October 15

​The commentaries for Oct 15 were written by members of the Strategic Team for Authentic Diversity in the Northwest Washington Synod.

by Rev. Darla DeFrance
Matthew 22:1-14 

At the Byberg Preaching Conference a few years ago, Professor Anna Carter Florence offered this excellent set of questions for approaching texts for preaching: 

• What gets me in this text and what is that about? (This is not the sermon. Please don’t preach this!) 
• What do I know about God? 
• What is the gift I want people to receive/the good news they need to hear? 
• What is the sermon trying to say? What do I want the sermon to do? 
• There is plenty that gets to most people in this violent and puzzling text about the wedding banquet. As Pastor Debbie Blue put it in The Hardest Question blog a few years ago: ”Why does the image of God as a sadistic brutal violent tyrant persist even in the face of Jesus? Does it say something about us?” 

As we approach this text mindful of the racial and class disparities that persist among us today, it might also prod us toward some unsettling questions: 

What do we in the church do with our sense of entitlement?
Who among us is confident that they belong in God’s family, at the metaphorical wedding banquet? 
Can this parable cut through some of the entrenched words we use to talk about race and class, insiders and outsiders, the chosen people and those cast into the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth? 
How does the gospel repeatedly place at the center those people who society wants to keep at the margins? How do we, as people of the gospel, respond to a society that is set-up to keep racial hierarchies in place? 
What kind of gatekeeping do we (unintentionally?) support? What are our blind spots, where we perpetuate exclusionary practices that undermine our efforts to be a community where all are truly welcome and valued?