Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 13 October 2014

Fr Robin Gibbons

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I find the last section of Matthew’s parable about the King and the Wedding Banquet (Mt 22:1-14) very disquieting and violent, it’s very unlike Luke’s version (Lk 14:7-14) which has a more balanced ending, admonishing us to be inclusive and welcoming at the Banquet of the Lord.

What is different about Matthews story? Not only is it the violence and killing that accompanies the search for guests and then the command of the King for the servants to compel good and bad alike to attend, it’s also his fierce behaviour towards the guest who came to the feast without putting on a wedding garment. Here the dialogue moves from sarcasm to violence, with the man bound hand and foot and cast out into the darkness.

Yet there is a meaning, one that requires us to make a bit of effort. There are a few mental leaps we need to make. As always the setting is the Kingdom of God, the image of OT Israel figures here as does Christ and the Banquet to which all are invited, but what does it mean for US? Somehow that cast out figure enveloped with darkness and misery is a warning of something?

Some commentators suggest that the garment, which was a feature provided for guests, certainly at Royal Wedding Feasts, stands for the repentance we are called to make when we accept the invitation of God to enter the Kingdom. That certainly ties up with the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus, ‘repent and believe the Good News’. However I think it is something more.

Clothing signifies who we are and sometimes what we do. It marks us out and ritually it often signifies a new start, a new life, like our baptismal garment. For me that’s what the Guest failed to do, he is indifferent to the invitation.There’s a lack of perception, care and response to what the King is really asking of him.

What that small section of the parable asks of us is nothing less than a total commitment to the Kingdom of God. For us the divine banquet of the Lord is about an inclusive covenantal relationship. To accept the garment of the Lord is to repent, believe and then discover, in that wonderful vision of Isaiah, the God who provides for all, who has come and saved us, wipes away our tears and destroys death for ever!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.