Cross The Road

Why did the turkey cross the road?  To prove he wasn’t chicken. I tell this corny joke because we are nearing Thanksgiving Day when many of us will have a feast of food and drink to be shared with family and friends. Turkey usually is front and center. 

Today we read about feasts. In Isaiah we hear of a feast of rich food and choice wines. In our Gospel from Matthew we hear of a king who gave a wedding feast for his son – a banquet of calves and fattened cattle. Our second reading provides a contrast with these feasts. It’s focused on the difference between being well fed and going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. 

Many of us understand the pain of going hungry, especially for our children. Many, perhaps most of us, are well fed and simply don’t understand. It’s not within our experience although I suspect most of us are more aware because, especially this time of year, we receive letters from organizations asking for our understanding, compassion, and for money to feed the poor and those who have little to eat.  

It’s a real and important need our Parish already appreciates by virtue of our Food Pantry with its volunteers and the ongoing major fund-raising campaign to build a new pantry facility. That effort is well-described in the posters at the entrances to our Church and in numerous flyers and in the bulletin. We have the ambitious, daunting goal of $2 million. Eventually, we will reach it.  Many thanks to those of you who already have pledged.

In the Gospel the king gave a wedding feast for his son, but the invited guests refused to come.  Furthermore, when the King’s servants were sent to those ignoring the invitation, the invited guests mistreated and killed them. What is Matthew’s point?  

As invited guests, the feast is what we join when we follow Jesus, our bridegroom, and do God’s will especially about loving our neighbors and combating evil in all its various forms. Regrettably, many of us ignore that invitation. When we refuse, evil prevails.

We all know that evil, portrayed by the devil, always lurks like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. We are all a potential feast for that beast. The question is: do we allow ourselves to be eaten or do we resist the temptation to behave in evil ways. Many of us do not resist so the lions lick their chops and feast.  

Let’s return to the Gospel and the king’s attendants. We have been invited by Christ our King to the wedding and his feast that we enjoy as the Kingdom of God. Do we accept this royal invitation, or do we refuse to go meaning we have not given our allegiance to Christ? We reject his invitation to the Kingdom of Heaven when we refuse to love and instead seek revenge, align ourselves with self-serving liars, resent immigrants, prefer to judge and hate, act with bias and prejudice, and behave as hypocrites.

In our Gospel the king invites the good and bad, the worthy and unworthy, to come and fill the empty seats. He invites people of the city and surrounding countryside to come to the festive wedding hall. Invitations to banquets held by prominent Jews and Gentiles of Jesus’s time were usually extended to family members, close friends, and intimate acquaintances. Poor people were not welcomed and seated at those banquet tables. Jesus flipped those tables.

This unwelcoming of the poor is highlighted in the parable by the man not wearing the white and clean wedding garment. Most of us have been to weddings, and isn’t it true that many of us compare how we are dressed to everyone else? Whose dress is outstanding, the most fashionable, and conveys beauty and wealth? Whose suit has the best cut, is most dashing, and conveys success and superior bearing?

Here’s the point: By wearing the wedding garment provided by the king, no one revealed their poverty or misery. Every guest hid his and her social and economic status underneath clean and white clothes.  Everyone looked the same.

However, in this passage the one who refused to wear the wedding garment revealed his unwillingness to hide or set aside his status. He wanted to stand out – to be front and center, the center of attention, admired, and feel better than all the rest. Many of us feel the same way.

That guest’s ugly fate? According to Jesus, as told to us by Matthew, his hands and feet were bound, and he was cast into the darkness outside, where there was wailing and grinding of teeth. Quite the consequence!

We are all invited to the wedding feast.  Like the turkey, will we cross the road? It’s the road that divides us from those we think are unworthy, beneath us, or bad – or from the poor and disadvantaged. Will we accept and put on those clean and white garments to cross the road?

I end with this question: Why did Jesus cross the road?  His answer: To get away from a mob of angry, hateful, hypocritical and hyper-critical followers. Let’s make sure we are not part of that mob, so we can cross with him to the better side where there is compassion, fairness, kindness, understanding, and love.

Deacon David Pierce