Preparing the table in Southwark for a wedding reception (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
The celebrations of Epiphany-tide continue today, and the week began with the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV, 28 January 2024).
The calendar of the Church of England in
Common Worship today remembers Charles King and Martyr, executed 375 years ago on this day in 1649. Before this day begins, I am taking some time for reading, reflection and prayer.
Christmas is a season that lasts for 40 days that continues from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation on Friday (2 February). The Gospel reading on the Sunday before last (21 January, John 2: 1-11) told of the
Wedding at Cana, one of the traditional Epiphany stories.
In keeping with the theme of that Gospel reading, I am continuing with last week’s thoughts in my reflections each morning until the Feast of the Presentation:
1, A reflection on one of seven meals Jesus has with family, friends or disciples;
2, the Gospel reading of the day;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Banqueting at the end-of-term dinner with the Durrell School of Corfu … we are all invited to the heavenly banquet, but are we ready to accept the invitation? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
10, The Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22: 1-14):
‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’
Sometimes, the ways I can behave as a snob can catch me off-guard and unexpectedly, and I shame myself.
When I was growing up, the snobberies and class distinctions of previous generations were challenged in an old-fashioned way, in the movie
My Fair Lady (1964), based on George Bernard Shaw’s earlier play,
Pygmalion (1913).
But
Pygmalion also inspired what I think is a much funnier movie,
Hoi Polloi (1935), with the Three Stooges, Larry, Curly and Moe.
Two professors are arguing about whether our social behaviour is caused by environment or heredity. It is a very funny take on the old Nature v Nurture argument.
To settle a bet, the two professors take three binmen – Larry, Curly and Moe – train and coach them for three months, dress them up, and send them off to a posh, society dinner.
Their behaviour descends into farce, and it looks as if one professor has won his bet: our social behaviour is dictated by inherited class.
But then the tables are turned – literally. Everyone else at the party descends to the same riotous behaviour. At a base level, we are all the same, even if some refuse to accept it.
Nature or nurture? It was an important statement that we all share the same humanity, coming as racism and the Nazis were on the rise in the 1930s.
The title of the movie,
Hoi Polloi, is a way of expressing class-based social prejudice. It is a Greek phrase, meaning ‘the many’ and it was used in Victorian England by people who had the benefit of a classical education in English public schools and the universities, to describe the masses, who they presumed did not understand the phrase.
Gilbert and Sullivan use the phrase to mock those who used it in their comic opera
Iolanthe. Later, it was used by English public schoolboys in the 1950s and the 1960s, when they referred to ‘oips’ and ‘oiks.’
The term
hoi polloi also appears in a scene in the film
Dead Poets Society (1989). Professor John Keating, played by Robin Williams, speaks negatively about the use of the definite article ‘the’ in front of the phrase.
Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) raises his hands and speaks: ‘The
hoi polloi. Doesn’t it mean the herd?’
Keating replies: ‘Precisely, Meeks. Greek for the herd. However, be warned that, when you say “the hoi polloi” you are actually saying “the the herd.” Indicating that you too are “hoi polloi”.’
This morning’s Gospel reading begins with a very joyful occasion – a posh nosh, a planned wedding, and generous invitations to a lavish banquet. But, instead of the farce in that movie with the Three Stooges, it quickly descends into very difficult images: slaves who are kidnapped, mistreated and killed; cities that are burned down; a man who is bound hand and feet and thrown into outer darkness.
The images of the wedding banquet and the wedding covenant are important ways of describing our relationship with God.
But the parable I have chosen this morning, the parable of the Wedding Banquet in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, is particularly difficult. This is his third parable about the kingdom of heaven, is particularly difficult. It tells the story of a king hosting a wedding banquet for his son. The king has invited a long list of guests, but even after being repeatedly sought out, none of these guests comes to the banquet.
To refuse to come, to refuse a king’s command, is treason; to kill his slaves amounts to insurrection. So the king sends out troops to put down the rebellion.
The king then sends his slaves into the streets to find enough people to sit at the tables at the wedding banquet. The phrase translated as ‘the main streets’ (διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν) in verse 9, means not the main fashionable, shopping streets in a chic part of a city centre, but refers to dirty, gritty, street corners and junctions, perhaps the main junctions outside the city gates, where those who wanted to be hired as labour, those who were refused entry, those who were on margins, could be found. Other translations catch this significance when they refer to the highways and the byways.
Notice how the invitation gathers in all people, ‘both good and bad’ (verse 10).
Yet, when the king sees that a man is not dressed appropriately for the event, the king throws him into the outer darkness.
If you were to imagine yourself as one of the characters in this parable, who would you be?
And would you behave that way?
Are you the king, throwing a lavish wedding banquet?
Are you a wedding guest who has denied the generosity of the king?
Are you one of the people brought in from the streets, but not prepared for the celebration about to take place?
Where do you find Good News in this parable?
Christ’s audience would naturally associate a festive meal with the celebration of God’s people at the end of time. The wedding feast is a recurring image in the Bible of the heavenly banquet and the coming kingdom.
What is meant by the many and the few here?
I have read that in Western thought many is a quantity much more than the majority, while few is many less than the majority. In Eastern thought, one less than 100% would be considered few.
We could put the Greek use of ‘few’ and ‘many’ by Christ in this parable in its cultural context. Pericles, in his ‘
Funeral Oration’ in Athens, according to Thucydides in his
History of the Peloponnesian War, uses ‘the many,’ οἱ πολλοί (
hoi polloi), in a positive way when praising the Athenian democracy. He contrasts them with ‘the few’ (οἱ ὀλίγοι,
hoi oligoi), who abuse power and create an oligarchy, rule by the few. He advocates equal justice for ‘the many’, ‘the all’, before the law, against the selfish interests of the few.
When we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember that Christ is the victim, and that he said his blood is shed ‘for you and for many’ … you being us, the Church, the few in this parable; but the many, οἱ πολλοί (
hoi polloi), refers to the masses, the multitude, the great unwashed, who are called too.
Christ dies for the many, the lumpen masses, all people, and not just for the few, the oligarchs. The many are invited to this banquet this morning. And who are we to behave like a tyrannical despot and exclude them? For if we exclude them, we are in danger of excluding Christ himself.
This story has elements of harshness and tragedy, and some of the responses seem out of proportion to the crime.
The first guests are those who are hostile to Christ. The one who arrives without wearing wedding robes represents those who do not count the cost in becoming disciples. The judgment on anyone who does not prepare will be at least as severe as that on those who reject Christ. The final verse is the moral of the story – a generalisation of Christ’s intent in telling the parable: ‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’
Wedding garments were provided to all comers, so refusing to wear one was not a matter of pleading poverty – it was a deliberate and direct insult to the host.
Yet is the king in the parable a paragon of virtue or a model for how Christ behaves? Christ’s condemnation of violent retaliation is clear and consistent, not only in his teaching throughout his ministry but also in his example of becoming subject to death on a cross.
I have difficulties with the traditional, exclusive claims made in many interpretations of this parable, the standard storytelling of this parable. Is Christ proclaiming that God will retaliate violently when God’s messengers are attacked?
The wedding feast is a consistent image of the messianic banquet. How often do we try to shorten and edit the guest list for the party? The task of the slaves is to gather all – ‘both good and bad.’ If it is for anyone to decide who should be ejected, that call belongs to the king.
But there is another, alternative reading of this Gospel passage. The guests have been compelled to come to the banquet, not because they have something to celebrate, but because they are in fear of the tyrant.
In this telling, Christ is the only one who speaks out and who protests against the king’s tyranny, the tyranny of the kingdoms of this world, by refusing to wear the robe, and ended up being rejected, being ejected, and being crucified on behalf of the many, on behalf of all those who are marginalised, thrown out, expelled.
For many are called to the way of the Cross, but few are chosen.
On the other hand, we might think of the person who was invited by the king, but who does not change. Many are invited to Christianity, come to the banquet, but do not change, thinking that God’s grace will cover it all.
As with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s discussions of Cheap Grace and Costly Grace, we are invited to the banquet, but we must change.
Or you might see the guest who shows up without the wedding garment as being like someone coming to a party but refusing to party. How often am I like that person? Are you?
‘Look, I have prepared my dinner … and everything is ready’ (Matthew 22: 3) … preparing for a banquet (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Mark 5: 21-43 (NRSVA):
21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ 24 So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ 29 Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ 31 And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”’ 32 He looked all round to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Welcoming the Stranger – A Candlemas Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Annie Bolger of the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Brussels.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (30 January 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Accept, we pray, our sorrow for the times when we have not shown compassion and mercy to those You have created in love and for love. Help us grow in courage and hope, always ready to welcome the stranger.
The Collect:
King of kings and Lord of lords,
whose faithful servant Charles
prayed for those who persecuted him
and died in the living hope of your eternal kingdom:
grant us by your grace so to follow his example
that we may love and bless our enemies,
through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr Charles:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection (A banquet with Levi, Luke 5: 27-32)
Continued tomorrow (The meal that never was: the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4: 5-42)
‘Those who had been invited to the wedding banquet … would not come’ (Matthew 22: 3) … empty tables at a wedding reception in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
http://nrsvbibles.org
The Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth … Charles I, a guest of the Comberford family in 1619, is remembered in ‘Common Worship’ on 30 January (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
