A Banquet in a Perilous Realm
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a banquet at which everything seems to go wrong. Like many deftly crafted stories, it subverts our expectations and encourages new perspectives. All of us are invited to attend. But take care… it could be a dangerous party.
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Transcript
I have heard that during the past week, people have been placing bets on whether or not I will choose to preach from the Gospel lesson this morning, or discretely opt out for one of the other texts in the lectionary.
All I can say is, depending on the odds, some of you are about to become very, very rich.
I like stories. I like listening to them, and telling them, and reading them aloud. They don’t have to be comforting stories. I like spooky stories, and stories that are a bit disturbing. So it’s probably no coincidence that today’s parable is one I happen to enjoy.
Not everybody does, and I respect that. It isn’t a comfortable story. From the setting, it seems like it should be. It’s a parable of the Kingdom of Heaven, and it’s set at a wedding feast. What could possibly go wrong?
At the beginning of this year, I attended a wedding feast, and it went off beautifully.
My sister’s eldest child, Moe, was marrying the love-of-their-lite, Beckett Thornber. The celebration was held in a medieval pilgrim’s hall next to Battle Abbey, in the county of East Sussex in England.
A broad array of guests was invited to attend, and they came from all over the world.
Word had gone out months betore:
No gifts, please. But WEAR something.
Something unusual. Something Medieval.
Something fantastic.
This may sound like a strange request, but in fact, Moe and Beckett were following in a family tradition. Moe’s mother Starr, who is my sister, had married the love-of-her-life, John Robb, in the gardens of Eden, the place where she had grown up, right here in Georgia.
The place where I still live.
Starr and John, dressed in medieval clothing, had arrived on a flower-decked raft, drawn across the pond to the thunderous music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.
People had begun arriving for Starr’s wedding days before, even camping on the property, just to be sure not to miss out on any of the festivities.
At Moe and Beckett’s wedding in England, the hall was filled with guests dressed in bodice and boots, gowns and gauntlets. Emily and I came wearing cloaks and caps and red robes. It was marvelous.
My suspicion is that Battle Abbey had seen nothing quite like it since the days of William the Conqueror.
So that’s the setting. That’s something of the scene you might imagine when you hear the reading of today’s Gospel .
A king has given a wedding banquet for his son, and sent out the invitations. But something unthinkable has happened. Nobody has responded. The invitations go out again: Come to the great dinner I’ve prepared. Oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come!
But the prospective guests again decline to respond, and not only that, they kill the messengers.
It must have been just like the days of William and the Conquest. Normans and Saxons. Hatfields and McCoy’s. They had issues.
Naturally the king is quite upset, so – in good Norman fashion, – he kills everyone he can find and burns the city. “They’re all worthless!” he shouts. Then… he sends out more invitations. It’s beginning to sound like a very dangerous party.
I can understand why people were reluctant to attend. The son may have been ok, but the DAD comes across like Joe Pesci in that old movie, Goodfellas.
We’ve all known people like that – people who can turn on a dime without warning. One minute they’re laughing at your jokes. The next minute, they’re gripping you by the throat and you’re turning blue.
So the next bit of the parable shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. “Bring in anybody!” He commands his slaves. “Anybody who will come, bring ’em on in!”
He’s a generous fellow! Magnanimous! Why can’t people understand that?
Well, this time they do come – the reputable and the disreputable – the Pharisees and the publicans – the thieves and the prostitutes – the mayor and the city council – they’re all there. The wedding hall is filled to bursting.
And wouldn’t you know it? It’s a GREAT party!
Here comes Dad, martini glass in hand, greeting everybody. He’s having a good time.
And then it happens. There, right in front of him, is a guest without the proper attire. Not one of the caterers. Not a groomsman. Doesn’t appear to a bridesmaid. He just doesn’t fit.
Dad is perplexed. He puts an arm around the man’s shoulder. ‘Friend? How did you get in here without a wedding robe?”
The guest is speechless. I’d be speechless. Everybody in the room is probably speechless because they can feel the tension mounting among the gathered attendants.
True to form, the generous, magnanimous, misunderstood king absolutely explodes.
It may be the most vivid depiction of an apoplectic fit you will find in all of Holy Scripture. That poor robeless man is bound up hand and foot and pitched into the outer darkness. Where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Well, I don’t know about weeping, but the one who keeps gnashing his teeth in this parable is the central figure, Himself – the Great King – the Star of the Show – the Godfather of us all. God?
But how can that be?
Jesus is the one telling this story. Jesus knows his Father quite well. So we have to ask, is God really like this? Is Jesus giving us a first-hand depiction of the family dynamics of heaven?
One would hope not.
I can see why lots of people don’t like this parable. I can see why preachers try to adjust it and rationalize it, and make excuses for it. But I have to confess that, when it comes to Jesus’ stories, this is one of my favorites. And I love it even though it doesn’t seem to make one lick of sense.
Can’t you just imagine God the Father, dressed in his venerable robes at the Pilgrim’s hall, keeping to the edge of the crowd, listening, as his own Son tell this parable – this family story – about Him?
He listens as Jesus carefully builds the tension, unveiling each uncomfortable detail.
Jesus is a storyteller. He may be exaggerating, to add to the effect, but he’s also being serious. He knows what he’s talking about.
I think, if I were God, I’d inch my way for the exit, hoping that no one recognized me. I’d go back to my palace, sit on my heavenly throne, and do some very serious self-evaluation.
When people tell stories about me, they often make me laugh. But those stories can also be a bit embarrassing. They make me think, is that how people see me? Am I really like that? And quite often, I must admit, the answer to those questions is yes.
The beloved Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, who taught at Columbia Seminary, often talked of the troubling stories we find in the Bible about the character of God.
He dared to say that God is in Recovery. Recovery from violence.
Listen to this:
“God has a history of violence,” says Brueggeman, “and God is not completely recovered, but He’s like everybody in recovery. We KEEP recovering. And we regress. And I can imagine that God regresses into old patterns of violence, and intends to do better than that.”
That’s a shocking thing for Brueggemann to say – perhaps even blasphemous – and I’m not suggesting you have to agree with him. But I am drawn to the idea. It tugs at my heart and awakens an unusual feeling: Compassion for God, whom we seldom think of as one who might actually need our sympathy, or our help, or our prayers.
It’s also hard to think of God as someone who might need to be held accountable, someone to whom we might need to speak the truth, now and then, even though it hurts.
Perhaps – just perhaps – Jesus is doing just that. Taking part in the divine, mutual influence of Father, Son and Spirit. Speaking truth to power, a word from the Word-made-flesh.
To some of us, this parable seems an absolute outrage, a reversal of all our expectations about what the Kingdom of Heaven might be like. But I think Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he told it.
One more thing that I find helpful to keep in mind is that when Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he never limits it to a place where we hope to arrive after we die.
He’s talking about something deeper, and much more strange.
Heaven isn’t just someplace we go. It someplace which is coming to us, right here, right now, in the very midst and muddle of our lives. It is as close to us as our next breath. A place within us, and among us – a place spread out across the earth, but seldom recognized.
The Kingdom of Heaven is always threatening to come near, and one of its characteristics – one hint of its approach, is that things seem suddenly peculiar and off-kilter. It’s a little bit like the way the light turns different and the air feels tense, just before a storm. It’s like getting into a new car with all the dashboard controls in the wrong place.
The last shall be first, and the first, last.
If you want to save your life, lose it.
The Kingdom. The Feast.
As in the parable, it is a place and an event to which we are summoned, but it is not a place known for its comfort or security.
Instead, Jesus warns us, the Kingdom of Heaven is a Perilous Realm.
“Watch out!” he cautions us. “Things will work backwards when the Kingdom comes. All your expectations and relationships will be reversed. This is a place where human assumptions are destroyed. Every convention is turned upside down. It is a good place, the best place, but you never know what might happen there.
“The journey into the Kingdom is not one to be taken lightly, frivolously, or without forethought. Dangers abound, and if you dare to enter this Perilous Realm, you’re going to need protective clothing.”
If there’s one aspect of the parable on which I can agree with the old commentators, it is the nature of the mysterious robe, the raiment which clothes us as someone approved for passage. It is, we are told, the garment of our salvation, the seal of our sanctification, and it is a free gift to anyone who will receive it, a robe of righteousness washed white in the Blood of the Lamb.
That’s the traditional description, taught to us in the customary language of the Church.
But in the spirit of the coming Kingdom, where even the most familiar things may take on qualities that are strange and new, I phrase it a little differently, as a charm, an incantation, a holy spell of protection:
Take your hat, and wear it backwards. Put your shoes upon your hands. Whistle and hum at the same time. Go in through the out door. And pray like there was no tomorrow.
Come, all ye.
We are bound for Battle Abbey, the feast at the Pilgrim’s hall, where there is laughter and rejoicing, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Come bravely, whoever you may be. But take my advice: Wear something unusual, something fantastic. Wear that robe.
God save all here.
Rev. Beau Farr
October 11, 2026