Gospel: Mark 8:34-9:1 (§37); Matt. 22:2-14 (§89)
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Fathers, brothers and sisters: Happy Feast! Spraznecom!
This morning with the Precious and Life-Giving cross infront of us, we hear another parable of our Saviour which follows on immediately from the parable of the Good Householder and the wicked tenants that we were exploring together last week. Today we also hear a similar parable about a King calling His servants to a wedding feast. Let us thus see how this parable relates to our present meditation on the significance of the Cross with the help of our father among the saints, St Hiliary of Poitiers.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,
Again in this parable we have the familiar conceit of a wedding, a king who is also a father of a son. St Hiliary helpfully clarifies that the ‘wedding is the sacrament of heavenly life and eternal glory imparted in the resurrection’. The Wedding is the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb, the Son of God, which will be given to His saints and friends at the end of the world in the Resurrection.
And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.
Those urged to come to the wedding banquet, already being invited, are the people of Israel: they are called to the glory of eternity through the Law.
This Wedding Banquet, of eternal life together with God, was not a brand new invitation unheard of before the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Rather, this was the same promise and invitation that had been shared before by the Prophets, for Israel to turn and repent and prepare for the coming of the Messianic Kingdom at the end of the age. In the parable, the servants who call those invited are, St Hilary glosses, ‘the apostles. It was their special role to recall those whom the prophets had invited’. Our Saviour it should be remembered first went to the search out the faithful from the House of Israel and then sent his apostles the 12 and the 70 to preach to them about the coming Kingdom.
Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.
We nowhere that more servants, other servants now call those who are invited to come. St Hilary says that these servants are ‘the apostolic men … the successors of the apostles’. Interestingly he also provides an interpretation of the reference to the fattened animals that have been killed.
The fattened claves are a glorious image of the martyrs, who were sacrificed as chosen victims for their confession of God.
He also qualifies that they have been fattened spiritually by feasting on the Word of God. We can think here of the thousands of early martyrs persecuted and martyred in the first few centuries of the Church, such as the Great Martyr Euphemia – whom we also commemorate today – who was eventually killed by wild beasts in the arena after being cut by blades and thrown into a fiery furnace.
But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:
And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.
However, as usual, flawed, sinful and fallen humanity turns down God’s wondrous and gracious offer of the sumptuous and glorious marriage feast and instead chooses the proverbial ‘mess of pottage’. Rather than accepting the invitation some go to the farm, which St Hiliary interprets as those ‘occupied by worldly ambition’; others to their merchandise which St Hiliarysays are those ‘detained …by their love of money’. Finally, we hear that not only are the servants’ invitation to the feast rejected but yet more servants are martyred. Those who treated the apostolic men ‘spitefully, and slew them’ was fulfilled in the lives of the apostles’.
But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.
Whilst the rejection of the invitation is rejected or ignored this is met with long-suffering and patience. However, when the chosen people reject the preaching of the apostles and their successors and then turn violent against them, God cannot but bring retribution upon them which is also often seen in the lives of the saints, where the torturers or rulers who cause the martyrdom of the saints are punished and sometimes even destroyed. Thus now God widens the invite list, and turns to the pagans, to the gentiles, to us to fill up the remaining spaces around the Messianic Banquet Table.
Directed to the company of the pagans … the bad as well as the good are to come. The invitation had been meant to make people good since it is holy and proceeded from the highest sentiment of the one who makes the invitation.
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
In the final lines of the parable, it is clear that things have skipped forward to the ‘time of judgment at the resurrection’ at the end of the ages. It is interesting here that those who are unworthy of the Kingdom are not spotted by anyone but by God alone. As St Hilary says –
God alone discovers this evil man and his unworthiness at the wedding assembly. The wedding garments represent the glory of the Holy Spirit, the radiance of heavenly garments worn by those whose confession …. is permanently reserved immaculate and whole in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.
It is not, therefore, that few are invited, but that a small number are chosen. There is a common good in inviting
humanity without exception, whereas those who are invited are justly elected from a determination of their goodness’.
In Orthodox understanding, as opposed to Calvinism and heretical forms of Christianity, there is no arbitrariness in God’s assigning some to heaven and others to hell, rather this is the result of Divine Foreknowledge, of God seeing the result of our free choices. Thus if we find ourselves outside of the Kingdom, this will be the result of our own stubborn rejection of God’s gracious invitation. We will ultimately have no one to blame but ourselves.
In our second Gospel reading today from St Mark’s Gospel, for the Feast of the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross, it ends on this curious note –
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Now the Last Judgment and General Resurrection obviously didn’t happen immediately before the Apostles death in the 1st and early 2nd centuries. What, therefore, is our Lord referring to? This passage in St Mark’s Gospel is immediately followed by the narrative of the Transfiguration, and it was on Mount Tabor that three of the disciples, Peter, James and John, were given just a tiny glimpse of the glory of the Kingdom, the glory of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
But how do we ensure that we will enter the Kingdom and come to the Feast? How do we ensure that we are clothed with the luminous wedding garments of the Holy Spirit? The answer to this question is given at the start of this Gospel
Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
My dear Fathers, brothers and sisters, we can thus say that the only way into the Kingdom of Heaven, the only way to earn our luminous wedding garments of the Holy Spirit, is through patiently taking up the crosses which the Lord has given us for our salvation. The Cross is the Key to the Kingdom, the Key to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the Key to our Salvation. Amen