Among all Jesus’ parables, the royal wedding feast is unique in its final twist: the expulsion of the replacement guest over his inappropriate attire. Dramatic reversals are common in the parables, but only here do we find a reversal of the reversal. So often Jesus teaches that the last will be first and the first last — but nowhere else is he so clear that the wheel can go around more than once, and the last who becomes first may again become last!
What ultimately matters here is the wedding garment. What is this all-important garment? Some early Fathers thought it was Baptism — but St. Augustine refutes that, since baptized people can be cast out! According to Augustine (and others, including Pope St. Gregory the Great and St. Ambrose), the wedding garment is charity: love of God and love of neighbor. That’s what ultimately matters.
This is the third in a series of Sunday Gospels relating a string of parables that Jesus tells in the Temple in response to a challenge from Jerusalem’s chief priests and elders following Jesus’ dramatic actions in the Temple. After entering the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph on the first Palm Sunday, riding a donkey to shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David,” our Lord enters the Temple and drives out all buyers and sellers, overturning the tables of the money-changers. He then proceeds to use the Temple as a base for his ministry, teaching and healing.
Of course the chief priests and elders are alarmed at the radical actions of this unpredictable northern prophet of Galilee! He’s invaded their space. He’s disrupting normal, accepted economic activity. He’s making the Temple all about himself. “By what authority do you do these things?” they ask.
Jesus responds with a question of his own about John the Baptist that leaves them “reduced to silence” — and then proceeds to tell these three parables. First, the man who asks his two sons to work in the vineyard: One says no but changes his mind and goes anyway; the other says yes but doesn’t follow through. Then, last Sunday, the wicked tenants of the vineyard who beat and kill the landowner’s servants and even murder his son. And, finally, today, the royal wedding feast and wicked invitees.
The familiar message of these three parables is that those who seem to be first in line for the kingdom of God — religious leaders; those to whom others look for guidance in attaining the kingdom! — may wind up far behind those they consider unworthy sinners. Tax collectors, prostitutes, Gentiles — non-Jews, like us! Jesus casts his religious opponents as the seemingly good son who doesn’t deliver; the wicked tenants and invitees who mistreat and kill the servants sent to them. Whereas tax collectors, prostitutes, and Gentiles are the disobedient son who changes his mind; the new tenants who will honor their contract; the random people on the street, good and bad, whom the king welcomes to the royal wedding feast.
Jesus tells these three parables standing in the Temple, speaking to Temple authorities at a moment when, on the one hand, membership in God’s family will soon be thrown open to Gentiles, while, on the other hand, the Temple and the Temple establishment will soon be destroyed by the iron fist of the Roman empire.
Less than 40 years after Jesus uttered these parables, in A.D. 70, Roman troops putting down a Jewish rebellion attacked Jerusalem, butchering vast numbers of Jews and “burning their city.” The Temple was destroyed, and with it the establishment of chief priests and elders who opposed Jesus and conspired in his death. As Jesus had foretold, the kingdom was taken away from the Temple authorities and given to others — through the power of the Holy Spirit descending on the Church at Pentecost; through the sacrament of Baptism, administered first to Jewish believers in Jesus, and then increasingly to Gentile believers.
All of this was in God’s plan. What does not reflect God’s will is how conflict between Jesus and Jewish authorities, and later between the New Testament church and Jewish leaders and communities, wound up playing a tragic role in the long and ugly history of anti-Jewish, antisemitic attitudes and ideologies. The teachings of these parables, along with other passages in Matthew’s Gospel and other New Testament books, have been grotesquely misused to justify the wicked idea of the Jewish people as collectively responsible for Jesus’ death, as cursed and rejected by God.
Antisemitism affects both Christian and non-Christian communities, and has often been connected to murderous violence — most recently eight days ago in the barbaric terrorist attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which seeks the destruction of the state of Israel. Over 1300 Israelis were brutally killed, the worst loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Nazi Holocaust during the second World War: the genocidal slaughter of six million Jews.
All forms of bigotry, racism, and hatred and violence toward groups of people are evil and utterly contrary to the Christian gospel — but hatred of Jews is a unique evil in the world, as the Jewish people themselves are unique. Antisemitism has been called “the longest hatred,” connected to fevered conspiracy theories and vile myths in which Catholics, even some saints and popes, have been complicit, while of course other saints and popes throughout history have condemned and opposed all of this.
After the literally unimaginable horror of the Holocaust, the slogan “Never again” has often been heard. Yet antisemitism has persisted — and, in the week since the Hamas attack, surges in antisemitic incidents have been reported around the world: attacks on Jewish people, damage to Jewish property, death threats, swastikas and antisemitic graffiti, and more. These attitudes still exist in our world, in our communities, even in our churches. Jesus came to tear down dividing walls of hostility, particularly between Jews and Gentiles, and every pope from Pius XI to Pope Francis today has made it clear that we cannot claim to follow Jesus if we are not opponents of every form of antisemitism.
Recent popes have also expressed great concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people. In response to this new conflict, Pope Francis condemned terrorism and affirmed the right of self-defense; he also expressed concern for the “many innocent victims” of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which have reportedly killed thousands, including hundreds of women and children. The Vatican has long supported a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, but too many on both sides only want to take as much as possible for their own side — and so innocent Israelis and Palestinians suffer with no end in sight. God has invited both Israelis and Palestinians to the royal wedding feast! May the Lord God “destroy the veil that veils” them, in the words of Isaiah in the first reading, and “wipe away the tears from every face.”
As for us — random people in the street who’ve been welcomed to the king’s feast — let’s remember that the wheel can go around more than once. The last who become first can become last again. We may be good, respectable Catholics, perhaps seemingly near the front of the line for the kingdom; but any of us may wind up far behind people we may think of as unworthy sinners. What ultimately matters is the wedding garment of charity: love of God and love of neighbor. Of every neighbor. May we dress appropriately for this wedding feast every day of our lives.
Copyright © 2000– Steven D. Greydanus. All rights reserved.