Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23 (October 11, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited by AI for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Please be seated.
This morning, as we were gathering for worship, someone took their bulletin, opened it up, and said, “I’m going to see if this week’s Gospel reading is more cheerful than last week.” [Laughter.] And I said, “I’m sorry.”
Are there any among us, having heard this Gospel reading, who feel confused? I see a few hands.
Are there any among us, hearing this Gospel reading, who feel troubled?
So that’s where I want to begin.
I want to say thank you to you, because this Gospel story, like other scriptures that might confuse and trouble us, reminds us that we need the guidance of the Spirit in order to be able to hear what God is saying to us in these holy scriptures.
And I’m thankful to you because you have called me here among you. And part of what you have called me and trusted me to do is to listen with you to the Spirit and to seek to proclaim the good news for all of us, even when the stories confuse or trouble us.
And further, remember that Jesus promised to the apostles, and therefore to every one of us, that Jesus will send the Spirit to guide us in our confusion and to comfort us when we are troubled.
So when you come to a story like this and you find yourself confused or troubled, say thank you to God for sending the Spirit to trouble your heart where it might need to be troubled, and for sending the Spirit to guide you in asking the right questions and in seeking the truth.
It’s an opportunity, and you can trust what your heart is telling you when a scripture troubles you. You can trust the troubled spirit within you and ask God to guide you through this.
So let’s try together. Okay.
There are scholars who think that the author of Matthew’s Gospel probably took two separate parables and stuck them together. And I am inclined to believe that, because it accounts for the dissonance in the parable, which seems to begin by making one point and then kind of stands on its head and makes the exact opposite point.
Let me tell you what I mean.
If you took it as two parables, right? The parable of the invitation to the banquet and the parable of the wedding garment.
Then the first parable is a story about a king who invited many guests to a wedding, and all of them were too busy and important, or had other things going on, and they didn’t want to come.
And so the king said, “Let’s make the list bigger. Let’s open the doors wider. Go out and round up everyone in the neighborhood.”
And Episcopalians love this: the good and the bad, and bring them all to the table.
Now, we love this. This is a parable we can get behind. We might have to set aside that little bit where St. Matthew adds in the genocide of all the people who didn’t want to come. We have to set that aside. But then we can be like Episcopalians. Yes, our table is open to everybody. Our doors say, “All are welcome.”
And that’s what the kingdom of God is like, too. And we can go home and feel good about our parable.
Or we could take the second parable, which is a story about guests who are at a banquet, right? They’re all there for a wedding, and one is found not to have received the hospitality offered with complete willingness because he’s not wearing the special robe.
So, at feasts like this, the host would provide the clothing to be worn. You know, think of, like, you go to the—I don’t know, the Harvard Club or whatever—and you don’t have your blazer, so they give you the big one with the crest on it that’s too big for you. But, you know, the idea is that there’s an appropriate form of dress, and part of the host’s hospitality is to ensure that everybody is appropriately dressed at the event.
And so to refuse that gracious hospitality is to insult the host.
All right? So we could understand that, too, right? Maybe the kingdom of God is like a place where, if you haven’t fully accepted God’s hospitality and welcome for you, you’re somehow going to miss out on the main event.
But you put the two together, right? And you have this conflict where, on the one hand, everybody, good and bad, is invited, but then somebody is singled out for humiliation and thrown out of the banquet.
This becomes very hard for us to understand, and especially hard for us to understand how the kingdom of God could possibly be like that.
Do you think that the kingdom of God is like that?
I don’t. I don’t.
Now, so far, if we had, you know, this little knot of a parable, probably all that I’ve managed to do is pull out some of the threads, and it looks even messier than it did before. It’s a bigger mess now.
We’ve articulated why we’re confused. We’ve gotten somewhat clear on what troubles us, what doesn’t seem quite right about this.
Let me take it a little further.
The one who is singled out is speechless.
That detail caught me.
There was another who was singled out and who never said a mumbling word, right? As the great spiritual goes, the one who was held up before the crowd and questioned, said not a word in his own defense, but went willingly into the outer darkness.
And I imagine myself in that banquet hall, seeing that poor man who’s wearing the wrong outfit being picked up and held up for everyone to look at, like the student who got the bad grade on the test, right? And then bound and thrown out.
And I think, what would I have done?
I don’t know that I could have borne that. And I certainly don’t like to think of myself standing by and watching. But I also think I might be afraid, and maybe you would be, too.
So we are deeply troubled by this story, and I think that perhaps Jesus intends that.
What if Jesus intends that for us?
One interpretation of the parable, taken as a whole, is this, right?
God has indeed opened the great banquet to all people, and everyone is invited in.
But not all who come in clothe themselves in Christ.
As Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter my kingdom.”
Now, you and I can think about examples in our own world of people who call themselves Christians and claim the name of Christ but have not put on, as it were, the garment of love and mercy and care for all people.
And perhaps the interpretation goes, this parable is reminding us that, yes, all are welcome, but all are also accountable.
All are accountable for growing, transforming, putting on the mercy and the love and the goodness of Christ.
That fits.
And now I can think of some people who call themselves Christians, whom I hear about on the news, and I think about them being held up and it being pointed out that they have not clothed themselves in Christ.
And a part of me feels just a little bit satisfied.
Maybe your heart, too, feels a little bit satisfied.
And now we are deeply troubled.
That very love and mercy which we desire all people to put on—that is what is troubling our hearts when we hear this parable.
Yes, we are all accountable before God for who we are in the world.
But we must take great care when our accountability turns into self-righteousness, right? When our desire to hold others accountable becomes self-righteousness, and when the mercy and the goodness we desire can’t be found in our own hearts.
The psalm says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me.”
Chase me down, follow me all the days of my life.
Goodness and mercy need to find their way deeper and deeper into our hearts, for the good and the bad, for the merciful and the unmerciful.
Goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life, ever refining me.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.