The First Shall be Last and the Last First

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time  

I find that one of the many fascinating aspects of Mathew’s Gospel is the way in which, time and again, through the way in which be shapes the stories and sayings of Jesus, we are given an insight into the issues with which his community of believers was grappling in the years following the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The principal issue appears to have been the nature of the Christian community itself. This included not only “Jewish Christians”, but “Gentile Christians” as well. This caused tension within the community. The Jewish Christians were sons and daughters of Abraham, God’s chosen people and the descendants of the very people to whom the promises of God had been made. Gentile Christians, on the other hand, were outside this family. They were “Johnny-come-latelies” who had only recently accepted the one God of the Lord Jesus Christ. How could these Gentile Christians be regarded as equal members of the community?

The parable which Jesus tells in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, which includes imagery taken from Isaiah’s vision of the messianic banquet in our first reading, is intended to address this very issue.

A King sends messengers to all those who had been invited to his son’s wedding feast to tell them to come: the oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered and all was now prepared. But those who have been invited do not come. They have too much to do. They have other priorities. One goes off to his farm and another to his business. The King is understandably furious that his generosity should be spurned in this way so he tells his servants to go into the highways and byways and invite all and sundry to share in the feast. Which is what the servants do and before long the wedding hall is full of guests.

All of which is one way of explaining why Gentile Christians take their place alongside the Jewish Christians in the community of the risen Lord Jesus. As many of those first invited have rejected the summons to come to the banquet, the doors have been thrown open to others.

Then the story Jesus tells takes a twist which we might find uncomfortable. The King sees one of those who have been invited at the last minute without a wedding garment. He is thrown out and sent to the place where there is much weeping and grinding of teeth. What does this mean? Maybe that it’s not enough just to belong to the community, you need to play an active part in it as well. You can’t just  say you follow Jesus: you need to live his Gospel too.

So what might this have to say to us? I am taking away from this Sunday’s Gospel reading three points in particular.

Firstly, Isaiah paints a picture of the future God has in store for us in terms of a banquet of rich and juicy foods and fine strained wines. It’s a banquet in other words which more than satisfies all our longings and desires. That’s the future which God has in store for us and we can rejoice in it and walk forward in hope and confidence towards it. We can even look forward to it!

Secondly, it’s so important that we who have been invited to this banquet make getting there our priority. We too have many things to do and we too, like those who in the parable were invited, are in danger of being distracted, of getting our priorities wrong and of not accepting the invitation when we receive it. 

Thirdly, being members ourselves of the community of the risen Lord Jesus, we don’t just take a seat at the banqueting table Bute’s need to be dressed in a wedding garment, in other words, we not just say we accept Jesus as our Lord, we need also to live his Gospel.

If this Sunday’s Gospel promotes in us a reflection on the priorities of our lives and on how committed we are to living each day by the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, it will have served us well. And as we reflect and maybe set about putting our house in order, we can take heart from the words of St Paul in the second reading of the mass from the Letter to the Philippians, “There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the one who gives me strength”. His help goes before us, as this week’s opening prayer of the mass says:

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. AMEN.

Fr Michael Holman SJ