Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14
Years ago, in my ever present nerdy habits, I tried to expand my repertoire of fantasy reading by trying out Terry Goodkind’s famous Sword of Truth series. I only got through the first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, which I thought was pretty terrible. But there was one moment in that otherwise forgettable book that stood out to me.
The hero, Richard Cypher, has a lengthy strategy session with his allies on how to defeat the evil tyrant Draken Ral. At one point in the midst of this conversation, Richard is astonished when his mentor, the wizard Zeddicus, reveals that Ral believes his actions to be for the greater good. "How can someone so evil even think that what he is doing is good?" Richard asks.
Zeddicus laughs in reply. "Most of the greatest evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good."
That idea has stuck with me. It applies to the real world as much as it does any fictional universe. Within their own minds, all the great villains of history believed what they were doing was right. Even they did not wake up each morning thinking, "You know, I think I'll be evil today." They all believed in something, a vision of a world they believed was better, even if only for themselves. Hitler, Stalin, Caligula, even and perhaps especially ISIS and their ilk. All believe or believed that what they were doing was good and a better world would emerge as a result.
Scary, huh? It gets worse. Because there’s also those who start out good but lose their way somewhere along the line. What’s that famous line from the Batman movies? “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Well, that does happen. The French Revolution comes to mind. Life under Louis XVI was pretty brutal, so it’s hard not to sympathize with the goals of Robespierre and the other revolutionaries. At least at first, but it wasn’t long before they lost their way and became as brutal and vicious (perhaps even more so) than the tyrant they deposed.
When I preached this text back in October, I critiqued a Christian commentator who offered up a solution to the problem of ISIS. He suggested we wipe out every Muslim in the whole world. Hitler killed 12 million people in his death camps and we regard the Holocaust as one of the worst atrocities of human history. There are one billion Muslims worldwide and this guy’s solution is the Holocaust 200 times over to deal with the “problem of Islam.”
The great evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good.
All this has been in my mind as I read our Gospel lesson this Sunday. This is an odd parable to say the least. It starts out somewhat conventionally. King gives out an invitation to his wedding banquet, the ones invited refuse to participate, so he invites another less worthy but more receptive group to arrive. This fits Jesus’ frequent theme of opening the kingdom more broadly than people expect. It also fits his theme of thumbing his nose at the “good religious folk” of his day (and ours to some degree).
But then it all goes strange. The king comes into the banquet hall and find one of these new guests dressed in his street clothes, not in his celebratory wedding garment. Seeing this, he throws this newly invited guest out on his rear, to join the other invitees who had previous refused to come.
Why this ending? It certainly makes this parable different from the others, but what is this last part meant to tell us? There's where I keep coming back to those today and throughout history who start out with noble goals but lose their way at some point. I keep thinking that this parable is a warning, to us.
The Old Testament is replete with examples of the ways the people failed to uphold God's will, even before Jesus came along. Prophets came to call them back, and were often ignored or even persecuted. They lost their way. And now Jesus has come and part of his purposes is to expand the Chosen people to include so many others, people that had previously been excluded. But as he expands the Chosen to the least and the lost, he reminds them that they too can fail. They too can lose their way.
That's who the disrespectful guest is. And he is being disrespectful. In the ancient world, if you attended such a wedding banquet, it was considered very poor taste to upstage the bride and groom. So your host would provide you with a wedding gown, a robe that somewhat plain so that you would not appear to be dressed more ornately or more fabulously than the happy couple. As the masses come in, they receive their gowns, put them on, and go into the feast. All except this one, who when the king sees him so flagrantly disrespect his son and his new bride, has him cast out of the feast into the darkness.
Jesus is telling this parable during his final week of life. He’s in Jerusalem and the cross casts a big shadow over his dealings during this time. He’s drawing a line in the sand with the Pharisees and his other opponents. They are the ones who should be most receptive to his message. They are the ones who claim and boast of their closeness to God. Yet like the nobles and rich in the parable, they reject the king and his invitation. But when the doors are opened to the common folk, to us, there are those among us who treat this gift with the same scorn and contempt as the guest who refused to wear his banquet gown.
How many of us Christians, in our fear and in our anger and in our hatred, have taken the gown given us in our baptism, washed white in the blood of Jesus Christ himself, and have sought to soil it anew with the blood of innocent people who are in some way different from us? How often have we let our zeal for good turn us into monsters? How often have we lost our way? The king’s invitation to his feast is a gift beyond price. And yet, how often do we cheapen it?
When the king invites us to his banquet, it is a gift that we have not earned nor deserved. We are brought to this font, washed clean in the waters of baptism, and we called by those waters and those words to be something different than what we were before. We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to live by his command and example. To care for those in trouble. To welcome the stranger. To embrace the outcast. To love even our enemies.
That is how God defines good. Our human impulses drive us to hate, to retaliation, to the destruction of evil, and yet the story of God’s salvation is a story of the redemption of evil. That is what it means to truly be “good.”
Christ died and rose again for the sake of all people, you, me, and for all the villains of the world, including the monsters in ISIS. This is our story. This is our calling. We are Christians. We are the baptized. We are those called to be something different. Called to trust. Called to believe. Called to love. To not be darkness like all the rest, but to be light in the midst of darkness. To wear our wedding gown proudly at the Lamb’s high feast and to show the world there is a better way than hate and destruction. That is who we are meant to be. That is who we are called to be. That is what it means to be Christian. Amen.
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