A Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026
Parables, by their nature, are meant to provoke, provide a punch, and then turn-upside-down the preferred reality of the listeners. This morning I want to suggest to you that Matthew’s parable of “The King who gave a wedding banquet for his son” is a much more dangerous parable than we may have previously thought. And, I want to suggest, Jesus knew, in telling it, just how dangerous it was!
First, let’s consider the audience. Matthew tells us Jesus is speaking to the Chief Priests and Rulers of the People. Jesus is speaking to the authorities of his day. This bit of intel from the evangelist is pivotal for understanding where God is located in the story.
Parables, again by their nature, are also meant to shatter assumptions. So, let’s just imagine what the assumptions of Jesus’ listeners might have been. Jesus tells a story of a King throwing a banquet. “Aha!” The Chief Priests and Rulers of the People say: “He is speaking of God and the heavenly banquet.”
Okay… but who really is this King in the parable? Jesus depicts him as a ruler who rules by wrath, who rules by rage, who routs out others by retaliation and revenge. And the Chief Priests and Rulers of the People say: “Yes! Of course, those invited did not respond. At best, they ignored the invitation. At worst, they they violently mistreated the King’s messengers. So yes, the King is justified in murdering them and burning their cities.” You can begin to feel a bit of glib, self-satisfied, self-justification arising in the minds and hearts of the audience. “You see,” they say, “by God we are justified in our own capricious, violent, authoritarian, and petulant ways of ruling.”
Now we, the readers of the parable, millennia later, begin to see before Jesus’ listeners saw that God is not the King in this story and the banquet is not the heavenly banquet. “The King” Jesus describes is a reflection of the audience: The Chief Priests and Rulers of the People.
So, next, along comes the underdressed wedding guest. We are told the King spies him out amid the banqueters and questions: “How did you get into my banquet underdressed? The question reduces the wedding guest to silence and the King, in his usual style, demands that his attendants throw him out! God is not “The King” in this parable. The King, in the parable, is the rulers of the age who are standing there looking Jesus directly in the face. And the banquet is a party honoring their own false image of God. So, where is God in the parable? Well, what if God was the underdressed wedding guest, as Jesus, himself, is the totally undressed God?
The evangelist John tells us: “[Jesus] came to his own and his own did not receive him.” God comes to his own, underdressed, (in unexpected and unacceptable guise) and worse, totally undressed in Christ (he is not the Messiah they were looking for). So they reduce him to silence, bind him hands and feet, and cast him out of their community of faith (basically rejecting the God who is suppose to be the animating center of that faith). They throw him outside into the darkness of death. The living God is not welcomed at this banquet.
Jesus’ question to his listeners then is the same as now: What if God is the underdressed wedding guest and he (Jesus) is the completely undressed God? Have we assumed wrong? Have we accepted an invitation to the “wrong” party?
How often have we reduced God to silence in our own faith lives?
How often have we expelled God from our own faith communities?
How often have we thrown a party for a false god that required the exclusion of others, including God himself?
Now, you may ask: “What about that last line in the parable?” Many are invited, but few are chosen. Well, what if that is the punch-line? What if that is the ultimate provocation at the heart of this parable?
In that final line, I suggest, Jesus is still reflecting back to his listeners their way of thinking; their mode of structuring reality, but, from the perspective of the God who is the underdressed wedding guest, and Christ, who is the totally undressed God, that message is now being turned on its head to read: All are invited. All are chosen. Because, even for us today, isn’t it still the radical inclusivity of Christ that most threatens our own cherished illusions about God and the structures by which we too often exclude?
All are invited. All are chosen. What if we took up that invitation? What if we showed up at that party?
