Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost; 15 October 2023; Proper 23A (RCL); Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14.
Sigh, another parable by Matthew, that I would as soon see excised from the canon as preached on. But, there it is. This time, Matthew is using Q as his source, rather than Mark. Luke’s version of this parable is very different (see Luke 14:15-24). The subject is just a man, not a king, and he doesn’t send his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city, and there is no one who gets thrown out of the banquet into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (one of Matthew’s favorite phrases).
Who pooped in Matthew’s Wheaties? Why such vitriol? Then parable probably comes from the second layer of Q material in Burton Mack’s scheme, which is the layer of tradition dealing with the rejection of Q’s invitation to commensality as a sign of the present Kingdom. Q probably existed before the destruction of the Temple, while Matthew is writing his Gospel after the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. Matthew and his community have likely been thrown out of the synagogue, and so feel a great deal of bitterness toward “the Jews.” Luke is writing at some distance from those events, and likely to a largely Gentile audience, so he doesn’t feel the need to drag “the Jews” into the mud as much as does Matthew.
For groups under threat and persecution, boundaries become hugely important. And gleefully imagining the destruction of one’s oppressors becomes a literary past-time. Matthew doesn’t need to imagine it; he watched it happen. The difficulty comes when the literature of the persecuted group is co-opted by the dominant group. Matthew was written for a small group in fear of its existence; The Christian Bible has become the literature of the dominant culture. The results can be pretty ugly. We should not share Matthew’s glee at the destruction of his enemies, since we ourselves can perpetrate such destruction.
This dynamic might also help explain the weird episode of the man not wearing a wedding garment. Boundaries would have been hugely important for Matthew’s community. Matthew appears to be written for a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile Christians, seeking a way for Gentiles as far as possible to live the pattern of the covenant as Jewish Christians would have understood it. Baptism, rather than circumcision, would have become the boundary marker, and we know that prior to Constantine, that boundary marker was very stringently imposed. Even after Constantine, the Donatist controversy shows how important that boundary could be.
In early Christianity, baptism could be called the nuptial chamber, and the white robe given to the newly baptized the wedding garment. While the marriage feast of the lamb might be open to both Jewish and Gentile Christians, in Matthew’s context, baptism was absolutely essential, and anyone failing that, and crashing the gates of the banquet would be consigned to the outer darkness.
Given the current crisis on the border between Israel and Gaza, we need to say something about threatened boundaries, and the glee we can feel at the destruction of our enemies, and just who is the oppressed group, and who the dominant group, and navigate these waters with great care, remembering that in the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew’s own Gospel), Jesus said something about loving our enemies.
The episode of the Golden Calf seems to be a critique of the Northern priesthood by the Southern priesthood, written back into the story of the Exodus. When Jeroboam withdrew the northern kingdom of Israel from the united kingdom after Solomon’s death, he built two temples, on at Dan and one at Bethel, each with a golden calf, and declared, “Behold your Gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” (1 Kings 12:28) exactly the language of the people in the wilderness after Aaron made the golden calf, right down to the plural of “Gods,” even though there was only one calf.
And the passage from Philippians, of course, is Paul’s final goodbye to he beloved community. No time for doctrinal teaching here, just, “You know what is good. Do it. God will take care of the rest.” If only . . .