Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Texts: Isaiah 25:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you.  Amen

As if there weren’t enough violence in our world already, we get to hear a parable like this. The senseless attack in Gaza last week, and the ongoing retaliation from both sides, following years of oppression, hostility, and unrest, have consumed our attention. The accounts of brutality toward civilians, the destruction of homes, the vicious cruelty are truly unimaginable and inexcusable.

And it’s not only in Israel and Palestine that warfare is ripping apart communities. Ukraine prepares to enter yet another winter with no end in sight to the invasion from Russia. We remember that things have never settled in Afghanistan. Over the last few months we’ve read of civil unrest in Ethiopia, Libya, the Congo, Niger, Ecuador, India, Haiti; I literally have trouble keeping it all straight.

When any of this violence gets fueled by religious furor, it can be even more shattering for us. Is God ever on the side of violence? Does God send invitations that, when ignored, would cause God to unleash divine arson, murder, and mayhem? Is God so demanding of our attention that our neglect is met with rage, revenge, and eternal punishment? And when we do show up at God’s “party,” perhaps out of fear of retribution, would we get thrown out for having missed the dress code? Pardon me for thinking it, but this doesn’t sound like that inviting of a banquet. Who would be in the mood to dance when your neighbors have been slaughtered?

A few of Jesus’s parables are allegories, describing the reign of God in images that correspond directly to our realities. God is like a loving father. God is the good shepherd. God is the woman with a broom, searching for the lost.

Today’s reading isn’t that kind of parable[i]. Jesus is not describing God as an insecure, violent king, frequently given over to vindictive rage, enforcing wardrobe decorum. Jesus’ parables are usually told to provoke or puzzle us. There may offer multiple ways interpretations or meanings. Sometimes Jesus tells stories as a means of setting a stage or describing a mood.

The reign of God is good; it’s the happiest, safest, most delightful banquet imaginable. It is open to all people from the beginning, no one is unworthy of being included or accepted. God longs for all people to live in its generous embrace not just at the end of time, not just when we get around to it, not just when it’s convenient, but always. God gives us entrance to it and welcomes us graciously, removing every disgrace we have ever known.

Understandably, God would be sorely disappointed when we refuse to celebrate. It would pain God when we separate ourselves from those we think should be excluded from the feast. God dismisses our sense that we deserve to be celebrated more than others, or are included because of our own worth.

If God were like a king giving this kind of party, you could imagine him to be furious with anyone who mistreated those who conveyed the invitation. If God were the hostess of a lavish, beautiful banquet, she would be heartbroken that people didn’t want to come, and infuriated with any who refused to welcome others.

But we stumble if we take this too literally. We stumble when we imagine that God has invited only some, but excluded others for their bad behavior. We stumble if we imagine God has picked us as worthy, instead of trusting that God’s love makes everything worthy.

And we miss out on the celebration altogether when we focus more on our own self-worth, our own importance, our own business and busy-ness, than on the holiness of all people, and the wellbeing of all creation.

God doesn’t inflict violence on people undeserving of love. It is our stories which tell of injustice and oppression, of distracted neglect of God’s ways. This is not a story of God’s violence toward us, but of our violence toward each other. God’s stories offer another way.

I’ve been rereading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass[ii]. The author, a biologist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, braids together indigenous wisdom, science, and what she learns from plants and the natural earth. She speaks volumes. I noted the other day that there’s a sermon on every page, so I might refer to her every time I preach.

Kimmerer cares for the plants and environment around her as kin, noticing how they teach and heal us as much as we care for them. Our abuse of the earth, she explains, hurts our bodies as well as the environment. But the earth continues to heal, and continues to teach us to heal. Every plant that grows in a damaged field, every fish that lays eggs in a polluted pond, works to restore creation. Every time we stop to marvel at the restorative power of nature, we take a step at healing our relationship with creation.

Our friend, Rev. Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, describes the same truth in Dakota spirituality, viewing the land itself as our relative. This perspective fosters a deep sense of connection to the earth, and to all our neighbors, human, animal, plant, even the soil beneath us.

This indigenous wisdom seems to draw inspiration from the same well that inspired Isaiah[iii]. God’s love always promises care for the earth along with all God’s people. The mountain itself will host all peoples in a feast of rich food and clear wines, and God will wipe away the tears of all faces, offering refuge to the poor, shelter for those in need.

God will welcome not just those in lofty positions of dominance or power, but everyone, the good and the bad, the powerful and the weak, the Palestinian and the Israeli, the Trans and the cis, the fluid, the questioning. Dare we suggest? God welcomes the Republican and the Democrat, the rich and the poor, the deserving and the resentful.

Violence never has a say on ground God makes holy. All are fed. All find shelter. All are included. And we’re all commissioned to share the invitation with others.

Dear friends, there’s a party going on. It’s a party of love and welcome. A party of fellowship with those who are poor, and communion with the earth itself. The only wardrobe fitting for the party is the love that comes from God. We are finally not robed in our self-importance, or wealth, not our knowledge, not our place in society, but only in the mantle of love.

With all creation, we wear the love that connects us to all things, the love that fuels the stars and spins the planets, the love that plants the cedar, and nourishes the fungus, the love that forms us as family, that holds us in grace, that knows each person on every side of every conflict and claims every one as a beautiful child of God, made in God’s own image.

We are all called, and, if we’re open to it, we all get to choose to celebrate how good it is.

Rabbi Sheila Weinberg offers us a prayer that is appropriate for the news we’ve heard this week.

Two peoples, one land,
Three faiths, one root,
One earth, one mother,
One sky, one beginning, one future, one destiny,

One broken heart, One God.
We pray to You: Grant us a vision of unity.

May we see the many in the one and the one in the many.
May you, Life of All the Worlds,
Source of All Amazing Differences help us to see clearly.
Guide us gently and firmly toward each other, toward peace[iv].

May it be so. Amen.

[i] Matthew 22:1-14

[ii] Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Sceintific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed, 2013.

[iii] Isaiah 25:1-9

[iv] Rabbi Sheila Weinberg, Jewish Community of Amherst, Massachusetts.  https://whalingcitycatholics.org/two-peoples-one-land/