Having been raised in Houston by southern parents, the dress-code was always a big deal in our family. I’m constantly amazed by the relaxed attitude toward clothing here in Colorado! When I was a child, there were strict do’s and don’ts about what to wear: nothing white before Easter or after Labor Day; dress shoes and “church clothes” on Sunday. For my mother, the ultimate “sin” was to over-dress or under-dress—both of which earned you the shameful epithet, “tacky.” Even in college at Sewanee in the early ‘80’s, women had to wear dresses to class, and men had to wear coats and ties!
In dream language, of course, the fear of not being properly dressed probably comes from our fear of not fitting-in, of breaking society’s rules, of showing that we don’t really belong. The dream-fear of showing up naked, also likely reflects our feelings of shame and inadequacy—our feelings that underneath, deep-down, we’re somehow not good enough. This common human fear even turns up in scripture. Remember Adam and Eve, eyes-opened from eating the forbidden fruit, hiding from God in the bushes? They realize that they’re naked, and they cover themselves with leaves. Do you remember how God responds? Even though Adam and Eve’s disobedience has consequences, God doesn’t boot them from the garden vulnerably naked, alone in their shame. God makes clothes for them out of skins, sending them out of Eden with some protection.
The rest of the Bible, too, is full of stories of humans being clothed lovingly by and even with God. In the book of Revelation, our human story ends with the saints clothed in white robes, made clean in the blood of the Lamb. There’s also St. Paul’s image of Christians being clothed with Christ himself in baptism, of Christians wearing Christ, being shaped by that clothing into the image of Jesus. Paul writes about how God’s clothing removes human distinctions between slave and free, male and female, making us all equally beloved in God.
Given these beautiful, comforting biblical images of being clothed with and by God, where on earth does today’s terrible parable come from?! And why does the poor guy with the wrong clothes get thrown out into the darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth?!
First, it helps to know that this banquet story appears in three different forms in Luke, Matthew, and in the Gospel of Thomas, a book that didn’t make it into our Bible. It’s very likely that each of these authors interpreted the original words of Jesus differently, to fit their own context. Jesus’ original parable was probably quite simple: a powerful man throws a great feast, as powerful men do. Normally, a powerful host expects to increase in honor by identifying himself with the famous dignitaries he would invite to his banquet. But Jesus describes a host who invites the poor and outcast, instead of the powerful and wealthy. Jesus’ host invites people who will give him no honor in return. Jesus’ host’s greatness is found in a reversal of the ways of the world; in Jesus’ original story, the last become first, and the first become last. The honored guests are truly the poor and marginalized, just like the scrubby mustard bush takes the place of the majestic cedar of Lebanon in that well-known parable.[1] Now a story like this one sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it?
Scholars also believe that Matthew’s parable
is a mash-up of two separate stories. Originally, Jesus would have told the
banquet parable I just described. Another time, he also would have told a parable about a man refusing the
robes that he’s offered. Matthew likely strung the two parables together to
tell the story that he believed his readers needed to hear—a story adapted to
speak to Jewish-Christians living in a Palestine divided over religion (sound
familiar?) Matthew wrote his Gospel about thirty years after the traumatic
destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by Roman soldiers. He wrote at a time when Jews and Christians were at odds with one another.
Matthew was trying to explain the destruction of the Temple and the animosity between the new Christians and their roots in Judaism. Matthew took Jesus’ weird little upside-down parable and made an allegory out of it, where “this” always equals “that.” Matthew tells his readers an allegory in which the King is God. At his banquet, God judges the Jews for killing God’s prophets and rejecting God’s Son. As punishment, God allows their city-- Jerusalem and the Holy Temple--to be destroyed by the Romans. Once the Jews are judged, Matthew focuses God’s judgment on the Christians in his community who don’t follow the rules. He sticks in the parable of the man without a wedding garment. Matthew’s banquet hall, the church, is full of both wheat and weeds, good folks and bad ones. The Divine King takes care to remove the weeds, throwing out the bad guy who doesn’t belong in the new Christian community. [2]
Yes, we humans do like stories in which there are logical reasons for disasters, and in which we clearly see the bad guys getting what’s coming to them. I’m sure that there are people right now around the world who are using all kinds of allegories to explain why either the Jews or the Palestinians are clearly all in the wrong and why God is going to punish one side or the other. But black and white stories of punishment and vengeance don’t preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
That’s why, today, it’s the last part of Matthew’s tale that interests me, this weird part about the guy who’s not wearing the wedding garment to the feast. Remember, if this used to be a separate parable, this guy wasn’t necessarily invited in off the street, without time to change his clothes. He’s not set up for failure by the King. If he had been invited earlier, he would have had plenty of time to change before the party. In showing up to the party in his old clothes, then, he is more than “tacky.” He’s a hypocrite! He's accepting the invitation without appreciating it enough to change. He’s like the people who call out to Jesus, “Lord, Lord” but don’t wear the garments of Christ. Jesus always has trouble with hypocrites. Their lives don’t reflect their words. I love how Tom Long describes this ungrateful guest: “He was in the banquet hall of the king ... The table was set with the finest food; the best wine flowed from regal chalices. He is the recipient of massive grace. ... Where is his regard for generosity? [Here] he is, bellying up to the punch bowl, stuffing his mouth with fig preserves, and wiping his hands on his T-shirt.”[3]
St. Paul writes in Ephesians, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self ... to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”[4] At baptism, Christ gives us his own self as our clothing. Who are we to refuse to wear it? Priest and scholar Lauren Winner has a whole book called, Wearing God. She meditates on what it means to be clothed in God. She writes, “I need to let Jesus, my clothing, affect the way I move. I need to let Jesus affect the way I interact, the way I shape affection, the means by which I negotiate others’ opinions of me ... What if I could say “My body interacts and changes places with Jesus as I wear Him?”[5]
We are indeed naked and vulnerable creatures who often show up half-dressed to the feast, hurrying and thoughtlessly stumbling over our own robes. The thing is, we’re not invited because we have it together, or because we are good and honorable, or because we have fancy clothes. We’re not invited to bestow honor on the king. All of us naked and vulnerable creatures of this world are invited to God’s feast, because God loves us. God wants to feed us and transform us all into the one Body of Christ. We are all lovingly offered the robes of God’s own Son to wear. All we have to do is to wear them in gratitude: To let them mold us and change us, to let them form us into people who act in love. As one poem puts it, the response that God longs to hear from us is this: “My life is naked longing, flesh and blood/ so dress me in your grace. You are my God.”[6]
[1]Bernard B. Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 173-4.
[2] Richard Lischer, Reading the Parables (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 54-55.
[3] Thomas Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 248.
[4] David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic Press, 1989), 136.
[5] Lauren Winner, Wearing God (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), 53.
[6] Ylva Eggehorn, 1992. Translation by Gracia Grindal, 1997. Quoted in Gracia Grindal, “Dress Code,” The Christian Century, September 25, 2002.
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