This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 15, 2023 for St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23, Philippians 4:1-9, and Matthew 22:1-14.
I’ll be honest here. I find Matthew’s parable of the wedding banquet very difficult. For starters, it reminds me of two aspects of weddings I’ve found very stressful: figuring out the right thing to wear and, for my own wedding, the guest list. But it’s mostly because this parable also strikes at the heart of what’s deeply stressful about relationships - human to human relationships and human to divine relationships; that is, the question of worthiness and the need for connection.
The sociologist (and Episcopalian) Dr. Brene Brown defines shame as the fear of disconnection. Like many other psychologists and sociologists, she also identifies shame as the root of so much human hurt - hurt directed inward at ourselves and outward at each other. Shame is also a cruel and effective method religion and other social organizations rely on for control. And so this parable can be read, and certainly has been used to claim the following untruths about God and faith: That connection to God, once severed or denied, is severed forever. That there are people worthy of relationship with God and people who aren’t.
These are grave spiritual misconceptions - no, misconception isn’t a strong enough word - these are insidious lies about God and Christianity that lead to the kind of deep shame-filled wounding that I will probably spend the rest of my career attempting to heal in those under my spiritual care. It is no coincidence that they are messages the rest of our society is happy to further grind into our conceptions of self: that this or that misstep, this or that identity can make us unworthy of connection to others, and others unworthy of connection to us.
Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven may be compared…then offered an open-ended parable. It’s vital that we listen for when God’s vision for us breaks into that story. The kingdom of heaven is not when the invitees decline the king’s invitation to his son’s wedding feast. It’s not when the king responds to the murder of his slaves with extreme, retaliatory violence. That sounds a heck of a lot like the world we live in right now. No, the kingdom of heaven is the moment when everyone is invited - all the people that can be found, good and bad - and everyone shows up.
It’s important that we notice: in the kingdom of heaven, who is doing the inviting and who is doing the disconnecting?
C. S. Lewis’s seminal allegory of heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, disputes the notion that Hell is a fiery state of eternal punishment God inflicts on unfortunate, unrepentant sinners. In Lewis’ illustration, the outer darkness is a Grey Town filled with people who continually prioritize other things over belonging fully to God’s love: priorities like bitterness, grudges, profit, and fame. In Lewis’ imagining, Hell as the condition of separation from God - Hell is what we experience when we continually choose to reject God’s invitation to boundless love.
The exaggerated, hyperbolic actions of the king, then, are the revealing of the true consequences of the guests’ own choices have already placed them in the isolation and loneliness of the outer darkness.
The deep and painful irony of being human is that shame often becomes a self-fulfilling fear. The fear of disconnection drives disconnection itself. When we shame others, we push them down and away. When we give into our own shame, we become convinced of our own unworthiness and push others away, too. In contrast, every time we reach for connection despite our fear, every time we have the courage to show up for someone else, every chaotic toddler birthday party we steel ourselves for, every late night ice cream run to a struggling friend, every funeral we attend, every time we take a chance on a first date, we step that much closer toward the kingdom of heaven, where everyone is invited and everyone shows up.
When we began talking about what it would look like to have people think and pray about all the various gifts they wanted to give back to God this stewardship season, I wanted to make sure we talked about the gift of presence. Those are the gifts I remember and appreciate most from my wedding, after all. It wasn’t the honeymoon fund contributions or the stand mixer. It was all the ways folks flew and drove and sacrificed to be there for us on that day.
It is no small thing to show up to church. Each of us has our own often very good reasons for why attending one week or the other is particularly challenging. But I hope each of you never discount the importance of your presence in the pews or online. You say with your embodied and virtual presence: hey, you all here, you’re worth getting to know, and you say to yourself: I am worthy of belonging to God. So as you think about pledging your gifts this season, the invitation of today’s parable is to consider how often you’d like to say yes to God’s open invitation each Sunday morning. To pray about what’s too often, what’s not often enough, what’s an amount of showing up that stretches you and encourages you to grow - and to commit to it. The challenge is to do it out of gratitude, not shame. Because if it’s out of shame, well, we’re right back to square negative one.
Now, I’d love to stop here on the simple message of just show up, believe me. Just get yourself here and trust God to do the rest. But this parable goes on.
The king encounters a guest who somehow managed to slip in without a wedding robe and we are reminded that it is possible to show up and still choose to not fully be where you are.
It is possible to be present but project the opposite message - to say with your words and actions and body language and clothing that the rest of you all here are not worthy of my full effort and attention. Or on my most compassionate days, I tend to read this sort of behavior as this instead: I am so afraid I’m not worthy of connecting to you all, I'm not even going to try. I’m so afraid of rejection, I’m going to reject you first.
I saw this a lot in youth ministry work - but I see it sometimes with adults, too. They’re there in the room but not really. Nose in the phone, refusing to participate, or share more of themselves beyond sarcasm and disdain. And who could blame teens? They’re right in the thick of that stage in life where one social misstep could expose you to endless ridicule and shame. Better to stay aloof. And if we are honest with ourselves, there’s probably still a bit of that teenager inside of each of us throughout our lives.
So long as men live in fear of having their manhood revoked, and women fear becoming more invisible with each passing year and each added wrinkle, so long as each member of a friend group fears slipping into becoming the butt of all the jokes…so long as our society depends on assigning a value of “less than” to whole swaths of people - none of us can be free from the fear of disconnection. From shame.
And yet, even with the most obstinate thirteen year old in my confirmation classes, there would eventually be a moment, the crack of a smile at one of my throwaway jokes or a passionate opinion suddenly expressed and I would feel it: we are all finally here, in the room, together. A glimmer of the kingdom of heaven.
So the invitation of this parable is also to consider not just whether we show up, but how. When we are here, do we stay open to connection - as much as is possible to us on any given day. And when we go out from here, how do we arrange our lives so that we can say yes to as many bids for connection as we can? How do we keep ourselves open to love in the face of so much internal and external shame?
Hey, thank you for showing up today. Thank you for all the ways you’re keeping yourself open to God and others. Even if today all that means is a smile and a handshake at the peace or on your way out the door. Even if that’s only a “hi!” comment left on our service’s Facebook post.
Each of those gestures matter. Each brings us all closer to that kingdom of heaven moment when all are invited, when all show up, when all are truly here.
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