The Unexpected Guest
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
Proper 23A: Isaiah 25.1-9; Psalm 23; Philippians 4.1-9; Matthew 22.1-14
St Bene’t’s, Cambridge; 11 October 2026
There’s an old saw about a fire and brimstone preacher hammering the pulpit with his fist and ranting about the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…
At which point a be-hatted grandmother in the back row pipes up: ‘But what if you ain’t got no teef?’
The preacher stops, fixes her with his gimlet eye, and says: “Teeth. Will. Be. Provided.”
This is a really uncomfortable parable, full of murder, rebellion, and city-burning troops, not to mention the unfortunate badly-dressed wedding guest.
Luke’s version, the one you may be more familiar with, is quite a bit calmer and pastoral, bucolic where Matthew is bellicose, inviting the poor, the halt, the lame from the highways and byways.
No one’s city gets torched.
But in Matthew, this parable follows on directly from last Sunday’s parable of the wicked tenants who murder first the servants and then the son of the landowner. In Matthew, Jesus is Jerusalem for the final time — these are the parables which follow Palm Sunday.
Everything is building up to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion and Matthew is preparing us for the violence of that great day. The air is heavy with expected thunder, a coming storm whose tension makes it hard to breathe.
It would be fair and faithful to read this parable straight, a condemnation of the refusal of Jerusalem to welcome her Messiah, the refusal of the scribes and priests to wait upon the bridegroom, set in the language of the violence of Roman-occupied Jerusalem.
But in this present day of growing wars, of live-streamed firing squads and rogue AI-agents, we might unfold Jesus’ parable in a different way — which is one of the gifts of parables and perhaps why Jesus taught with stories rather than axioms, to let new meanings come to light for each age:
Years of Sunday school have conditioned us to assume that every time Jesus tells a story about a king, the king must always be God.
Yet is this capricious, prideful, violent king really the best image of God? Jesuit theologian, poet, and activist Daniel Berrigan argues that Matthew’s parable is a comparison, a contrast to the kingdom of God, rather than a likeness of God’s kingdom.[1]
In the reign of God, the banquet is for all peoples and all nations, a holy mountain where all tears are wiped away. In the empires of this earth, all invitations are dangerous; no matter who the emperor invites to dinner, somebody is going to get punished.
In the reign of God, you may choose to refuse the invitation, but God continues relentless in inclusion, sending out on the highways and hedges to find new guests. In the empires of this earth, pride and shame reign supreme – it’s about having the right clothes, saying the right words, having crowds for the photo opp., but not caring about who they are.
Luke had set this parable at a dinner table, with Jesus teaching a mixed crowd about the generous manner of God’s hospitality.
But in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus “once more” addresses the Chief Priests with this parable, as though to say: “Here’s the kind of hospitality you’re showing – you, and the Empire you collaborate with.
When people shame you by refusing your invitation, you react with hurt pride and vengeful violence. And when you try to be generous, inviting in the poor and lame, you turn those vulnerable people into victims of your pride.
You bring in a poor man, homeless and destitute and then upbraid him for not being properly dressed!” And there it is: might we see Jesus not as the bridegroom this time but as the poorly-dressed wedding guest?
The powers and principalities of the world do not recognise him because he is not clothed with worldly glamour – he has ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a warhorse.
The Word of God, homeless and poor, who was silent, speechless before the condemnation of Pilate, who was dragged out of the city of Jerusalem for not conforming to the norms of Empire and Religion and hung on a cross where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth…
But gathered here, around this table, we have the opportunity to live out Isaiah’s vision of a great feast. We are invited by God to take our place as guests and servants at God’s table.
Over the years, in this parish, in our diocese, in our ecumenical and interfaith work in Cambridge, through your generous giving of time and treasure and talent, co-workers for the Gospel, we will continue to have opportunities to set a table for those in need.
We can choose to throw a dinner party like the one in Matthew’s gospel – exclusive and petty, worried about the quality of our guests. Or we can throw a party like the one in Isaiah which Anika read from: abundant, generous, inclusive, full of laughter – with an invitation list that seeks out, and keeps safe, all peoples and all nations.
For God does pursue and hunt down — that is the message of the 23rd Psalm after all!
For goodness and loving mercy do not just follow us…the Hebrew verb is radaph רָדַף, to chase, to hunt down, to persecute and persue: Radaph is the verb used to describe the way Pharaoh’s troops chased after the fleeing Israelites; radaph turns battles into routs.
And you thought Berrigan was radically original in inverting Matthew’s parable!
Goodness and loving mercy shall charge after me me all the days of my life. The soldiers of empire, the agents of AI, the algorithms and drones and servants of violent kings may hunt and burn…but it is God’s goodness and loving mercy which shall chase me down unceasingly.
And pursued relentlessly by God’s loving mercy, what can we do but, as Paul directed in the words Aysha read for us, but rejoice in the Lord always.
What can we do but surrender and break open a bottle of clear, well-aged wine? To set a table of welcome for all who are pursued by the loving mercy of God: women and men, young and old, straight and queer, rich and poor, the stranger and the alien in the land, saints of long-standing and seekers filled with new questions.
A nation of ragged saints, a refuge to the needy and a shelter from the storm; a joyful celebration, inclusive of all people, foolish in generosity, trusting only and wholly in Jesus Christ.
[1] https://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2001b/050401/050401k.htm A parable for today, if not tomorrow - the parable of the king's banquet” National Catholic Reporter, May 4, 2001 by Daniel Berrigan.
See also more recently Emily Sanna, “What if God isn’t the king in the parable of the wedding feast” https://uscatholic.org/articles/202610/what-if-god-isnt-the-king-in-the-parable-of-the-wedding-feast/