The Marriage Feast

A sermon for the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

In the Gospel read just now, the Lord Jesus Christ compares «the kingdom of heaven to a man, a king, who made a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were bidden to the wedding feast—and they would not come». What heedlessness, what pride, what ingratitude, what insolence! But what condescension and longsuffering on the king’s part! «He again sent other servants, saying: Tell those who were bidden: Here, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fattened cattle are slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast». What, then, did those who were bidden do? How did they answer the kind king’s new invitation? «They, the Gospel tells us, made light of even this, and went off, one to his own field, another to his own trade; the rest, seizing his servants, insulted them and killed them». But now listen to what the king did with these insolent and ungrateful men. Hearing of such outrageous insolence in those bidden to the wedding, «the king was enraged; and, sending out his troops, he destroyed those murderers and burned down their city. Then he says to his servants: the wedding feast is ready, but those who were bidden were not worthy; therefore go out to the crossroads and invite everyone you find to the wedding feast. And those servants went out onto the roads and gathered up everyone they came upon, both evil and good; and the wedding feast was filled with those reclining at table. The king, coming in to look over those reclining at table, saw there a man not dressed in a wedding garment, and says to him: Friend! How did you come in here without a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the servants: Bind his hands and feet, take him away, and throw him into the outer darkness: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there; for many are called, but few are chosen»[1]. Here ends today’s reading from the Gospel.

This account is called a parable, that is, a likeness, or as it were a riddle. It must be solved. Who, then, is this king who prepared the wedding feast for his son? It is God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth and the King of all creation; who is the king’s son? It is the Only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ; and His bride is the Church: first, the Jewish people chosen by God, and second, the soul of every believing Christian; Christ loved the Church, it is said, and gave Himself up for her[2]; the Apostle Paul says: I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you to Christ as a pure virgin[3]. By the wedding feast is meant the heavenly kingdom, in which those who truly believe will be united forever with the Lord Jesus. To this marriage, or into the heavenly kingdom, the Jews were invited first of all, through the prophets and the apostles, but they refused the invitation; more than that, they even insulted God’s messengers and killed many of them. For this, God afterwards destroyed the people by the arms of the Romans and razed their city and temple. In place of the Jews, God called to the marriage, or into His Church, through apostles and those equal to the apostles, the pagan peoples, including us Russians. But even of the Christians from among the pagans, and of the Christian generations that have followed after them, not all will enter the kingdom of Christ. Those of them who do not keep pure the bright wedding garment of innocence and holiness that they received at baptism—or who, after defiling it with sins, do not cleanse it with the tears of repentance—will be cast out at the Dread Judgment into the darkness outside, where there will be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Such is the interpretation of the parable given above! But there can also be another, similar and equally true interpretation, one applied more closely to ourselves, brothers and sisters. The wedding feast of which today’s Gospel speaks is the Divine Liturgy, at which there is set before the faithful not a slain calf, but the Lamb of God Himself, slain in sacrifice for the salvation of us sinners, that we may be nourished with His most pure Body and Blood, that we may be united with Him in the closest union, that we may be flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. This is the marriage of the king’s son—the union of Christian souls with Christ in the Mystery of Communion! This is the feast—the partaking of His flesh and blood! A divine, most holy, incorruptible, heavenly, and deifying feast! But how many hasten to this divine feast even now! Does not the greater part even now absent itself from this heavenly supper out of negligence and laziness and out of various worldly calculations—for instance, because of trade, or out of little faith and haughtiness, or because of long sleep, and the like? Who does not see this, does not notice it, does not know it?

Such is our weak faith, such is our spiritual dullness of mind, such is our attachment to the world, such is our inattentiveness to the greatest Mystery of faith, to the Mystery of immortality and deification! Such is the vanity and ingratitude of Christians toward the Lord, who offers His very Self to us as food and drink for cleansing, sanctification, and immortal life! What do such people deserve? Do they not deserve to be rejected by God—since they themselves rejected Him almost their whole lives? But do even those who come to this marriage feast of the Lamb, to the Divine Liturgy—to commemorate His life, His preaching, His miracles, His acts of kindness, His sufferings, His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension into heaven—or to receive Communion of His all-pure Body and Blood—come in a wedding garment? Do they come with a pure soul, with a pure heart? With heavenly thoughts, with a holy disposition? Is it not with earthly daydreams and passions that many present themselves even in the church, in this bridal chamber, as it were, of Jesus Christ? Do we ourselves, the celebrants of the awesome, heavenly, bloodless Sacrifice, always appear in the church in the wedding garment—purity and dispassion of soul—and serve in it? Alas! Often even we have no wedding garment, no reverent meditations and no thoughts of the heart; and not infrequently we enter clothed in the unclean rags of the passions. O let us all hasten to repent and to whiten the garments of our souls with the tears of repentance and with deeds of righteousness, especially almsgiving, which cleanses from sins. I see Your bridal chamber, my Savior, adorned, and I have no garment in which to enter it; illumine the garment of my soul, O Giver of Light, and save me. Amen.