In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson famously edited the gospels to make them more to his liking. As a thinker in the heart of the enlightenment, Jefferson was most interested in morals, ethics, and philosophy. He, and many other enlightenment thinkers, wanted nothing to do with and dismissed the supernatural as a fantastical relic of the past. And so, Jefferson literally took a razor blade to copies of the Bible, cutting out the teachings of Jesus he found helpful for his project of moral philosophy, pasting them into a book of his own, and everything else met the trash can. The result was a book titled, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” It explicitly excluded any mention of healings, miracles, Jesus’ divinity, or the resurrection. It was, to say directly, no longer Christian scripture.

I suspect we all have thoughts of going the route of Thomas Jefferson sometimes. It may not be excluding the supernatural, but Scripture sometimes makes us squirm. Maybe it is God as depicted in the Old Testament who we might appear too judgmental or too violent. Maybe it is Jesus when he seems to be exclusionary and talks of heaven and hell. Perhaps it is the Apostle Paul and his writings about the role of women in the church. I realize I am opening a can of worms here by naming those things and this isn’t the sermon in which they will all be addressed. The only point I’m making is that it is often tempting to avoid, ignore, or all together do away with parts of Scripture that we don’t like or that make us uncomfortable. It is tempting to shape Scripture to fit our beliefs, rather than our beliefs being shaped by Scripture and the way God is revealed through it. And yet, the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, along with the Apocrypha, are the Scriptures of the Christian Church. They are the texts through which God has and continues to work to shape us and the Church into faithful followers of Jesus. While the Holy Spirit can speak through anything, God is revealed most fully to us through the words of Scripture.

You can probably see where I am going with all of this because this morning’s gospel reading is sure one of those passages that is uncomfortable, at best. It is certainly one I would rather avoid in preaching. But still, my belief about God, my trust in Scripture, my foundational theology that says God is revealed through Scripture compels me to wrestle with it and look for the Gospel…for good news. As much as I would rather push it aside for something more palatable, as Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy says,

“all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

So how might we become equipped for good work through the parable we have before us?

As you listened to this Gospel being read, you may have imagined a sermon. Perhaps the sermon you were thinking of began with the question, “Where are you going after you die?” Maybe it ended with, “if you don’t accept Jesus, you will be ‘thrown into the outer darkness.’” This passage, and others like it – Jesus sorting out the sheep and the goats, the wheat and chaff being separated – are often read and heard as being only about God’s ultimate judgement of humanity and where eternity might be spent. And yet, I wonder how much of that is our quick assumptions, judgements about, or discomfort with the parable, rather than listening for what it is actually saying to us.

You see, because this parable isn’t directed at everyone. We are still in the temple with Jesus after his return to Jerusalem just before his death. For the last three weeks, we’ve been witnessing Jesus’ confrontation with the chief priests and the elders who questioned Jesus’ authority. Jesus’ answer – and pointed critique of them – is found in three progressive parables: First, the story of two sons whose father asks them to go out and work. One says he will but doesn’t, the other refuses but ultimately goes. Jesus points out the religious leader’s hypocrisy and insists that actions must match words; that one must practice what they preach to be faithful. Next, which Peter preached on last week, a story about a landowner who gave his vineyard into the care of tenants who, when harvest time came, mistreated the representatives of the owner and killed the landowner’s son. In hearing that story, the religious leaders realized that Jesus was talking about them. And, if you noticed last week, the religious leaders didn’t disagree with Jesus’ assessment of their faithfulness or knowledge of their planned actions…rather, they continued their plot to have him arrested. Then we arrive at the parable we read today.

It is progressively more absurd than the preceding parables: a king who throws a wedding party and, when rather than come to the party, the invited guests kill the slaves the king had sent out to spread the invitation, the king responds by killing those invited and destroying their city. I’ll say it again. This is an absurd story.

If we generalize and make universal this parable – taking it out of its narrative context and making it about any and all people – we might arrive at the conclusion that God is a vindictive tyrant waiting to condemn and destroy those who don’t accept Jesus. We might understand God as judgmental, unforgiving; one who reactively punishes those who don’t respond to God’s invitation. But those conclusions are contrary to everything we come to know in Scripture about God who is love and grace and compassion and mercy beyond measure. As Peter eloquently stated last week, from Genesis to Revelation, from the beginning of the story of God until the end, the throughline is the love of God.

So what if this is simply a pointed story – with the absurdity of it part of the point – directed at a small group of arrogant, entitled, unrelenting religious elites who believe that their lineage and titles entitled them to the riches of God’s kingdom despite their unfaithfulness to everything God had asked of them: to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God; to love the lord their God with all their heart, and soul, and mind and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. Perhaps Jesus is painting God as the king in their image, pointing the mirror back at them – with the absurdity and violence of the king meant to show them themselves and kick them in the pants towards more faithfulness in that to which they had been called?

When we hear this parable – or other stories from Scripture that make us want to quickly turn the page – we have a choice. We can dismiss it because we don’t like the way it portrays God. We can read it literally and universally, making it about any and all people and the fate of those who don’t accept Jesus. Or we can read it as an event from Jesus’s life told to a particular community for a particular purpose, but one that still might have something to say to us today. My faith, my belief and understanding of God, leads me to the later.

Because, while you nor I are one of the religious leaders Jesus directed this parable to, obedience and faithfulness still matter. Put differently, there isn’t nepotism in God’s kingdom…one’s family history or lineage isn’t enough. Showing up to church isn’t enough. This parable is about those who consider themselves “insiders” – those who believe themselves to be part of God’s family. And you’ll notice, that when the “insiders” failed to be faithful, failed to respond to God’s invitation, failed to practice what they preached…the circle of inclusion expanded. It was the “outsiders” who enjoyed the feast no matter who they were or what they had done; the good and the bad.

That is echoed at the end of the parable in Jesus’ statement, “Many are called, few are chosen.” At first glance, this seems to be a narrowing of those who will ultimately inhabit God’s kingdom. It is language John Calvin picked up to define predestination and the election of few who will ultimately be saved. But what if we pay attention to the words and place them in a different order? God’s chosen people are the people of Israel. God chose a particular family so that, through that family, God might bless the whole world. That project of restoring creation did not produce the intended result which led to Jesus and direct relationship with God being open to all people. Few were chosen – the family of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – and now many are called. All are invited – including those God originally chose – to the great banquet of heaven. And that is what we hear in this parable: the invitation is now indiscriminate. “Many are called” becomes an expanse of God’s embrace and invitation rather than the exclusion of any.

That still leaves us with the guest without a wedding robe. The parable has made clear, the invitation to the feast of God’s kingdom is open to any and all. But while it is open to all, attendance requires something of those who attend. As one commentator put it, “The only sufficient credential for citizenship in God’s kingdom is a transformed life.” When we join ourselves to and live in relationship with God, something happens to us: we begin to reflect the goodness and love of God. Those who are clothed in God’s goodness, who open themselves up to the transforming love of God, that is who finds themselves at the table. And the invitation is always open.

I’ll close with this…because, while the majority of this parable is directed at a particular group of religious elites and their hypocrisy, it does move to the universal and the open invitation to the feast of God’s kingdom for all people. And it holds out the possibility that some might not be at the table. I don’t presume to know who will ultimately be at that great feast and, thank God, I’m not the one who gets to decide. What I do know is that all are always invited. That there is plenty of room. What I do know is that God invites the good and the bad and their inclusion has nothing to do with who they are or what they have done. I do know that God’s love and grace are indiscriminate. I do suspect we will ultimately be surprised at who is present in God’s kingdom. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all will be there…and not because God excludes anyone.

There is an old story about heaven and hell both being banquet tables with three-foot spoons. In hell people starve because they are unable to feed themselves. In heaven people are stuffed from feeding each other. Or the image of hell that CS Lewis wrote about in The Problem of Pain. He said, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware wrote in an essay titled, “Dare we Hope for the Salvation of All?” (and spoiler alert – he said we must hope for the salvation of all),

“Our belief in human freedom means that we have no right to categorically affirm, ‘All must be saved.’  But our faith in God’s love makes us dare to hope that all will be saved…Hell exists as a possibility because free will exists.  Yet, trusting in the inexhaustible attractiveness of God’s love, we venture to express the hope that in the end, we shall find there is nobody there.”

Jesus’ point in this parable is not to define salvation and who is in or out.

It is not to describe how God will act in the end to judge and destroy those who do not accept the invitation. It is to call those of us who believe that we are already in towards faithfulness and a transformed life. So today, and tomorrow, and every day until the end, may we be clothed in goodness, transformed by the love of God more and more, and may our actions in the world reflect the radical and overwhelming openness of God’s kingdom until, by God’s grace, we find ourselves at the table.