Homily: Of Invitations and Dress Codes

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 25.6-10 / Psalm 23 (R/v 6cd) / Philippians 4.12-14 / Matthew 22.1-14

Haven’t you gotten those invitations that spelt out the expected dress code for the invited occasion? Perhaps, it made you mull long and hard on the appropriate attire to wear. The formal black dress or the sarong kebaya for the wedding? The lounge suit or smart casual for the charity dinner? A costume or regular clothes for the fancy dress?

Our readings today have to do with an invitation and a dress code: with God inviting us to his feast and the correct attire we should wear to attend it.

Our first reading is about God inviting us to a wonderful feast. For Isaiah, this is the right occasion of rejoicing. It expresses God’s forgiveness for sins. It manifests God’s favor that saves. It assures a tearless happiness God promises. This occasion will take place on God’s mountain; on that day there will be gladness. For those of us who look forward to the Lord’s coming, Isaiah’s words are hope-filled. 

But as much as Isaiah’s words assure us of God’s promised abundance to come, you and I know that we want to experience more of God’s goodness right here, right now. How many times have we asked God to provide more for our every need, whether they were as big as passing the PSLE and O’Levels and finding the right spouse, or as small as getting through the day or finding a car park space? 

And as we did so, did we not repeatedly ask God, “When, Lord?” and “How long, O Lord?” We did and we still do because our human situation is one of having and not having, of experiencing God’s goodness and of longing for more of God’s goodness. This is the “both/and” reality of Christian life as Paul explains it to the Philippians in our second reading.

This “both/and” reality is however not a lack but a grace. It is the grace that keeps us humble and open to always make the journey towards the more, the center, the day of the Lord.  This is because though we may be presently enjoying the feast of plenty in our lives, we also know that we do not have it all. Our abundance does not subtract us from longing, reaching out, thirsting and aching for that very thing that abundance promises, but cannot provide satisfactory in this life.  And this is why we long for God even more. 

This paradox of Christian life is grace because to live with the giftedness of having and the poverty of wanting more empowers us for life in God. It gives us the strength and the hope to keep on leaning towards this feast of rich food and choice wines that God will provide for us on his mountain. This is why we can continue to yearn for this moment, this day, when there will be no more weeping and no more grinding of teeth.

How then should we properly present ourselves before God with what we already have and what we hope to have? What should we be wearing as we present ourselves?

Today’s gospel story provides us with a glimpse of how to do this. 

The ones who do not come to the feast are the ungrateful guests who turn down the invitation to the wedding feast. They are the independent and self-sufficient. They wear garments embroidered with the phrases “I, Me and Myself.” They refuse the invitation to share in the joy and goodness of another. These ungrateful guests are not welcomed to the feast. Neither are those who hear the invitation and enter without the right garment, like the man without the wedding garment. These are the ones who do not dispose themselves properly to enter into the celebration.

Aren’t we sometimes like these guests? When we are, don’t we wonder if we are still unwelcomed?

Who then can come, is welcomed and should celebrate? Jesus says, “the bad and good alike,” whomever on the street who is willing to come. Why would such people be admitted, rather than the devout, the pious, the obedient or the righteousness?

Because they come willingly to the feast, wearing the right attire. This attire is that disposition of nakedness they cloak themselves in as God’s guest—whether good or bad, they come recognizing that God judges them worthy to be his guest.

For St Edith Stein, this nakedness has everything to do with the Christian vocation. It is about standing before God as we truly are: whether good or bad, it is always about longing to be with God who lets us stand before him as we are. This longing is the acceptable attire to dress in for God. 

Here we are at Eucharist. We have come to be fed at his table of plenty with the body and blood of God’s Son, Jesus, our daily bread. Who amongst here dares to claim, “Yes, I have come in a complete state of grace to receive communion as the Church teaches?” If you and I are really honest, we will confess otherwise; we’ve come in a state of longing for God. We’ve come because we are sinners yearning for God’s compassion. We’ve come believing that we will encounter God in the Eucharist because in Jesus we share in God’s life and we receive God’s love. We hear this echoed by Pope Francis: “We celebrate the Eucharist not because we are worthy, but because we recognize our need for God’s mercy” (General Audience, 12 Feb 2014). 

If we come to the Lord this morning as Francis describes, it is because we've come dressed in our poverty, I believe. A poverty that depends on God’s mercy for forgiveness and God’s love for life. 

Blessed are we who come like this; we are ready to dress ourselves in our nakedness. As we do so, we might begin to see how our nakedness is really reflected in the nakedness of Jesus who always depended on God to cure the ill, feed the hungry, save the sinful. Then, we can begin to let Jesus lead us to God. And he will lead us to God by drawing us into greater solidarity with those who are equally like us in their nakedness, the last, the lost and the least. When we realise that this is how Jesus saves us into eternal life, we can then echo Paul’s confident line to the Philippians, "I can do all things in Him Who strengthens me” as our testimony to one and all.

This is why it will be good for us to reflect if we are coming to God's love aware of our longings, needs and aches for God. If we are not, then we might be excluding ourselves from receiving God’s love wholeheartedly. And this will lead us away from God and into  the weeping and grinding of teeth because of our own self-satisfied and self-stuffed responses; they harden our hearts from feasting gratefully and joyfully with God.  

This morning God is inviting you and me again through Jesus’ parable to his bountiful and joyful feast. And as we listened to Jesus, did we not hear his teaching about the right dress code to wear to this celebration? If your answer, like mine is, ‘yes,’ then, how right and good it is that we come to this table of plenty with our longing and our poverty. These cloak us in our nakedness. This is attire good enough for God. And yes, no other dress code is needed. 

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: from the Internet (justshirtsoflondon.co.uk)