business or just play with words.
Stories to make us think.
Jesus’ approach in this parable reminds me of a 93-year-old artist friend, Dr. P. Solomon Raj, in Vijayawada, India. Raj, as an artist working largely with batiks and wood-block prints, has spent a lifetime trying to engage viewers, especially his Indian audiences, by depicting something puzzling or controversial to encourage them to say, “What’s going on here?” or “What kind of a God is this?” One print is especially powerful to me. Reflecting on the division that occurred when Muslim Pakistan was separated from Hindu India, Raj portrays for his Indian audience two refugee groups separated by barbed wire. In the back of the Muslim Pakistani group stands a man wearing a crown of thorns. Imagine what controversy, even anger, such a print might encourage! Whose side is Jesus on anyway!
In Jesus’ parable, listeners are engaged by hearing that there also two groups of people. In the first part of what my great professor, Joachim Jeremias, once called a double-edged parable, there are people who are invited by a king to a wedding banquet—and those who refuse to come. From Jeremias’ point of view, this is background information. It sets the stage. In all double-edged parables, the message lies in the second half of the parable. Again there are two groups in this half. Everyone is generously invited, given that nobody was interested in the first half. And everyone comes to the wedding celebration. However, the king discovers a person who’s not appropriately dressed. And he chooses-- he who had invited everyone the second time around-- to throw this man out. This man represents the second group-- those who are called, but not allowed to stay.
What is going on here? With which group is the man with the crown of thorns standing? How can such a joyful occasion be turned into such a frightening one? What does this have to do with our understanding of our own place at the wedding feast— at the messianic banquet that God is throwing for everyone? This is a serious question. This is serious business.
More than a grain of salt
Many of our friends might find it unnecessary to take this issue seriously. With a Latin expression that I learned years ago, they would prefer to treat all things religious cum grano salis (with a grain of salt). However, there are times when the ultimate questions face us and we can’t avoid coming to grips with their seriousness. Yesterday, our 43-year-old son called to say that a 43-year-old friend of their very close-knit group of friends simply died unexpectedly, leaving behind a wife and three younger children, and they were all gathered in his hospital room trying to think seriously with friends that had for years enjoyed laughter, partying and togetherness. Now there was separation and it called for an explanation.
These are the situations in which religion seeks to speak seriously—about meaning, hope, fear, relationships, morality, kindness, dedication, and love. Where is God in all this? Are we left to make sense of this ourselves? How do we answer the questions that have no answers? All of us have asked these questions, and all of us know that serious questions can call for serious answers that exceed the boundaries provided by the truth with which we are comfortable.
Martin Luther once entered into this predicament and it’s appropriate to bring him into this discussion because this month marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Luther’s remarkable literary and verbal output has been printed in 120 volumes of the authoritative Weimar edition of his works and in those volumes one can find glorious attempts to wrestle with profound issues. However, there are a few places where Luther uses inappropriate language and scandalous references, especially about the Jews. Luther had reached a point in his life, confronted by illness and personal threats that made him think the end was near. He wondered why the pure and sweet message of God’s gracious love in Christ didn’t’ simply convince everyone and encourage them to beg for admission to the wedding feast (to use the imagery from our parable). Because the Jews didn’t accept this invitation, Luther more than lost his cool and said things about other people that no Christian should say. In various places, however, Luther acknowledged that he wanted to be temperate, but “God has not allowed it,” (H. Oberman, Between God and the Devil, 321) to use his words. He was battling, he believed, not, as St. Paul would have said, “against flesh and blood” but against “principalities and powers, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph. 6:12). Against such forces, Luther believed, he needed more than common language. He needed hyperbole. He needed the big guns because the kingdom was at stake! This was serious business.
I would like to believe that for Jesus the same understanding about serious business is true of the seemingly harsh message in the second half of the parable in today’s Gospel. Jesus used a powerful literary device to make his point. Hyperbole is a figure of speech that comes from a Greek word meaning “to cast afar.” The verb hyperbolein means to throw something or, in our English usage of the term, to stretch the truth in order to make a point. To reject God’s gracious invitation to join everyone invited in the celebration that belongs to his people is one thing. But to attend with great casualness, to pretend that you had a right to the invitation or that you don’t think it’s any big deal to be present is to slap God in the face. It’s to treat grace cheaply (as Dietrich Bonhoeffer worried in The Cost of Discipleship). It’s to pretend that you’ve never had to face the big issues of life, to take anything seriously. It’s to treat matters of faith cum grano salis.
Of course, the way the second part of the parable ends seems to give a negative tone to the religion we want to embrace. There is, after all, an ultimate judgement, a serious conclusion, for those who want nothing to do with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22). And there is great sadness involved in rejecting the open arms of the Savior who invites all to join in the celebration that belongs to his friends. But to focus on that is to miss the power of the parable’s invitation. It is to focus on dead-ends and negative judgements instead of on the imagery of welcome and affirmation. If there is hyperbole in the words describing judgement, there is certainly hyperbole in the words that say “Come to the wedding… invite anyone you find.” This is serious business. For 20 years now, Sermons from Goettingen (www.online-sermons.info), led by Dr. Ulrich Nembach, has been placing freshly-written sermons before pastors and laity who enjoy reading devotional material-- not because it judges them, but because it affirms and empowers them with the Gospel! Our God is a welcoming God, a loving God, and a gracious God. Don’t miss the affirming nature of the Christian message.
This affirmation is visualized in one of the most famous sculptures of Jesus by Thorwaldsen in the Lutheran Cathedral in Copenhagen. This Jesus with the outstretched hands has been replicated in churches throughout the world as a way of insisting that although this is serious business, the matter you dare not miss most of all is the love that casts out fear, the love that knows no bounds, the love that claims even you.
I grew up in a church that had a Bertel Thorwaldsen replica in the reredos above the altar. When it arrived, so I was told as a child, Pastor Abel did not like the fact that the face of Jesus seemed to be cast down, as if in meditation. So, defying all rules of aesthetics, he had the head raised so the face confronted the seeker and truly for Pastor Abel said what the statue’s Danish words proclaimed: “Kommer til mig” (Come unto me). This story, which might be apocryphal, reminds me of the visage which we Christians ascribe to our righteous God whom no one has ever seen. It is face of love that both affirms and empowers each one of us today. It is the face that we want to see, need to see, before we see our righteous and holy God face to face.