NORTH BALWYN UNITING CHURCH SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2014 Rev. SweeAnn Koh Exodus 32: 1-14; Matthew 22: 1-14

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1 NORTH BALWYN UNITING CHURCH SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2014 Rev. SweeAnn Koh Exodus 32: 1-14; Matthew 22: 1-14 Sermon by SweeAnn Koh 1 But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are chosen. Let us pray: Gracious God - bless now the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts. Breathe your Spirit into us and grant that we may hear and in hearing be led in the way you want us to go. Amen. There are seventeen parables in the gospel of Matthew. If you had to choose one that was the hardest to interpret, this week's Parable of the Wedding Banquet is a good candidate. The story is full of violence. One interpreter calls some of the details "beyond comprehension." I think most of us can agree that the parable from Matthew 22:1-14 is a tough parable. The reaction of the king to those who refuse his invitation is perplexing. They have beaten and killed his messengers. The king retaliates explosively. He sends in the army and burns the rebel city down. Those left alive after the murderous rampage walking the streets because their homes were torched are rounded up for the banquet. One possible reason for this inclusion may be that Matthew was writing after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in response to

2 the Jewish uprising of 66 AD, and so he added this comment to reflect on the way the religious leaders had been brought down. Certainly, this part of the story does not appear in Luke s version of this parable. Let s just admit it: However we look at the parable this is an ugly parable. No amount of generalizing about God s hospitality or vulnerability or invitation is going to do away with that. We are rightly mystified by the behaviour of the characters in this bizarre parable. The king is petty, murderous and arbitrarily cruel. Luke s version of the parable [Luke 14:15-24] does not include the bit about a king or violence or the speechless man. I know that many do and will continue to read this Sunday's gospel as an allegory in which the king is God but I refuse to make such a surrender for a king whose behavior resembles someone like Saddam Hussein or any number of brutal dictators we can name, including the Herods and Caesars of Jesus' time. I hope that I might be able to unpack this parable using postcolonial hermeneutics. In this sermon, I attempt to re-read the parable from the perspective of the man who was not wearing a wedding robe. Othering is a term that is associated with discourses of colonialism, and, in particular, with the work of Edward Said. The act of othering is a manifestation of power relations. When we start describing ourselves as part of a group of people united in a we, while other people are constructed

3 as fundamentally different, united in a they, we are using a powerful weapon that might serve to de-legitimize others. And too often, these distinctions are drawn along the classic axes of discrimination and power differences, like sexuality, gender, ethnicity, race, class and so on. Othering is strongly connected with power and knowledge. When we other another group, we point out their perceived weaknesses to make ourselves look stronger or better. It implies a hierarchy, and it serves to keep power where it already lies. This speechless man in the parable is made the Other. He was punished because he was different. He was sent into the utter darkness because he didn t conform. With the party in full swing, the king enters the banquet hall and moves among the guests. To his dismay, he finds that one of them is not dressed properly. Friend, he says, how did you get in here without a wedding robe? (v. 12) And receiving no satisfactory answer, he has the poor guy bound and thrown out not just outside the hall, but into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (v. 13). With friends like that, who needs enemies? It almost seems out of place. A party where EVERYONE S invited, both good and bad. And yet one guy s singled out because he s not DRESSED right. And he s punished.

4 How could he be expected to have in hand wedding attire when he has been on the streets? And I wonder how anyone would have dressed properly in the midst of the burning carnage. Traditionally most bible commentators tried to explain or justify the behavior of the king. One commentator said that, The wedding garment for such an event as Jesus describes would have been supplied by the host, by the king in this parable. Those arriving would have been issued the appropriate garment at the door. So, if persons were in the party but not wearing the garment, it wasn t because they didn t have the garment. It was because they refused to wear it! It was such refusal of the qualification after acceptance of the invitation that resulted in this person being cast into the outer darkness. And Brendan Byrne commented on these verses in his book, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew s Gospel in the Church Today. And I quote: The man without a wedding garment represents all those who accepted the invitation but did not, within that calling, undergo the conversation of life required for entrance into the final kingdom. At the judgment imagined by the king s coming to see the guests (V.11) they will be found lacking the wedding garment of good works and suffer the exclusion described. (page 165) I don t find these explanations satisfying or convincing. Many biblical commentators suggest that the man without the wedding robe was guilty and that s why he was speechless when confronted by the king. What do you think? This man in the parable did not have any name. We don t know much of him except he was punished for not wearing a wedding robe. It seems what you wear or don t wear can get you into trouble. Doesn t that sound very contemporary? Remember the uneducated and inappropriate comments made on Australian Muslim women

5 by the likes of Senator Jacqui Lambie and Senator Cory Bernardi recently? Palmer United Party senator Jacqui Lambie said women in burqa were a national security issue. And the Prime Minister Tony Abbot said that he found the burqa confronting and wished it was not worn. I thought in our free and open society, women should be entitled to dress as they please. I see a distinct irony in the suggestion that women who are allegedly forced to wear a face covering should be forced not to wear it. We do not hear the man s voice in the text. We are simply told, he was speechless. The word speechless in Greek is ἐφιμώθη: [E-fee-move-thay] Literally it means he was muzzled, tongue tied, as if his mouth were closed with a muzzle The word SPEECHLESS is fascinating. Some synonyms for the word speechless that I have found - Thunderstruck Flabbergasted Astounded Amazed Dumbstruck Wordless Bowled over Dumbfounded Shocked Tight-lipped Silent Muted Clearly the word SPEECHLESS has fifty shades of meanings. One can be SPEECHLESS for a multitude of reasons. Anyway, can you remember when was the last time you were speechless? Dev, when was the last time you were speechless and for what reasons? People can become speechless for a variety of reasons. For example, many abused women are struck speechless by their abusers. The abuser takes a position

6 of privilege or control over another and diminishes the other person self-esteem and worth until she's almost immobilised from it. Do you know domestic violence is the leading cause of death in Australia and injury in women under 45, with more than one woman murdered by her current or former partner every week? One woman is hospitalised every three hours across the country. Access Economics has estimated about 1.6 million Australian women have experienced domestic violence in some form. Thousands of women right now are living in fear of their partner; are being demeaned, threatened, bullied, controlled and assaulted; even murdered by their partners. Many are made speechless because of fear. Their voices have been muted by fear. Fear involves extensive loss. An abused woman fears the loss of her family, reputation, status, children, home, income. Many abused women face the cultural pressure and economic necessity of staying put. Germaine Greer, the renowned feminist, writes in her book The Whole Woman in 1999 referring to her earlier bestseller written thirty years ago: When The Female Eunuch was written our daughters were not cutting or starving themselves. On every side speechless women endure endless hardship, grief and pain, in a world system that creates billions of losers for every handful of winners. (p. 3) Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is hailed around the world as a champion of women's rights who stood up bravely against the Taliban to defend her beliefs. Malala, now aged 17, became globally known in 2012 when Taliban gunmen almost killed her

7 for her passionate advocacy of women's right to education. "The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born," she told the United Nations last year. "The wise saying, 'The pen is mightier than sword' was true. The extremists are afraid of books and pens," she told the United Nations. "The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them." Malala refuses to be silent, though a Taliban tried to render her permanently speechless. Today she is the voice for the voiceless. The news is filled with stories of people all over the world being persecuted by corrupt governments, dictatorships and extremists of various kinds, such as Boko Haram or ISIS, desiring to silence anyone who does not accept their ideology. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And he was speechless. The nameless man in the parable for this Sunday was speechless! Dev, there are many reasons why people are speechless. There are many who are made speechless in our society. Many voices have been muted by domestic violence, by racism, by poverty, by discrimination, by colonization, by domination. Dev, in this multicultural Church we both love and are called to serve, we know there are people amongst us who are speechless, whose voices are muted or they find great difficulties in having their voices heard. Dev, I believe one of the responsibilities we have

8 is to discern the speechless in our midst and find ways to help them not to remain speechless. Matthew constantly contrasts the Empire kingdom with the kingdom of God. If there really even is what could be called a king in God s kingdom, it would look like Jesus. Jesus says he comes not to be served, but to serve. That s really different. He tells this parable after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem: Behold your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass. That s so different, it s funny. Does Matthew really mean for us to compare the violent king to God, or to contrast him to Jesus? Who s the man without the robe? Could this be a critique of the way the Empire works? Right after Jesus tells this parable, the Pharisees try to entrap him with the question of paying tax to Caesar. Jesus answers: give to Caesar what is Caesar s, give to God what is God s. Armies and taxes and violence, retaliation and cruelty belong to Caesar not to God. The storyteller is God incarnate (so our faith proclaims) not the enraged king in the parable, and yet so much of the Christianity we grew up in got its image of God from these scary parables basing its image of God on the angry, violent, king. Friends Proverbs 31:8,9 reminds us of our responsibilities: Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously,

9 And plead the cause of the poor and needy. Let us pray God you call us your friends, Not just one but also all. Not just the rich but the poor, Not just the powerful but the marginalized, Not just the vocal but also the voiceless, Not just the speechful but also the speechless. Help us not to be speechless in the midst of racism, discrimination and oppression. Help us to hear the voiceless in our midst, And give us courage to be a voice for the voiceless in our church and society. Help us to be aware of those people whose voices have been muted by domestic violence, by poverty, by discrimination, by domination. Help us to stand with them and be their voices till they find their own voices once again. We pray in trust. Amen.