I begin this morning with a confession. The story we just read from Matthew’s gospel is probably my least favorite parable. I wish it weren’t there. I really wish it wasn’t in the lectionary.

But when such a difficult text shows up, I feel an obligation to preach on it, to wrestle with it, and see if it can have something to say to us today.

This parable is an allegory, a story in which each of the characters stands for someone else; a story that has a wider symbolic meaning. The write of this gospel was addressing members of the new, and very small, Christian movement.

The followers of Jesus, who were almost all Jews, were often persecuted by the religious establishment. They were such a minority that they must have sometimes wondered if following Jesus was the right thing to do, whether it was worth the risks they were taking.

This story must have bolstered their confidence and faith. Surely they would recognize that those who ignored the king’s invitation to the wedding banquet were the religious establishment, those in power and authority. The refusal to accept the invitation led to their deaths.

And then who gets invited to the wedding feast? The riff-raff, the nobodies, the people off the street – in other words, the very people to whom Jesus reached out in his ministry.

But even all of them are not allowed to stay. The king looks over his assembled guests and notices one who is not dressed properly. “How did you get in here without a robe?” the king demands.

Scripture tells us that the guest is speechless, which is understandable. How could he be expected to be dressed properly if he just came in off the street?

A king who kills those who ignore him and ousts people who are dressed improperly is hardly an appealing image of God. What has happened to the God of love, justice, and inclusivity? That God seems to be absent from this parable.

Obviously this is a story about the battle being waged between the religious establishment and the new radical sect of believers who followed Jesus. And it must have comforted that ragtag group to recognize themselves as the winners in the story.

But there is a big difference between those early Christians who heard this story, and those of us who are Christians who hear it today.

The difference is that we are not a ragtag group of nobodies, like those early Christians. The difference is that we are the religious establishment.

And as the establishment, the ones in power, it is all too easy for us to hear this story as a justification of our own lack of hospitality, our own mean-spiritedness and hardness of heart.

It is all too easy to hear this story as a justification of our divisions of God’s world into those who are in and those who are out; those who are saved and those who are damned; those who are blessed and those who are cursed.

It is all too easy for us to hear this story and see ourselves as the ones who have on the right wedding garments and remain at the table and those others – the ones who are not like us – as the ones who do not have the right garments and are justifiably cast out.

Hearing the parable this way, it is no longer an allegory of God’s love for those who the world casts aside. Instead, it becomes an allegory of inhospitality, cruelty, and hatred.

So we who are the establishment must hear this story in a new ways. It must be retold in a manner that captures the good news of a God who is, as we hear today in the reading from Isaiah, “a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.”

A God who Isaiah proclaims will “make for all peoples a feast of rich food.” A God who will swallow up death forever.

I believe that even though we have not added any books to the Bible in many centuries, God’s spirit still inspires many writers today. One of them, Alice Walker, has written a parable that captures the spirit of the gospel by twisting the wedding feast parable.

If Jesus were preaching and teaching today, he might well tell this parable, entitled The Welcome Table, an allegory closer to our own time and place.

The old woman stood with eyes uplifted in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes: high shoes polished about the tops and toes, a long rusty dress adorned with an old corsage, long withered, and the remnants of an elegant silk scarf as head rag stained with grease from many oily pigtails underneath. Perhaps she had known suffering….

Some of those who saw her there on the church steps spoke words about her that were hardly fit to be heard, others held their pious peace, and some felt vague stirrings of pity, small and persistent and hazy, as if she were an old collie turned out to die.

Those who knew the hesitant creeping up on them of the law, looked at her and saw the beginning of the end of the sanctuary of Christian worship, saw the desecration of the Holy Chrch, and saw an invasion of privacy.

She had come down the road toward the big white church alone. Just herself, an old forgetful woman, nearly blind with age. Just her and her eyes raised dully to the glittering cross that crowned the sheer silver steeple.

She had walked along the road in a stagger from her house a half mile away. Perspiration, cold and clammy, stood on her brow. She stopped to calm herself on the wide front steps, not looking about her as they might have expected her to do, but simply standing quite still.

The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule. “Auntie, you know this is not your church?” he said. As if one could choose the wrong one.

But she brushed past him anyway, as if she had been brushing past him all her life, except this time she was in a hurry. Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back, gazing with concentration at the stained glass window over her head. It was cold, and she was shivering.

Everyone could see. They stared at her as they came in and sat near the front. It was cold, very cold, to them, too; outside the church it was below freezing and not much above inside. But the sight of her, sitting there somehow passionately ignoring them, brought them up short, burning.

The young usher, never having turned anyone out of his church before, but not even considering this just as that (after all, she had no right to be here, certainly) went up to her and whispered that she should leave….She did not pay him any attention, just muttered, “Go ‘way,” in a weak, sharp, bothered voice, waving his blond hair and eyes from near her face.

It was the ladies who finally did what had to be done. Daring their burly indecisive husbands to throw the old colored woman out they made their point. God, mother, country, earth, church. It involved all that and well they knew it.

Leather bagged and shoed, with good calfskin gloves to keep out the cold, they looked with contempt at the bloodless gray arthritic hands of the old woman, clenched loosely, restlessly in her lap.

Could their husbands expect them to sit up in church with that? No, no, the husbands were quick to answer and even quicker to do their duty.

Under the old woman’s arms they placed their hard fists. Under the old woman’s arms they raised their fists, flexed their muscular shoulders, and out she flew through the door, back under the cold blue sky.

This done, the wives folded their healthy arms across their trim middles and felt at once justified and scornful…Inside the church it was warmer. They sang, they prayed. The protection and promise of God’s impartial love grew more desirable as the sermon gathered fury and lashed out above their penitent heads.

The old woman stood at the top of the steps looking about in bewilderment. She had been singing in her head. They had interrupted her. Promptly she began singing again, though this time a sad song.

Suddenly, however, she looked down the long gray highway and saw something interesting and delightful coming.

She started to grin, toothlessly, with short giggles of joy, jumping about and slapping her hands on her knees.

And soon it was apparent why she was so happy. For coming down the highway at a firm though leisurely pace was Jesus. He was wearing an immaculate white, long dress trimmed in gold around the neck and hem, and a bright red cape. He was wearing sandals and a beard and he had long brown hair parted on the right side. His eyes, brown, had wrinkles around them as if he smiled or looked at the sun a lot.

She would have known him, recognized him, anywhere. There was a sad but joyful look to his face, like a candle was glowing behind it, and he walked with sure steps in her direction, as if he were walking on the sea.

All he said when he got close to her was, ‘Follow me,’ and she bounded down to his side. For every one of his long determined steps she made two quick ones.

They walked along in deep silence for a long time. Finally she started telling him about how many years she had cooked for them, cleaned for them, nursed them. He looked at her kindly but in silence.

She told him indignantly about how they had grabbed her when she was singing in her head and how they had tossed her out of his church. An old heifer like me, she said, straightening up next to Jesus, breathing hard.

But he smiled down at her and she felt better instantly and time just seemed to fly by. When they passed her house, forlorn and sagging, weather-beaten and patched, she did not even notice it, she was so happy to be out walking along the highway with Jesus.

She broke the silence once more to tell Jesus how glad she was that he had come, how she had often looked at his picture hanging on her wall over her bed, and how she had never expected to see him down here in person. Jesus gave her one of his beautiful smiles and walked on.

She did not know where they were going; someplace wonderful, she suspected. The ground was like clouds under her feet, and she felt she could walk forever without becoming the least bit tired.

They walked on, looking straight over the treetops into the sky, and the smile that played over her dry, wind-cracked face was like the first clean ripples across a stagnant pond. On they walked without stopping.

The people in church never knew what happened to the old woman; they never mentioned her to one another or to anybody else. Most of them heard sometime later that an old colored woman fell dead along the highway. Silly as it seemed, it appeared she had walked herself to death.

Many of the black families along the road said they had seen the old lady high-stepping down the highway; sometimes jabbering in a low, insistent voice, sometimes singing, sometimes merely gesturing excitedly with her hands. Other times silent and smiling, looking at the sky. She had been alone, they said.

Some of them wondered aloud where the old woman had been going so stoutly that it had worn out her heart. They guessed maybe she had relatives across the river, some miles away, but none of them really knew.

“I’m going to sit at the Welcome table
Shout my troubles over
Walk and talk with Jesus
Tell God how you treat me
One of these days!”

Readings

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled. On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”