Violating a Dresscode?

Matthew 22:1-14

NARRATOR- Once more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, saying:

 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying,

KING-  `Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.'

NARR-  But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves,

KING- `The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.'

NARR- Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him,

KING- `Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?'

NARR- And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants,

KING- `Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

NARR- For many are called, but few are chosen."

BACKGROUND

Seems like an overreaction for a dress-code violation, especially in the context of a parable about the kingdom of heaven. ..

THE CONCERNS OF MATTHEW’S COMMUNITY

For the most part the commentators see this as a reflection of Matthew’s concern for maintaining high ethical and spiritual standards in the Christian community. Just because the new community was more inclusive and generous than the old didn’t mean it had no expectations of its members. On the contrary, its expectations far exceeded those of established Judaism

…The whole section, in fact, is directed to the Matthean reader. It is instruction and warning to insiders, not a description of the fate of outsiders…. Boring (Matthew, New Interpreter's Bible)
DISCIPLESHIP AS A “GARMENT”
Often in the Pauline corpus one's life after conversion is often pictured as "putting on" the new life in clothing terms (Ro 13:12-14; Ga 3:27; Ep 4:24; 6:11; Col 3:9-10; 1Th 5:8; see also Lu 15:22; Re 3:4; 6:11; 19:8).

Isaiah 61:10 also uses clothing image:
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. [NRSV]

. “…throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Our first response to such words is to assume they refer to some kind of “hell” where people are separated from God and the kingdom of heaven. But Ched Myers and others have observed that “outer darkness” is precisely where Christ goes to establish his new kingdom. “Outer darkness” is the habitation of the poor, the outcast, and the rejected. To the primeval imagination, “outer darkness” is the abode of demons, monsters, and predators, human and otherwise. On the day of crucifixion, “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon” (Matthew 27:45), and the passion narratives draw heavily upon imagery from psalms like Psalm 22, where, in verse 16, “they open wide their jaws at me, * like a ravening and roaring lion,” and where (v. 16) “packs of dogs close me in.” It would seem that “gnashing of teeth” is not only a symbol of misery and extreme discomfort, but a reliable indicator of the presence of the Messiah.

SUMMARY

I can’t help but sympathize with the wedding- guest-sans-tuxedo. The commentators notwithstanding, he seems more “Christ like” and more like “kingdom of heaven material” than does a bossy king with a penchant for violence. Remember, this is Jesus, who defied hallowed tradition to allow his disciples to “eat with unwashed hands.” And now he makes a villain out an underdressed man at a party? A party he was forced to attend at gun point? Give me a break…

Perhaps there is a paradoxical truth here. My own experience confirms what the Gospel of Matthew proclaims: Christianity does have drastically high expectations of adherents, coupled with its lavish inclusiveness; as Desmond Tutu has eloquently observed, grace is more demanding than law. However, just because I have been invited to the wedding party along with the other riff-raff doesn’t mean I have carte-blanche to drink all the fancy wine and barf on the bride. What it does mean is that even when I do presume upon God’s generosity, even when I do barf on the bride and exile myself to the outer darkness of teeth-grinding alienation, even then the king’s oddball son will come looking for me, come without an army and without any slaves, come gently into the place of exile, into the domain of dogs and lions, come wounded and divorced, to calm the lions and feed the dogs who came to lick my sores and his.

It is with that son that we are called to party. To that wedding even the old mad king is called, his troops demobilized, his slaves emancipated, his rage dispelled.

“I think the ill-dressed wedding guest is God and we are the terrible king, who keeps making demands of God and eventually kicks him out because God never conforms to our ways. So, then, if we want to be with God, we, too, will be kicked out. God has left the building.”       Pastor Manisha Dostert