Dear Friends:

In this week’s gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a King who prepares a lavish wedding banquet for his son but faces challenges with the guest list. The first people he invites are too busy or lazy to respond, and so he needs to revise his list to include people he never would have considered…people on the streets, good, bad and everything in between. Even those who do turn up aren’t too appreciative or prepared; one of the guests refuses to put on the wedding garment that is offered to him…. a flagrant denial of hospitality in Jesus’ day. This last act of rejection throws the King over the top, and he sends the guest into outer darkness.

As one who presides at a lot of weddings, I am aware of the anxiety that surrounds guest lists, especially during this time of pandemic, when people are hesitant to commit and uncertain how to prepare, or what to wear to an event that is held outdoors or in a barn! And yet, the idea of throwing a guest into the outer darkness for refusing to wear the proper clothing is beyond anything I can imagine. How do we connect the harsh actions of the King in Jesus’ parable to our own understanding of a loving, welcoming just God who would never judge someone on appearances?

Perhaps it helps to consider that the wedding garment that the guest refused to wear represents the attire that most of us have trouble “putting on” in order to enter the banquet feast of God. Things like forgiveness, or tolerance, or patience. Or the willingness to change, whether in heart, attitude, or behavior. Perhaps what mattered to the King in Jesus parable wasn’t so much how his guest was dressed, but whether or not he was prepared. Had he—have we—“put on Christ” in preparation for the hospitality of the One in whom we live and move and have our being?

As I have pondered this, I am reminded of the promise that God once made to the prophet Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you hearts of flesh.” A heart of stone, unlike a heart of flesh, is hard, rigid, inflexible, impenetrable, incapable of growth or change. Like the wedding guests of today’s gospel, perhaps we are called to put on a more supple garment– one that will most surely invite our hearts and our minds to soften and change. Are there ways in which our hearts have become hardened? Are there areas of our lives that we have not been allowing God to touch?

Now, more than ever, it is the time to ask God to soften us and to place a new spirit within us. Now, more than ever, it is the time to put on the garment of change and get ready to enter the feast of God.

In Christ,

Amelie