For many are called, but few are chosen

 

 And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said:  "The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come.  Again, he sent out other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, "See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready.  Come to the wedding."'  But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business.  And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them.  But when the king heard about it, he was furious.  And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.  Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.'  So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good.  And the wedding hall was filled with guests.  But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment.  So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?'  And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'  For many are called, but few are chosen."

 

- Matthew 22:1-14 

 

In yesterday's reading, Jesus taught this parable in the temple:  "Hear another parable:  There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower.  And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.  Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit.  And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another.  Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them.  Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir.  Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.'  So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.  Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?"  They said to Him, "He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons."  Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:  'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.  This was the LORD's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?  Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.  And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder."  Now when the chief priests and Pharisees heard His parables, they perceived that He was speaking of them.  But when they sought to lay hands on Him, they feared the multitudes, because they took Him for a prophet.

 

 And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said:  "The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come."  In today's parable, given again in response to the religious leaders who have questioned His authority in the temple, this parable also proclaims the transfer of the Kingdom from the faithless in Israel to the Gentiles.  The setting is a joyful wedding banquet (see also Matthew 25:1-13).   My study Bible comments that Christ is often called the "Bridegroom" (Matthew 9:15; John 3:29).  St. Paul also uses a marriage analogy for the Kingdom (Ephesians 5:21-33).   Here the king sends out his servants and will repeatedly do so as we read further in the parable; my study Bible comments that it shows the Father's great desire to have His people with Him in the Kingdom.  Altogether, he will send out three groups.  This first group is interpreted to be Moses and those with him.

"Again, he sent out other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, "See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready.  Come to the wedding."'  But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business.  And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them."  This second group of other servants sent out is understood to be the prophets.  They also call those who are initially invited, the Jews.  My study Bible also comments that the oxen represent the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, while the fatted cattle represent the eucharistic bread of the New Covenant.  ("Fatter," it says, is better translated "wheat-fed," or more literally "formed from wheat."  Such an animal is a male bull-calf raised on wheat in preparation for use as a religious offering.  An offering "formed from wheat" is a picture of the eucharist.)  So, therefore, both the Old and the New Covenants are fulfilled in this wedding of Christ and His Church.

"But when the king heard about it, he was furious.  And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city."  According to St. John Chrysostom, whose teaching is cited here by my study Bible, Christ is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70.  Therefore he attributes this destruction to an act of God rather than simply to that of human beings.  Nonetheless, it's noted that God showed patience by waiting some forty years from the time of Christ, giving an entire generation a chance to repent.

"Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.'  So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good.  And the wedding hall was filled with guests."  This is the third group of servants sent out with invitations, but this time they are sent out into the highways.  Not that these gathered all whom they found, both bad and good.  This group of servants represents the apostles sent to the Gentiles.  That is, those not initially invited, but who are now called.

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment.  So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?'  And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"  Here the parable turns to address us, we who have been called from among the Gentiles and out of the world from the highways.  My study Bible explains that the wedding garment would have been provided by the king, and therefore the man had no excuse for not wearing one; therefore he is speechless.  It notes that his refusal to wear the garment that was provided is an illustration of those who refuse God's hospitality, or who want God's Kingdom on their own terms.  Specifically, this garment is a reference to the baptismal garment, and by extension the life of faith, repentance, virtue, and charity that it is meant to lead us to.  Without these, my study Bible adds, a person will ultimately be cast into outer darkness.

"For many are called, but few are chosen."  For many is an Aramaic expression Christ has used before (Matthew 20:28), meaning "for all."

 

Perhaps one thing of which we should make note in today's parable is the extreme inventiveness of God, God's infinite creativity as exemplified in the repeated calling and sending out of servants.  These work in a sense in waves:  depending upon how people receive God's Kingdom and call, God works strategies to continue to find new ways to call those who will accept it into His Kingdom, to find God's "chosen."  First there is Moses, then the prophets, and finally the apostles -- and we see ultimately what will happen at the culmination of all of this effort, the Wedding Feast.  So, therefore, we understand that the story is not over yet, the drama has not finished, for we do not know exactly what will happen at the Wedding Feast of the Son, the Bridegroom -- we do not know who will be chosen, and neither do we know what lies in store for those who arrive properly wearing their wedding garment.  It's an unfolding, ongoing story, and one in which we cannot count God out, nor God's ongoing and unfolding actions calling us forward and back onto the path toward that Wedding Banquet, finding new ways to call us, and stretching the time for repentance with God's mercy, allowing us more experience, a hope of wisdom, and a challenge for preparation for the feast.  What we also understand from the parable is our own stubbornness, the constant rejection of God and God's purposes and plans, and our never-failing earthly mindset that we somehow know better, and our own drawn up plans are the only things that matter.   This is quite a typical illustration of human nature and our very limited focus on the here and now.  That limited perspective of human nature by no means gives us the long picture of observed spiritual history, and what comes to naught.  Jesus has said, "He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad" (Matthew 12:30).  We today are foolish to dismiss the good things that Christ's teachings have brought us, the fruit they have supplied of things we might take for granted, but the world seeks after.  The products of Christian faith would include justice systems that are exhaustively driven to protect the innocent (although as human institutions, they remain imperfect and subject to corruption), or popular cultural notions we've inherited that mercy constitutes greatness more than manipulative power that was common in the ancient world (see Matthew 20:25) are things that many of us take for granted.  But those who dwell without such social inheritance long for them, and when we forget about them, our lives become tinged with misery.  But in the economy of salvation, even times of darkness can serve as learning curve, when we take time to reconsider what in our lives is valuable and precious and what is darkness.  Overall, the message for today is to see God's infinite creativity in coming to us with avenues of salvation:  when human beings fail, God will persist in finding ways to reach out, to reach us, to bring salvation to the world and even to the entire cosmos of Creation.  In our faith, even at small individual levels, we can find the same thing.  As we are closed off from one avenue, God makes a way to find another, if we are persistent in our faith and in prayer.  Sometimes life changes without our noticing or even our effort to make it so, but the ground shifts in ways that open life up in response to prayer and faith.  Sometimes that shift is an inner perspective that comes through God's grace, and we can look at life differently than we did when we were more limited by our own darkness, before the light of God opened up possibilities that were there which we just didn't see before.  We should remember that in Christ's parable, God has sent out servants -- the apostles -- to all the highways of the world, and at the same time we know that God is everywhere present and filling all things (in the words of the Orthodox Prayer to the Holy Spirit on this page).   A prayer for healing by St. Ambrose of Milan declares, "I have found a Physician. He dwells in Heaven and distributes His healing on earth. He alone can heal my pains Who Himself has none. He alone Who knows what is hidden can take away the grief of my heart, the fear of my soul."  We can be certain that the explosive, omnipotent creative power of God will always be at work, the energies of grace reaching out and seeking to save us by all means possible, to take on our darkness and send light into any crack in our armor, to find the places we can let the light in and heal.  So it is with the repeated fullness of the sending of servants to the world, to God's people, even to all the highways, to find those who will come to this wedding feast, and respond by wearing the fullness of the beautiful garment God will provide if we but choose to accept and to live faithfully.  For many are called, but few are chosen.

 

 

You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness

 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'  Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes:  some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house  is left to you desolate; for  say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

- Matthew 23:27-39

We are reading Jesus' final sermon, given in the temple in Jerusalem during Holy Week.  The sermon began with Monday's reading (Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted).   Yesterday, we read that Jesus continued:   "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.  Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.  Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?  And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?  Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells on it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.  These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.  Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."

  "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."   Here we receive the real condemnation of religious practices as mere means of appearance, a method to maintain hypocrisy.  The comparison can't be minimized:  outwardly whitewashed and beautiful, like the bright wedding garments of those who will attend the marriage of the Lamb -- but inwardly full of death, the antithesis of God who is life itself, even Resurrection.  As my study bible pointed out earlier in this sermon, these warnings aren't merely for the scribes and Pharisees, but "every word applies equally to those in the Church who behave in this way."

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'  Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?"  Taken one step further, the inner remains of "death" becomes the lineage of guilt of murderers -- those who shed the blood of holy ones, the prophets sent by God.  But their own hypocritical actions continue those of "their fathers."  Jesus calls them a "brood of vipers" -- those who spread what is deadly, poisonous and painful to human beings.  John the Baptist has used the same expression to characterize the leadership earlier in Matthew's Gospel (see Matthew 3:7).

"Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes:  some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."   Regarding Zechariah, my study bible says that some Church Fathers teach that this was the prophet at the time of Joash the king (2 Chronicles 24:20-22), while others say it refers to the father of St. John the Baptist, who, according to tradition, was also murdered in the temple.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house  is left to you desolate; for  say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"   My study bible tells us that the deepest desire of God is the reconciliation of His people, yet most do not want Him.  The description of the desolate house refers to both the temple and to the nation itself -- house can be used to mean either "family" or "tribe"  (see Psalm 115:12; 134:19).  It says, "Both the temple and the nation will be without God's presence once Christ departs."

 In future readings, we will get a deeper sense of where Jesus is heading with these last words.  But in the comparison to whitewashed tombs, the declaration of the guilt of sons of murderers (those who practice the practices of their murderous predecessors, but declare they would do differently), and the epithet brood of vipers, we get a sense of a spiritual declaration here.  There is a way of life and a way of death, and the two are enemies of one another.  We know that God is the God of life everlasting and eternal; Christ's Resurrection gives true meaning to just what life is.  It cannot be defeated by death.  In the Easter Resurrection hymn, the Orthodox sing that Christ, through the Crucifixion, "trampled death by death, giving life to those in the tombs."   In one of the earliest teaching documents of the Church, the Didache (dated by most to be written sometime near the end of the first century, and subtitled "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Nations"), the great theme is that there are two ways in life:  the way of life and the way of death.  Jesus' way (as in I am the way and the truth and the life) is the way of life.  This word in Greek for way is οδος, which also can be translated as "road" or "path."  By using the allusion to a death-filled tomb, Jesus is explaining that hypocrisy is the way of death, encased in a false picture of life.  But true life comes through the one who truly loves God, as in the first great commandment, and is therefore extended into the second, to love one's neighbor as oneself.  Apart from this, the suggestion goes, there is no life, no way of life.  The contrast cannot be anymore stark nor clear.  According to my study bible, the condemnation is all the greater for those who would be leaders or teachers of this "way of life" who are, in fact, hypocrites.  For us to really understand what this means, we need to have a sense of what life really means.  Life isn't something that ends with what appears to be death.  Whether or not we are speaking about a venture in life that doesn't work out, a dream one has that must be discarded, or physical suffering and diminishment, even physical death itself, none of these things overcome God's power of life.  The power of life includes Resurrection, and all of its forms:  the capacity to recover from disaster and disappointment, the capacity to continue "the good fight" of life, the capacity to pray, to keep trying, to restore, and to heal -- even the capacity to mourn properly, with love:  all of these things are a part of the way of life which is always at work.  It is truly remarkable how prayer or communion with God in meditation can uplift and energize in defeat, restore one back to the "struggle" of a godly life -- even when faced with the ways of death.  We all can come to recognize those; their basis is selfishness, a kind of self-centeredness that sucks the life, maybe the hope, out of everything around it, that gives nothing to others.  That's a broad description but as Jesus said, "by their fruits you shall know them."  This stark contrast is given to us so that we understand the difference that repentance makes, that with true life there is always recovery, resurrection (even in the act of repentance that restores right relatedness to God and to others).  These are the "weightier matters" (as Jesus said in yesterday's reading) of justice and mercy and faith.  Which road do you choose?