The Church of the Redeemer

Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost

October 13, 2002

Since my arrival, I have stood alone encouraging our young people to come to church comfortably dressed.  My argument being God is not concerned with what we wear so why let a subjective dress code interfere with a young person’s spiritual formation.  I must confess, over the past couple or years I have seen some unique fashion statements in church and confirmation as our young people struggle to assert their emerging identities while adhering to imposed parental boundaries of acceptability.  My favorite experience being when a young man arrived at the 8:00 service clad in gray sweats, and a navy blue blazer.  I guess what they say is true; a navy blazer can make anything look dressier.  All humor aside, as we think back over our years of Christian education, we have always been taught that God is not concerned with how we appear on the outside, but who we are on the inside.  So why is it that the end of today’s Gospel seems to teach the opposite? 

            Before we begin to answer this question, we need to build some context around the story.  We are all familiar with attending wedding feasts, or receptions. Even today we know that there is a certain level of dress expected when attending a wedding.  Over the last year, some of the invitations I have received have indicated the dress code.  The same was true in ancient Palestine, people attending a wedding banquet were expected to arrive adorned in their finest clothing.  In some sectors of that society, it was not unusual for the host to send along side the invitation a robe to be worn at the event.  Since it is a king who is hosting the feast, it is possible each guest received a robe prior to his or her arrival at the banquet.  If this was the case in today’s Gospel, the person who came without the proper attire had no excuse, and his actions were indeed an insult to his host, the king.  

            This story, however, is not about physical adornment, but spiritual adornment, and unlike the first part of today’s parable, it does not address the issues of those out there, who hear the call of God but refuse to answer, this later story is addressed to us.  To you and me, who are sitting here today, who have responded to God’s call by coming to the wedding feast.  This parable challenges us to ask ourselves if we have come to the feast prepared, with our hearts adorned in the robes of God’s love and grace, because those are the robes God has called us to wear.  And, as with any garment, God’s robe has two sides, so the answer to today’s question is two fold. 

            The inner part of the robe has to do with our inner selves as we are called to examine our hearts and ask if we have come to the banquet simply to eat the free food or have we arrived prepared to fully participate in the experience at hand.   For the most part we come for the free food because day in and day out we reject God’s offer to love us.  It is amazing how often I hear people tell me they understand that God loves them, and that God is willing to forgive them for their sins, but that they are unwilling to forgive themselves.  And the reason for this is simple; we live in a culture that encourages self-loathing.  The diet and fashion industries make millions a year encouraging us to hate ourselves. Every day we are told we are too fat, or too thin, we are not attractive enough, or we don’t have enough, and no matter how hard we try to achieve these artificial markers of perfection, there is always more to be achieved. (To add a brief aside, it is no longer just women who are affected by the diet and fashion industry, current studies indicate that eating disorders are growing rapidly within our male population between the ages of 14 and 30 years.)  The truth is, we will never find ourselves properly dressed before God as long was we continue to follow the gospel according to the American media because it will never allow us to love ourselves enough to enable us to accept God’s love into our lives.  

            The Gospel message is simple, God loves us, or better yet, wants to love us, but we have to be willing and able to let God love us.  It is not God’s desire to punish us.  The punishment of the man in today’s story is not a punishment from God, but the consequences of his arriving at the feast unprepared.  The same holds true for us, we will continue to be in that place where there is weeping and wailing of gnashing of teeth as long as we continue to chase after false gods, but God, the God of the Gospels is waiting for us, willing to pull each of us out of our own self-made hells.  All we have to do to escape is to put on the robe of God’s love and grace.   

            Earlier I mentioned that the Robe of God’s love and grace has two sides, and that the answer we seek today is two fold.  I have discussed what the inner cloth contains; now I wish to discuss the outer portion of the cloth, that being our response to God’s love.  If we have opened ourselves up and received God’s love in our hearts, it is incumbent on us to respond to God’s love by loving others.  

            This week I meet with a very wise person, my spiritual director, in the course of our conversation he reiterated for me the basics of our faith and the history of God’s actions on earth.  First he said, God gave us the Ten Commandments, the first four commandments teach us how to love God, and the other six teach us how to love each other.  Over time the Israelites expanded on these basic laws to the point where the intent of the laws, that is, how to love God and each other, was forgotten, and the keeping of the laws became an ends unto themselves.  So God sent Jesus to teach us how to love again, and the cross, originally a symbol of humiliation and death became the symbol of God’s love and God’s call to us to love.  He went on to explain that when he imagines the Day of Judgment, he pictures an ornate courtroom, filled with all the people who have touched our lives, and the question we will be asked to answer is, how well did we love others.  

            The question posed is reasonable, and yet the answer difficult.  We have become a culture that has a hard time reaching out and loving each other.  There are many reasons for this.  We are too busy.  I joke with many who come into the office that they need to put taxi signs on their cars as they rush to drive their children from one activity to the next.  Gone are the days when our children gathered in back yards and created their own games. Our business transactions are global and focused on productivity at the cost of building relationship.  To compound our busyness, we are a transient society.  In the two and a half years Maureen and I have lived in Needham, two of our four immediate neighbors have moved and a third neighbor we have never seen.  The busy, transient society in which we live is burning us out, leaving us unable to reach out and connect with others, because we have become unwilling to invest our energies in the constant development of new relationships.  Instead, we strive to cocoon ourselves in family and old relationships, and then as family and friends scatter to the four winds we inevitably find ourselves alone surrounded by a sense of isolation.  Is it any wonder then, because of how busy and transient we are, that we feel more connected with the images on television than with those who immediately surround us. 

            While serving on the vestry at Christ Church, West Haven an older member named Jesse would comment at each meeting that nobody came to church anymore, despite the fact there were on average over a hundred in attendance each week.  In reality, her comments were not the lamenting of shrinking church attendance, but the fact most of her friends from childhood had either died or moved away.  Over her lifetime, this person made the same mistake many of us make each day; she formed a close circle of friends early in her life, and then stopped opening her heart and home beyond the security of this circle. In the end, she found herself thrown out of the wedding feast to that place of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth because she stopped reaching out to love others.  

            How many of us are like Jesse, who come to church each week only to return home complaining that “no one was there” because your inner circle of friends were out of town?  How many of us in the last year have opened our hearts and homes to somebody new to this community?   It is when we open our hearts and homes up to God and others that we will find ourselves robed in God’s love and grace.    And so what we have found this morning is what we already knew about God.  That God is not concerned with outward appearance but our inward desire to receive and give his love.  Because when are willing to receive and give God’s love, we are always properly attired for the Wedding Feast.   Amen  

The Rev. Craig R. Swan

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