28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Isaiah 25:6-10a · Psalm 23 · Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 · Matthew 22:1-14
This Sunday I am at a loss, almost speechless.
In the gospel a king gives a wedding feast for his son and sends for the invited guests. They refuse to come. He sends again: the banquet is prepared, the calves and fattened cattle are killed, come to the feast. They pay no attention. One goes off to his farm, another to his business.
This part you understand at once, and it preaches well. Neither of them has anything against the wedding. They just have something more urgent to do, and the more urgent thing is usually right. That is how most invitations are turned down, without anyone meaning harm: the Christmas party, the strategy day, the meeting someone dreamt up so that people would talk to each other again. You have an appointment, and the appointment wins. What you miss, you never notice, because you were not there.
Not all the invited guests are so harmless. Others seize the servants, mistreat them and kill them. The king is enraged, sends his troops, has the murderers killed and their city burned. Then he sends his servants to the crossroads to invite everyone they find, bad and good alike, and the hall fills up. When the king comes in, he sees a man who is not wearing a wedding garment. My friend, he says, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment? The man is reduced to silence. The king has him bound hand and foot and thrown into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. At the end it says: many are invited, but few are chosen.
Here I can no longer follow. That the king is enraged I understand; his servants have been killed. But he has not only the murderers killed, he has their whole city destroyed, and that in the middle of preparing his son's wedding. Where is a man who was standing at a crossroads a moment ago supposed to get a wedding garment? And why does he say nothing when he is spoken to?
The lectionary allows the gospel to end at the full hall. The destroyed city may stay in; the man without the garment may be left out. That does not make it any better for me.
Next to this gospel, this Sunday sets two meals that are entirely different. In the first reading God gives a feast for all peoples on a mountain, with rich food and choice wines, and he wipes away the tears from every face. The psalm is one many people know by heart, often from funerals: The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Except for one line. You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes. There too someone sits at the table, and others watch from outside.
This is a reading aid, not a second full version. Zugemutet reads the four texts of the Catholic lectionary each Sunday for what they say about living together. The texts are given; I listen for what comes across.