Who gets thrown into outer darkness?
Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14
We hear what we know.
We are so wired to decode every parable in the same way. King or authority equals God. Son equals Jesus. Banquets are basically figures of speech for communion. The disciples are the good people, the Pharisees/obdurate/unprepared people the bad. End of story.
So, here is the traditional way to interpret today’s Gospel. God invites people to feast with him. The people refuse the invitation. God sends his slaves aka the prophets, they get killed and therefore God revenges their death by burning down cities. Until there is only white ashes left. Then, God invites other people, good and bad, all of them, Gentiles and Jewish alike. And they come and feast with him. Yet, one person shows up unprepared. He came but he didn’t care enough about the feast nor God and so, again, God uses great violence to throw him out, straight into hell. The lesson: many are called, some are chosen, the rest won’t be saved. Too bad for them, because we are, of course, part of the chosen ones. Thank God.
Well, here is the thing. If it was that easy, why did Jesus tell one parable after the other to get his point across. I mean, this logic isn’t hard to get. It’s the world’s logic of power. And it preaches mighty well. Especially, when the church or pastor gets to feel and act like the king, judging people’s worthiness. Or their dress-code. Or both. This text is a favorite for Christians telling each other what kind of clothes to wear to church.
We hear what we know. What did the people during Jesus’ time hear?
Once there was a king named Herod. [1]
Herod became king by the grace of the Romans while he was actually in exile. This took Herod by surprise. He had expected his brother-in-law, a Jew of royal blood, to become king. Instead, he was crowned. One of the first things he did was killing his nephew. Afraid, that this baby boy would once claim to be the true heir. Yep, this is the same Herod, who felt super threatened by another newborn king. He tried to find out where he was from the three Magi in order to kill Jesus. When they never came back to report back to him, he simply decided to kill all male babies under the age of one.
So, Herod became king of Judea in Rome without having ruled even one day in Jerusalem. Being rather ambitious, he takes up an army and makes his way to the walls of Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, people there aren’t amused to get a Roman ruler, be he half-Jewish or not.
Instead of fighting and losing his army to a well defended city, Herod pleads, inviting the people to join forces with him. He knows that even though he represents the greatest empire of that time, the Romans don’t are about him in particular. They just want him to bestow peace upon Jerusalem and rule in the Roman interest. If the Jews won’t trust him on the long run, he will be worthless as a king. And he will be gone and killed in no time. Those were the days.
So, Herod tried to play it smart. He claimed to be just the ruler, not a king. Basically one of them, a private man, who “came for the good of the people, and for the preservation of the city, and not to bear any old grudge at even his most open enemies, but ready to forget the offenses which his greatest adversaries had done him.” (Antigonus 14:402) In other words: “He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’” (22:3-4)
At that time, Herod is engaged to the granddaughter of the high priest Hyrcenus. Through that marriage Herod will become part of the true royal bloodline. And his yet to be born son will be a real royal. Just as real as any sons his sister might have in the future. No further killings of little boys will be necessary. Herod’s son will be king. And that’s what counts.
Here’s the deal. If the people of Jerusalem accept his invitation to accept him as king, his kingship will be safe. If they voluntarily receive him as their king, he will call off an imperial army and happily invite the most honorable people of Jerusalem to his wedding banquet as a symbol of their new peace. And in the future, his guest’s children will attend his son’s royal wedding. That’s how royalty ought to work. It just continues.
The other option is: oppose the offer of a peaceful invasion and feel the consequences. Diplomacy or army, that’s the question. The outcome is determined anyway. Herod will rule.
“But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business.” They reject Herod’s offer. And they don’t do it out of laziness. They do it because it’s their only way to be proactive. In the eyes of the royals of Jerusalem, it would have been unworthy to have a usurper in the city. To the priests Herod was an insult. Nothing more.
Now, the king will have to prove whether he is a man like them or the enforcer of the Roman empire. The time to play innocently is over. Here, the old powers are at play. The circle of revenge has started. One does not reject a king’s invitation, and be it to surrender, without consequences.
Some people naively return to their farms and businesses and old lives, hoping that if they ignore the threat, it will just go away. That life will return to normal. They want to hunker down until Herod is gone or the world has changed or both. And at first it seems to work. Herod withdraws from Jerusalem. Just to come back with more forces to take down the walls of Jerusalem.
Others are less sheltered, they don’t own property to hide at. When then king sends out his slaves and soldiers, their anger and violence is more visible. And they “seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.”
One killed officer, that’s all Herod needs to justify a blood bath. Herod is directed by the shame of being rejected by the people he is supposed to govern. There is no common interest anymore, just people against king.
The Jews fled into the inner court of the temple. Their greatest fear was not to be able to offer God their daily sacrifices in the temple. So, they asked for permission to bring in animals for sacrifices. And Herod granted that wish. Hoping, they were finally going to yield. They didn’t.
And the king “…destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” Fire is worth than battle. Because it consumes everything indiscriminately. Just like a world consumed by rage will be devastating for everyone living in it. The city Herod burned, was his own. Jerusalem.
Herod was an ambitious man. And a scared man, because he knew that his kingship was only granted to him by the Romans. To gain some security he married his fiancée just before he took Jerusalem.
Knowing what was holy to the people of Jerusalem, he devoted tons of resources to rebuilding the Temple. As a half Jewish man himself, he knew: Whoever built the temple could claim to be the king of the Jews. Religion was highly political. The wedding of powers had to take place. Even a disastrous victor had to seek a way to put the swords back into their sheaths and go over to doing business as usual. Coming together around an altar in the temple was one possibility. And so, Herod was obsessed with maintaining the sanctity of sacrifice in a city littered with corpses. Just like the king in Jesus’ story was obsessed with completing a wedding in a hall filled with prisoners for guests.
“Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” With people who lived out in the streets because their houses had burned. With guests who had no choice but to attend. There was nowhere to hide anymore. Good and bad doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is: who serves the new order? Who submits to the new king?
The people listening to Jesus hear his parable and the story of Herod at the same time. It’s only been 30 years since he came to power, their mothers and fathers lived through that horror. They understand just too well, what kind of a king Jesus talks about. It’s definitely not God. What good would be a God that acts just like the worst king they can imagine?
To save the people of Jerusalem, Antigonus, the Jewish leader, engages in an incredibly honorable act of self-sacrifice. He falls down in front of a Roman general and pleads for mercy for his people. While others prepare to surrender, he literally takes off his royal robes to sacrifice himself for his people.
It doesn’t work, Herod is unmoved and Antigonus is put into bonds and dishonorably beheaded. In other words: “‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” This is not just a death; this is a death made to bear the face of oblivion.
Jesus’ audience also remembers where their families stood back then. Who tried to hide and who was out in the streets fighting the army until everything was lost. They wonder, which side Jesus would take. They want him to judge somebody, anybody. The king, the servants, the guests.
And so, they miss what Jesus was actually saying: That once we forsake the kingdom of heaven conflict will make us indistinguishable from each other. And we will enter the circle of violence. Until a passionate king is met by a passive man. A man who takes on the dumbness of the people. One could call it the sins of the people.
And this man becomes the focus of the king’s wrath. A wrath that’s still there even though the king finally gets the party he wanted. But the guests aren’t as easy going as they should be. It’s hard to enjoy oneself while feasting in angst of a massacre or other kind of revenge by the king. And while mourning the loss of loved ones and houses. What helps is distraction. A scapegoat or a common enemy. Someone who shows up at the party and draws the king’s full attention. A clearly identified victim. A speechless victim who leaves the king speechless. Who shows that the king no longer has full control of the situation.
And then there he is. The king sees him as soon as he enters through the door. As if he had been waiting for him to finally show up. The one victim who will make everyone else the winner. Where there were good and bad people before, a king and his servants, there is now a group unified against the unrobed man. A sigh of relief can be heard. Finally, everyone else will be safe and able to enjoy the party. Finally, everyone's mistakes or sins from the past won’t count anymore.
We hear what we know.
Last week Jesus was asked a question he refused to answer: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (21:23) This week, he replies. Many expected him to lead a revolution. Instead, Jesus tells them that he will take onto himself the violence that rules our lives. Authorized by a world so broken that nothing else works anymore but absolute renunciation of power.
For many are called but few are chosen to renounce power and live the way of God. Because Jesus is not an earthly king playing the power-game. Jesus would rather be crucified than kill. Jesus would rather upset some important men than abandon us.
We hear what we know. Except, when we don’t hear what we know. That God loves the world and sent Jesus to turn the earthly logic of power and violence and winners and losers upside down. Don’t we know that? Isn’t that what we believe? And yet, in this parable we have been hearing for centuries what we know to be wrong about God and true for cruel leaders who are greedy for power.
And no, God is not like Herod, burning cities, killing the unworthy. God makes a point of showing up as the most unworthy in human eyes. And by the way, God doesn’t care how you are dressed at church. Other church-members might. Your mom might. God has bigger issues to take care of. Like teaching us to stop fighting and to get it. That God is not a God of wars and damnation. That God is not a God of the divide. That God is love. Nothing less. Amen.
[1] Thanks to the very inspiring paper of Marty Aiken that contains all the details and argues from a New Testament Scholar’s point of view for the following reading.
The Kingdom of Heaven Suffers Violence: ”Discerning the Suffering Servant in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet”
