Wedding Dress

I grew up in a large family, so we didn’t go out to eat very often. It was just too expensive. On those few occasions when we did, we often went to the Viking Restaurant. The Viking had an authentic Scandinavian smorgasbord, the precursor of today’s huge buffets that encourage people to eat in one sitting enough food for a week. We liked it because we could get as much of whatever we wanted. My mother liked it because she didn’t have to cook. I still remember the little cards on every table: “Eat with taste; please don’t waste.”

The Viking had a dress requirement. Every male from adolescence onwards had to wear a sport jacket or suit coat, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the dining room. The management even had a few spare jackets available in case someone forgot. After wearing one of those garish ill-fitting loaners a time or two, I always remembered to bring my own.

Dress requirements seem quaint, a thing of the past, certainly in our corner of the world. It’s like three-piece suits in our church, a clear indication of a visitor. Even festal occasions nowadays don’t always mean festal dress. R and I recently attended a wedding reception at the local country club, and saw a farmer in his overalls with a pair of pliers still in the tool loop. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough that it didn’t faze me a bit.

Thus a Bible story about someone getting booted out of a wedding feast because of improper clothes seems yet another example of how out-of-date Scripture is. What makes this story worse is that the ejected guest appears to have been welcomed at first. So why care what he looks like?

But I get ahead of myself. This wedding feast is a parable of Jesus, another one that begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” Once again there’s a king, whom we’ve already seen is the stand-in for God. As Jesus describes the banquet, it sounds more and more like the feast, the messianic banquet God offers to everyone. One hears echoes of Isaiah: “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The steaks are on the grill and the beer is in the cooler. All the king needs are guests.

The trouble is that those who got the invitation don’t want to come when everything’s ready. One decides that the combine needs some tinkering and another remembers paperwork at the office that needs shuffling. With the steaks heading toward very well done, the king tells his servants to go out into the streets and haul in everyone they find. (I love the Authorized Version’s translation of the parallel passage in Luke: “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” It’s so British.)

When the king comes in and starts working the room, he spies someone who isn’t wearing the right wedding garment. Either the man didn’t stop at home to change first, or he didn’t like the loaners the king had hanging on a rack. Or maybe he was just walking by as everyone went in and decided to crash the party. The king, calling him “friend,” gives him a chance to explain himself. But the man is speechless, and his silence condemns him. So the king has him thrown out on his ear.

In this parable, Jesus tells us something important about the messianic banquet. First of all, God’s feast is going to be a big one. Everyone is invited. But not everyone is going to be there. Some of the invitees will be too busy to show up. They’ll walk the other way when the time comes. And a few will try to get into the banquet on their own terms, not God’s. When they’re found out, they’ll be shown the exit.

We don’t like the idea that some people will be excluded from the banquet. We want to think that everyone is there. That’s called universal salvation: everyone gets to be with God, everyone goes to heaven. It is true that God intends salvation, reconciliation with God and one another, for everyone. Yet it’s also true that we are given the freedom to walk away from God. We can make light of God’s invitation. We can try to get in on our terms, not God’s. Jesus made it quite clear that such behavior has consequences. It puts us in darkness, not light. It separates us from the joy of the wedding feast.

As far as I can tell, the Viking Restaurant is no longer in business. I’m not surprised. The formality of the owners and their stinginess with the food (remember those table cards?) could not compete with the informality and largesse of the modern family buffet. I no longer have to worry about wearing an ill-fitting loaner jacket. And when the day comes for that big feast, the messianic banquet, I hope and pray that I will have the sense to accept the invitation and arrive clothed in Christ. In the meantime, I better do something with the pile of paperwork on my desk.

[Pentecost 17: Isaiah 25:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14.]