TWENTY EIGHT SUNDAY OF YEAR A

                                         

(Is 25.6-10; Phil 4.12-14,19-20; Mt 22.1-10)

We may not be so used to royal weddings, but I still remember when Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Thousands of invitations were sent out. Crowned heads and international political figures, heads of state, aristocrats and newly rich, all those who were somebody in "high society" vied with one another as to who would have the honour of being invited to the festivities. Of course not every body was so favoured, for the number of available seats was limited. And so for those who were lucky enough to receive the much coveted invitation, a refusal was unthinkable. One does not turn down an invitation coming from Buckingham Palace.

In ancient times, kings announced the approximate time for a wedding banquet weeks in advance. The exact day of the banquet was given at a later date. To say "yes" to the advance invitation and no at the later date was an insult. It was this kind of situation that Jesus had in mind in today's parable.

The audience for whom Jesus intended his parable was the Jews of his time. Ages before, they had accepted God's invitation to be his chosen people - his special guests at the banquet
of the kingdom of God. But when Jesus came to announce the banquet, they rejected his invitation.

It is clear how Jesus' parable applied to the Jews of his day. But how does it apply to you and me today? What message does it contain for you and me in the twentieth century? What is Jesus saying to us through the parable?

The Jews had accepted God's first invitation. But then some of them had a change of heart. The parable says one man decided to work on his farm instead. Another decided to attend to other business. These men didn't go off to get drunk. They didn't decide to commit a crime. They simply decided to do something else.

I think here is where the lesson is for us. We, too, have accepted God's invitation. When we received baptism and confirmation, we said "yes" to God's invitation to be his guests at the eternal banquet. I remember that at Baptism particularly, each of us is presented with a white garment as a sign of the new life we henceforth intend to live. But saying "yes" to God's invitation at baptism is not a one time commitment. It is meant to be an on going process. Saying "yes" to God’s invitation requires constant recommitment and updating. You and I know how easy it is to get distracted by daily life and to forget about eternal life. It's so easy to fill ourselves with the junk food of this life and forget about the banquet of eternal life.

Accepting God's invitation is not a matter of saying "yes" once and for all and then forgetting all about it. It entails a responsibility. It is like the "I do" of marriage. The "I do" is not the end of a process, but the beginning of one. If a person accepts the invitation of God and banks on  his forgiveness in order to go on sinning shamelessly, he is mocking God. This amounts to accepting his invitation so as to insult him. A guest of this sort is finally cast out in the cold of the night, away from the joyful atmosphere of the banquet. When I accept the invitation of God, it is to give up many things of the past. It means to repent. To repent is to shed off our old working clothes and to dress up for a celebration.

Sometime ago a minister told a story on himself. One night he went over to the church to lock up for the night. He found a boy asleep in the last bench. He woke the boy apologetically, and told him he was going to lock up. The boy explained that he had no place to stay that night and was hoping to remain in the church. The minister said that he hoped the boy would understand, but he didn't think that was a good idea.

The minister then invited the boy into the church office while he called two refuge centres in town, trying to find a place for the boy to stay. Unfortunately, neither center had a vacancy that night. The minister apologized to the boy. The boy said he understood, shook hands with the minister, and disappeared into the night.

When the minister returned home, he told his wife about the incident. She looked at him and said, "Why didn't you bring the boy home? He could have stayed in the guest bed room". With that he sat down on the easy chair. He picked up his Bible, opened it, removed the marker, and began to read the assigned section for the day. It was the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Suddenly the minister realized that the boy he turned away was like the injured man in that parable. He, too, was badly in need of somebody's help. The minister saw, also, that he was like the priest in the parable. He had passed up the boy without helping him. The minister closed the Bible. He thought about a story he had heard, years ago, when he was a student in the Seminary. An old Jew came up to a rabbi and said, "Rabbi, I’ve just read through the entire Bible for the fifth time in my life". The rabbi looked at the old Jew and said, "The important thing Abraham is not how many times you've been through the Bible, but how many times the Bible has been through you". 

In today's Gospel Jesus invites us to consider God's invitation to each one of us and our response to it. Each one of us has been personally invited to share in the life of Jesus, to follow Him and to celebrate with Him. It is an invitation that is persistently repeated even if we ignore it. The King sent his servants to follow up his original invitation several times. He does not easily take no for an answer.

These invitations come to us every day. They come when we have an opportunity to care for someone, when we are asked to forgive and make peace, when we are tempted to sin, when we are asked to witness to what we believe. We can say no and refuse to do what is right. But when we say yes then we are entering into the life Jesus invites us to share. Then we will also be able to celebrate wholeheartedly with Him. Today's gospel reading is in that sense an invitation to take a long, hard look at ourselves and to ask ourselves if perhaps we are like the minister. Do we listen attentively to God's word at Mass, but fail to apply it to our daily life? Or are we, perhaps, like the two men in today's gospel reading?

We must not forget that the two men in the Gospel did not refuse to come to the wedding; they merely had more important things to do and would come later. They just decided that rather than cancel or postpone their schedule business, they would attend later. In their view the king's wedding banquet could wait a while.  In giving marriage as an excuse, the parable tells us that we cannot even use our families, our dearest and nearest, as an excuse for staying away from the Kingdom. No excuse is acceptable when the offering is a matter of life and death. Our spiritual survival is at stake. Yet, we find excuses and are attracted by the affairs of the world more than by the needs of the spirit. The world is too much with us. We are consumed by commerce; our lives are too busy and cluttered; too noisy to hear the invitation to a banquet of joy. We have found other things to occupy our time and consume our energy. When we are asked to take time to pray, to learn God's truth, to share it with others, to focus on what is of eternal importance instead of on temporary needs, we make light of it. The cares of this world loom much greater than the cares of the Kingdom.

Jesus is telling us that the kingdom of God is a matter of urgency and top priority; it demands our response here and now, and not at some other place or at some other time. Unfortunately, most of us don't take our Lord's invitations seriously. Our world still makes light of the Good News of God. You can look anywhere and realize it. It is not just that the Gospel is ignored; it is ridiculed by the way people live. Notice that the gospel reading does not say that because the invited guests did not come to the banquet, the wedding was canceled. No. The wedding and the feast were to go on as scheduled. Only the guest list was changed. God does not alter his plans because of the indifference of human beings. God does not withdraw the feast. The choice is up to us. It is we who accept or reject the invitation to joy. The feast is still there for those who would come to the banquet, who would honor the invitation. But most of us have other things to think about. We have work to do. We have our jobs. We don't have time to read about the faith, to worship with others, to serve others; we have work to do.
How many times does he call you to come to his weekly Eucharistic banquet on Sundays, only to be ignored because there are more important things to do like playing a game of golf, shopping or sleeping a little longer?

How many times does Jesus invite us to become more prayerful people only to have us turn away to our television sets for the afternoon soap opera or Monday night football? How often does Jesus invite us to be helpful to others, only to have us look beyond their needs to our trivial pursuits or vain amusements? On the other hand, it's sad to see people drift through life because they lack a sense of urgency. This might mean a wasted youth and a lost education, a humdrum marriage and unfulfilled dreams, a middle age of mediocrity and stagnation, or the onset of old age and the realization of not having done anything significant.

How many times have we reduced religion to the mere formality of attending mass on Sundays, doing our Easter duties, giving to charity simply because we believe that a person has other priorities like earning his living, ensuring his career, making influential connections, entertaining his friends, keeping abreast of things, bringing up children and relaxing a little? Is it not true that a lot of us believe that happiness can very well be found not so much at the banquet of God, as elsewhere? We imagine that, by giving God the minimum time, we will have the maximum time for ourselves, for the securing of our happiness? We forget that we are made for God and that, apart from God, the most lavish human banquets have a taste of ashes?  It was the great St Augustine who once said "Our heart is restless, Lord, until it rests in you".

Today, even at this Mass, we have accepted the invitation to share in such a celebration. We celebrate the presence of Jesus among us and his call to "good and bad alike". Yet our Gospel reading contains a warning. We are not acceptable to god just by our presence here. The man who was not wearing a wedding garment was thrown out and punished even though he had accepted the invitation to the wedding. When we remain attached to our sins or bad habits we too refuse to wear the wedding clothes and to live in conformity with our status as guests of God.

Often times some of us are like this improperly dressed man. We attend church not because we feel the need for God but because see others going. Sometimes we pray not because we see the need for prayers but because we see others praying. It is like attending a burial without knowing who died. The man in question was thrown out of the banquet when his oddity and disconnection from others became very clear.

The message today is very clear. We are being advised to climb the mountain of the Lord. Moses had to go up to the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, Elijah had to climb mount Horeb to meet God, Peter, James and John had to climb mount tabor in order to experience the transfiguration. Today there is need for us to take the pain to climb. It involves dropping our luggage, it involves cleans hands and pure hearts (Psalm 24:4). It may be challenging but St. Paul in the Second Reading (Phil 4:12-14, 19-20) today assures us that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength and also that God will supply all our needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. On that mountain God will fulfil all the promises He made to us. When you start taking God serious He will start being serious with your affairs. You will be addressed the way you dress!

We should therefore also look at ourselves today and ask ourselves how we have come to this celebration of the Eucharist; and what the wedding garments we should be wearing are? The wedding garment in the story is to be understood in terms of our lives that we must change, the contents of our consciousness, our hearts, our vision, not our clothes. These are the intangible garments that concern Jesus. When we wear them, then he will come, bringing his Kingdom of Heaven. Right here. Right now. As we are told in Revelations: For the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. To her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure - for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. The point that Jesus is trying to drive home to us in this parable is to get ready, to stitch together for ourselves the garments of truth, of his way of life, so that we will be open to God. Only by preparing such a robe are we to gain entrance into his Kingdom.

St Paul tells us that to qualify the only suitable clothing in which to come into God's presence is to put on Christ. But what does it mean to be clothed with Christ? It means saying "yes" to all those little daily invitations to live the life of Christ. But what if we fail? St Paul still reminds us today that it is not our strength but Christ's that enables us to share in his life.