I was at a memorial service last week in Dorset for a very old family friend. She’d been a stalwart of the all the rural sporting pursuits. This was remembered in the lovely service. At the end the congregation turned to the west door of the church, which opened to the village and valley beyond in the bright autumn sunshine; the local beagle pack’s huntsman, in full attire sounded the “going home”. Two little beagles nearby looked up at him expectantly. Our friend was going home.
The huntsman’s uniform and the whole atmosphere was very striking.
What we wear is rather important. The robes we wear at the altar are earthly and partial symbols of a heavenly and sacred participation.
Today’s Gospel speaks of special garments.
The parable a confounding story of a King who gives a marriage party for his Son. All the invitations are sent, but the people asked don’t come. So, like in a similar parable, slaves are sent to invite others, presumably less grand guests, and they not only carry on with their daily lives regardless, but maltreat the messengers and kill them.
In the parable just before this, the workers in the vineyard had done the same thing.
In this parable rather than then sending the Son, the King retaliates and destroyed the murderers and burnt the city.
There have been those in the history of the Church who have allegorised this story and made every incident and aspect have a meaning.
We know there are a lot of stories about feasts and banquets and even generous fathers who love their sons.
Our parable gets more complicated now.
The slaves manage to gather in a party’s worth of guests, but not your ideal wedding reception. They come from the main street, and rather unthrillingly they include the bad and good alike!
The King does a magnanimous tour, checking that all is well. And horror! One guest, one guest, has not put on a wedding garment. “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” he asks rather ominously, and the man was “speechless”.
And then the King casts him into outer darkness, “where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
We need to remember the key point about this story is not the twists and turns, each detail is less significant than the invitation.
It is a judgment.
Once you get the invitation, it should be enough to know what it is you are getting.
That’s why the hapless guest is not so hapless. Once on his way to the wedding, he should have known to put in a garment, afterall, we are pretty sure they were supplied at the door!
You had dodge them as you came through the porch. He had not realised that the invitation was both free, and a crisis, a judgement.
There are so many other allusions to wedding banquets in the Hebrew Scriptures and throughout the NT.
When new converts were baptised in the early Church they were given new garments, reminiscent of the wedding robe in our story, and symbolised by christening robes, themselves an imitation of the robes of white the saints in Revelation wear before the throne; which is why we wear white at the altar.
God calls every one to his kingdom regardless. But he also expects all of them to live a life worthy of the call. From being called to being chosen there is a crisis, an invitation.
So, we come now to this eucharist, this foretaste of the heavenly banquet. We are all invited, regardless but we are also offered the chance to be transformed, to receive the body of Christ and to become what we eat – Christ’s body in the world.
Spare a prayer for meeting taking place in this church on Wednesday and Friday. On both days there will be Eucharists shared with Clergy from the French Protestant Church. 25 years ago exactly an Agreement with them was reached which recognised both a longstanding history of connection between us and them and a desire to continue in dialogue with them. Celebrations will continue at Lambeth on Wednesday evening. One of the most famous French-speaking Protestants of the 20th c, Brother Roger of Taize wrote the following, which speaks to today’s Gospel and to the talks which will follow here.
Come to this table, you who have much faith and you who would like to have more. You who have been to this sacrament often, and you who have not been for a long time; you who have tried to follow Jesus, and you who have failed. Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak, not because you have any claim on heaven’s rewards, but because in your frailty and sin you stand in constant need of heaven’s mercy and help; come, because you love the Lord a little and you would like to love Him more; come, because He loves you and gave himself for you. Lift up your hearts and minds above your cares and fears. Come; it is Christ who invites us to meet him here.