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I’m just going to say it: Of all the stories Jesus told, this is probably the strangest and most unsettling on the surface. I think we would all agree that it doesn’t appeal to our sense of justice, to say the least.
Let’s review: A king throws a banquet and invites the kingdom’s elite, but no one is interested in attending. After the people mistreat and kill some of the king’s messengers, the king retaliates, sending an army to wipe out the people. He then sends more messengers to invite whoever they can find to the banquet.
Then, just as we expect the story to end, Jesus throws a curveball. The king comes into the banquet and is furious because one of the guests is not appropriately dressed. The king has the man thrown out of the banquet.
Here is where the story loses me. The king had his people invite a man who did not fit in, then got angry because the man didn’t fit in. If this king is supposed to represent God, I think we can all understand why it might leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.
But that is exactly the issue: I don’t believe this king is supposed to represent God.
Many of Jesus’ parables begin with the phrase, “The Kingdom of God is like…” or, “The Kingdom of heaven is like. …” Jesus would then proceed to tell a story that communicated some truth about the way God intends for the world to be. When we read it in our English translations, this one seems to be part of that same tradition; but the original Greek actually contains two distinctions which provide a strong hint that Jesus is really saying something very different in this parable.
First, the tense is different. Rather than saying “the kingdom is like,” the original Greek says something closer to “the kingdom has been made like.” Secondly, the word rendered “king” specifies that we are talking about a human king.
Putting these two distinctions together, I propose that this king is not meant to represent God, and this king’s behavior does not represent the way the kingdom of God operates. What Jesus is actually saying is, “The idea of the kingdom of God has been hijacked and made into something very human.”
The king Jesus describes is rash, answering violence with an equal or greater measure of violence. Not only that, he’s also impossible to please. He is a narcissist who responds to perceived slights, not with grace and dignity, but with judgment and violence. Even a man who was only there at the king’s urging was ultimately rejected for not meeting a standard that had not been explained to him. I can’t emphasize this strongly enough; the king instructs his messengers to invite both “good” and “bad” people, and then reacts angrily to the presence of a man he perceives as bad.
Someone once said, “God created man in his own image, and man returned the favor.” This seems to echo the sentiment Jesus is sharing in this parable.
Jesus is saying, in essence, “You have taken God’s dream for the world and turned it into something that reflects your own preferences. You have turned God into a mean-spirited, condemning king, self-absorbed and ready to punish anyone who steps out of line.”
Doesn’t that God sound a little too familiar? Haven’t we all heard of this vicious God of condemnation too many times, from too many of those who claim to speak for God?
Compare the king in Jesus’ parable to the words of David in Psalm 22, our responsive reading a few moments ago. In The Message paraphrase, David writes:
“Down-and-outers sit at God’s table and eat their fill. Everyone on the hunt for God is here, praising him. ‘Live it up from head to toe. Don’t ever quit!’ From the four corners of the earth people are coming to their senses, are running back to God. Long-lost families are falling on their faces before him. God has taken charge; from now on he has the last word. All the power-mongers are before him – worshiping! All the poor and powerless, too – worshiping! Along with those who never got it together – worshiping!”
This sounds quite different from people being removed from the banquet for not meeting the king’s standard, doesn’t it?
The truth is, the kingdom of God is far more expansive than we’re capable of imagining. The truth is, whoever we think does not belong is indeed welcomed with open arms, because God is not like the king in Jesus’ parable.
Probably 12 or 13 years ago, someone shared with me an excerpt from Max Lucado’s book “In the Grip of Grace.” I have never forgotten this passage, because I can strongly relate to Lucado’s confession; and I’ll bet you can, too. This is what he wrote:
You know what disturbs me most about Jeffrey Dahmer? What disturbs me most are not his acts, though they are disgusting. Dahmer was convicted of seventeen murders. Eleven corpses were found in his apartment. He cut off arms. He ate body parts. My thesaurus has 204 synonyms for vile, but each falls short of describing a man who kept skulls in his refrigerator and hoarded a human heart. He redefined the boundary for brutality. The Milwaukee monster dangled from the lowest rung of human conduct and then dropped. But that’s not what troubles me most. Can I tell you what troubles me most about Jeffrey Dahmer? Not his trial, as disturbing as it was, with all those pictures of him sitting serenely in court, face frozen, motionless. No sign of remorse, no hint of regret. Remember his steely eyes and impassive face? But I don’t speak of him because of his trial. There is another reason. Can I tell you what really troubles me about Jeffrey Dahmer? Not his punishment, though life without parole is hardly an exchange for his actions. How many years would satisfy justice? A lifetime in jail for every life he took? But that’s another matter, and that’s not what troubles me most about Jeffrey Dahmer. May I tell you what does? His conversion.
Months before an inmate murdered him, Jeffrey Dahmer became a Christian. Said he repented. Was sorry for what he did. Profoundly sorry. Said he put his faith in Christ. Was baptized. Started life over. Began reading Christian books and attending chapel. Sins washed. Soul cleansed. Past forgiven. That troubles me. It shouldn’t, but it does. Grace for a cannibal? Maybe you have the same reservations. If not about Dahmer, perhaps about someone else. Ever wrestled with the deathbed conversion of a rapist or the eleventh-hour conversion of a child molester? We’ve sentenced them, maybe not in court, but in our hearts. We’ve put them behind bars and locked the door. They are forever imprisoned by our disgust. And then, the impossible happens. They repent.
I’m convinced that what we often consider righteous indignation is really nothing more than puny self-righteousness. We are much more like the Pharisees than we’d like to admit. We take a sort of pleasure in the limits we set on the kingdom of God. We use rules and regulations as a means of measuring our goodness. When we can identify what’s wrong with someone else’s behavior, we feel just a little bit better about ourselves. This is why, as Max Lucado said, we are bothered by the idea that God accepts those we consider to be worse than us.
One of my heroes is a musician and prophet from New Jersey named Bruce Springsteen. I can’t tell you how exciting it is for me to have the opportunity to work The Boss into a sermon! I think a lot of Bruce’s songs belong in sermons, but one of my favorites is kind of an obscure one; it was only recorded on a live album at Madison Square Garden in 1999, after Bruce reassembled the E Street Band. Some critics consider it to be one of the best songs of the second half of Bruce’s career. It’s called “Land of Hope and Dreams.” I think Bruce intended to write a hopeful song about the possibility of a better world, and in the process, perhaps unintentionally, he wrote what I think is one of the most stirring expressions of the gospel of the kingdom of God that I can imagine.
The song echoes the themes of Psalm 22, but instead of a table, it uses a train metaphor. Bruce sings about a train that “carries saints and sinners, carries losers and winners, carries whores and gamblers, carries lost souls; carries the broken-hearted, carries thieves and sweet souls departed, carries fools, carries kings – all aboard!”
One old hymn says, “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” Another says, “The strong, the tempted and the weak are one in Jesus now.” Whatever words we use, this message is cause for celebration: The kingdom of God is open to everyone. All are welcome. And the degree to which this bothers us is the degree to which the heart of a Pharisee resides in us.
As unsettling as this parable is on the surface, I believe it’s one of the most brilliant stories Jesus ever told. I think it’s brilliant because Jesus levels two charges against the Pharisees; they play two roles in the story. First, as we’ve already discussed, they’re the king; they have stolen the identity of God and created a God of their own, one who is impossible to please and takes pleasure in punishing us.
But, like many good stories, this one works on multiple levels. Jesus also suggests that the Pharisees are the people who were invited to the banquet. With artful subtlety, he reminds them that they have been given an invitation, but they have been so preoccupied with their own agenda that they have ignored the call. It’s the same invitation that was given all the way back to Abraham – that God’s chosen people would be blessed in order to be a blessing to the entire world. It was an invitation to be partners in bringing God’s dream to fruition. Later, Paul echoed this invitation as he urged the Philippian church to “make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them.” Instead, the Pharisees made it their life’s work to create in-groups and out-groups.
It’s easy to see why Jesus got frustrated with the Pharisees. He saw in them such passion, such single-minded commitment and devotion. If only they could see their potential, he must have thought. If only they could understand the invitation they’ve been given. If only they could channel that passion into something meaningful – God could change the world through them.
Perhaps Jesus thinks the same thing when he sees us and the lines we draw. If only we understood the party we were invited to.
One of Flannery O’Connor’s best-known short stories is “Revelation.” The story tells of Mrs. Turpin, an elderly lady who thinks herself better than most of the people she sees around her – especially those of other races. One night, Mrs. Turpin has a vision in which people are ascending into heaven. O’Connor writes:
“There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of blacks in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. … In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.
“At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”
