Homily: 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Today in our Gospel reading, our Lord
Jesus uses the image of a wedding banquet as the setting for his lesson to the
religious elite about the kingdom of heaven and about the invitation of
God. I think that it would be good at
the outset to pause and to ask ourselves, “What is a wedding banquet?” so that
we can better understand both the described reaction of the invited guests as well
as the full reality of our invitation.
So, what is a wedding banquet? Before we can understand this, I think we
have to reckon with our modern take on weddings and the celebrations associated
with it. It is very true to say that
weddings have become a capitalist industry in our society: with businesses on
every side looking to provide products and services to help you make your
wedding as big and extravagant as you’d like it to be (or bigger and more
extravagant than the last person’s you saw on social media). Now, weddings are a big deal and they should
be celebrated—even in big ways; but it seems to me that the “market is driving
the consumer”, so to speak, causing us to distort the idea of a wedding
celebration. To see how, let’s go back
to the Scriptures.
In the Gospel, the wedding banquet is
a metaphor for eternal life and the king who has prepared the banquet is
God. In the first reading, from the
prophet Isaiah, we see a vivid description of what that banquet will be like: “a
feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines”. Given this description, we might think that a
wedding banquet—that is, in this case, eternal life with God in heaven—is just
unadulterated hedonistic pleasure: that is, the eternal enjoyment of all the
greatest pleasures. But this is
certainly not the case. (Not that heaven
will not be eternally pleasurable, but just not in this way.) Rather, and when we look at this in the
context of the life and culture of the people during Jesus’ time, we see that
this image was about way more than simple eternal indulgence in pleasure.
At the time of Jesus’ life on earth,
life was difficult. Very few people had
regular access to anything akin to a supermarket: that is, to ready access to
an expansive variety of food and drink at prices affordable enough to make
enjoyment of them relatively common among the people. Thus, to be invited to a dinner in which rich
food and drink was served—and served freely—was truly a special event. Thus, when the prophet notes that God will
provide for his people (who, by the way, had been languishing in exile for many
years) “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure,
choice wines”, it was noted as an invitation to celebrate: in contrast to being
seen simply as an opportunity to indulge our hedonistic desires for food and
drink. In other words, a rich banquet
wasn’t intended to be an opportunity for gluttonous overindulgence, but rather
to be a sacrament of sorts: an outward sign of the shared spiritual and
emotional joy that the common celebration provides. (I think that, if we boiled down our own
expectations of wedding celebrations, we’d find that this is actually what we
look for. My perception, however, is
that this very often gets lost when the “wedding industry” takes over too much
of the planning.) With all this in mind,
now we are ready to understand the parable Jesus is telling and the lesson that
it is putting on display.
Jesus—the Son of God incarnate—is the
Messiah sent to God’s chosen people: sent to bring fulfillment to all of the
covenant promises and to usher in the fullness of the kingdom of heaven. The chosen people failed to recognize this
coming and did not respond to his invitation to enter into this fullness. Why did they not respond? We can’t know for sure, but some signs are in
the Gospels: self-centeredness, pride, worldliness… these were all behaviors
that the chief priests and the scribes displayed. They were “locked in” to their own ways of
thinking and to achieving their own goals or worldly ends that they were blind
to the signs that the Messiah was standing before them inviting them into the
eternal wedding banquet. Worse than
that, they actually rebel against the king: mistreating his servants and even
killing some. Saying, in effect, “Not
only do we refuse your generosity, but we reject our relationship with you
entirely.”
The king, of course, responds and
punishes the chosen people for rebelling against him. Interesting, however, is how the king refuses
to let his banquet be spoiled, right?
“If those who were chosen refuse to come, then go out and invite anyone
else: for this wedding must be celebrated: this abundance of joy must be
shared.” In telling the parable in this
way, Jesus prophesies the welcoming of the Gentiles—that is, those who were not
of the race of the chosen people—into the kingdom of heaven.
This last point is important for us
because (and I think it’s safe to assume this here) we are all “gentiles”: that
is, not of Jewish ancestry. But we
should not let this fact lull us into complacency about the invitation and our
choice to respond: for the same pitfalls that the chief priests and the scribes
fell into two-thousand years ago, are the ones that we can fall into
today. God is constantly inviting us to
the wedding feast—that is, inviting us to enter fully into the kingdom of
heaven—but self-centeredness, pride, worldliness, etc. can turn our minds and
hearts away from this invitation and lead us to refuse it: and even downright
to rebel against the generous king who sends it.
It is so easy for us to fill our lives
with stuff: so much so that our stuff gets in the way of receiving what God is
offering to us. Easy because we enjoy a
daily abundance of the world’s goods that the people of Jesus’ time couldn’t
possibly imagine. The challenge,
therefore, is to hold space in our lives so that our stuff doesn’t get in the
way. The way we do that is through
detachment: constantly working to be sure that we are not overly attached
emotionally to the things and experiences in our lives. For some, this may mean a complete separation
from the things of this world and a life of relative poverty, voluntarily
assumed. For most of us, however, it’s
the constant effort to keep the things of this world in their proper place:
that is, never allowing our things to become barriers or obstacles to our
relationships, both with God and with others.
For example, if taking care of my lawn is more important to me than
joining my neighbors at a cookout (or, perhaps, joining my fellow parishioners the
parish picnic) then I’m probably in danger of missing the invitation that God
is offering me to enter into the fullness of his joy in the kingdom of
heaven. By recognizing when this happens
and raising our gaze once more to the higher things, we ensure that we don’t
suffer the fate of the invited in Jesus’ parable: to be rejected and punished
by the king whose generosity we’ve rejected.
One final note about the wedding
banquet. Notice that, after inviting all
those who weren’t previously invited and filling the hall to enjoy the feast,
the king finds a guest not dressed in “a wedding garment”, who he then throws
out of the feast. This, of course, is
more than a comment about wedding dress codes, but rather a metaphor signaling
that, even though the king went out and invited “whoever” to the banquet, it
didn’t turn the banquet into a “free-for-all”.
Rather, all were expected to “change” and to “put on the proper
garment”. This is a reminder that, while
God invites us all into the full and eternal joy if his kingdom, it’s not “come
as you are”. Rather, we are expected to respond
to his call and to conform our lives to his commandments—to live lives of
holiness and virtue—so clothing ourselves in the “proper garments” to enter
into so honorable of a feast. Each of us
must be careful not to presume on God’s mercy, but rather constantly strive to
be so “clothed” when we enter eternal life.
Okay, one final, final note. Let’s assume that we have responded well to
the invitation and are striving to remain detached from worldly things and to
clothe ourselves in holiness and virtue: then what? Then, God is going to call you to be his
messengers. That’s right, the messengers
like the ones he sent to carry his invitation.
This invitation is probably the one we most often refuse from God. Probably because Jesus’ prophecy is real: as
messengers of the king, we will be refused and very likely mistreated—even
killed—by those who refuse God and rebel against him. This cannot stop us from responding. When God sends us, we must go. Otherwise, even our attempts at religious
faithfulness will not save us from his punishment.
The good news is that we have the best
example and witness: our Lord Jesus
showed us the way. He became incarnate
to bring the Father’s invitation to his chosen people and he was rejected and
killed. Yet, he rose from the dead and
lives forever. Those us who are united
to him in baptism, although we may be treated the same for being his
messengers, nonetheless live in the promise that we will rise like he did. Therefore, we can be courageous in
responding—even if we are afraid: for by following him in his example, we will come
to enjoy the rich banquet—the joy of eternal abundance, shared with all the
saints—that awaits us… the banquet prefigured for us now, here in this
Eucharist. Let us ask for this grace of
courage today, and then go forth to witness to it: trusting that God, whose
banquet is constantly prepared, will not fail to bring us into his joy.
Given at St.
Mary Nativity Parish: Joliet, IL – October 10th & 11th,
2026
