Four words from this Gospel have haunted me all week. Those four words: And he was speechless. What happens to the man who was speechless? What does the King who has invited all these people, the King who seems to have a will that blinds his own compassion and love, what does the King do to the man who was speechless? He has him bound and tossed into the outer darkness. I mean, come on, the man was invited, wasn't he? The man was doing nothing wrong, it seems, he was harmless.
Not wearing the right robe as a parable for the Kingdom of Heaven is something I have trouble wrapping my head around. I will be honest with you, the standard interpretation of this Gospel does not sit well with me. The first group that rejected the Kings invitation are the Jews and the second group invited are all of us. We all know where that goes, where it went. Besides, there is an important historical question, was Jesus setting himself against the Jews of his time, or was he setting himself against the Roman establishment, the oppressive and corrupt Herodian government?
If Jesus' words were directed at the Pharisees and Saduccees I believe that he was not so much speaking to them as people who had rejected God, or even Jesus himself, he was speaking to them, rather, as leaders who stood idly by and watched as their own people were murdered, oppressed, raped and beaten. The people Jesus was speaking to were people who had power and influence and chose not to participate in an exercise of liberation, chose not to participate in a process of freedom and dignity.
We hear a whole lot about what it means to be silent. Elie Wiesel said, "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..." We have heard or read Desmond Tutu's and Martin Luther King Jr's statements about how those who remain silent side with the oppressors. These are condemning words, because there is a lot of injustice and corruption in the world and we tend to remain silent on most issues. Silence can, apparently, lead to death. Now we can add Jesus to this list of people who have a deep disdain for those who remain silent in the face of injustice.
This person who did not wear the appropriate attire to the wedding, which presumably was provided by the King, was rejected outright by the host of this marvelous wedding banquet. How was the man brought to the King's attention? Did someone else point him out? Was what he was wearing so obvious that the King did not have to look long to find this sore thumb? And why did this man not have a simple response? Why did he not say, I don't know,, offering the King a teaching moment, or why not say, gosh, the stewards ran out, I was the last one in the line, leaving Jesus the opportunity to say the first shall be last? Why did he remain silent, and what was so important that the King would not tolerate for one single ounce or second this man's presence?
So I began to ask myself about what it means to be silent, what it means to speak up, what it means to make a stand. I found myself agreeing with Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King Jr. and Desmond Tutu, and of course, Jesus as well. Silence is a form of oppression, silence does place us on the side of the oppressors, silence destroys our own soul, our own identity and even our own faith. To stand by silently implicates us in ways we cannot imagine. So does that mean we have to pick some issue, make it our own and be the voice for that issue in the world?
This is where I found myself struggling, and empathizing with the man who was cast out to the outer darkness. I was driving to work one day, early, I think it was a Tuesday morning, and I heard a BBC report about how 2 some odd Billion people in the world don't have access to clean and sanitary toilets. Thirty percent of those people live in Asia, it might have been more, I can't remember exactly. The reporter talked about how for years the Indian Government has been trying to deal with this issue of sanitation to no avail. It is a dignity issue, to say it simply, these people have had their dignity taken away from them.
So working to get the 2 billion plus people in the world a toilet, or access to sanitary and hygienic bathroom facilities sounds like a good cause, it is a basic human dignity issue that I can get behind. But as I began to go through the list of causes, of human rights issues, I became quite overwhelmed, how in the world does my effort to get toilets in Asia help the massive and destructive famine that is currently plaguing Africa, which for the most part, I have been silent on. And what about the environment? If I work towards making the global climate change issue a centerpiece of my hope for the future, how does that impact the immediate need of people who use the processed food, which is a big part of the global climate problem, we hand out from our Shelf of Hope? Is it simply enough to do something, anything and hope for the best on everything else?
Finally, in this struggle, I found myself circling around to the idea of justice, which has always been slippery to me, always been ambiguous. Justice can be defined in so many ways, it can be understood in so many different contexts. It was in the midst of this struggle that the Baptismal Covenant came floating to my eyes, on Wednesday as I was finishing up the bulletin for today. There in all it's glory were the statements that have changed the Church forever.
Will you
continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread,
and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent
and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
These words that often seem so innocuous yet fluffy and nice have a powerful and compelling argument for speaking up, for not remaining silent.
The foundation we stand upon is not the cause we find passion for. The foundation we stand upon is our baptism, or our understanding of Baptism, which claims these five commitments as core to our life in Christ. In our understanding of Baptism, which is the incorporation of an individual into a larger community of faith, the global community of hope and love, the Human Family as we understand it, we are able to say that we believe all people must have basic human rights and dignities, not for any secular purpose but because this is what Christ calls us to offer the world. This is what God desires us to share and strive for. And when we are silent, this great gift we have been given, this gift of life that has been granted us, remains held in quiet security, not being taught, not being proclaimed not being served. Silence is death, for those who are oppressed and silence is death for our own souls.
It is a fine line to walk, because we are not here today for our own selves and our own souls. We exist here today, we gather here today, to try to change the world. To bring voice to those who have none, to bring justice to the places injustice, to bring love to places of apathy. Christ is our foundation, love is our motivation and our faith is our future. Today we will not be silent, today we will not keep our love to our selves, today we will speak, today we will love, today we will change the world.
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