Today's readings: Isaiah 25, 6-10; Philippians 4, 12-14. 19-20; Matthew 22, 1-14.
Christianity is good news. The dimension of future fulfillment remains fundamental to understand how the Gospel's message becomes good news. We call it the eschatological perspective, that aspect of Christian theology dealing with the 'end things', especially the ideas of resurrection, heaven, hell, and eternal life. Without eschatology, Christianity lends itself to other versions than that of Jesus. The hope of Christianity can thus so easily be distorted, reducing itself to politics and becoming merely part of the human struggle devoid of the divine element.
Reading Matthew's parables in our times demands that we go through a process of unlearning. In our interpretation of the Gospel we've been brought up to put the Church as the centre of everything. We've substituted the substance with the form. In reality, it is the kingdom of God which lies at the centre as the sure point of reference which maintains the right order of things. The Church is the sign and instrument, not the destination. The destination remains God's kingdom.
The final banquet in today's parable and in Isaiah's vision in the first reading is a messianic symbol of all this. It is a banquet for all peoples on the mountain of the Lord, or, as in the Gospel, a banquet which gathers at table all those found at the crossroads in the town. There are different cultures and religions in the world. But the journey towards the destination is, in spite of the different forms, common to all. The great divide is not the one that has dominated our frame of mind, that between Christians and non-Christians, but rather between those who journey and those who do not.
In today's parable of the wedding feast, Matthew speaks of three major events that marked Christianity's origins: the Gospel's mixed reception of within Israel, the fall of Jerusalem, and the inclusion of marginal people in God's kingdom. He inserts all this in the series of parables that he then contextualises in a sequence of controversies between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees. Immediately prior to this text, Jesus already indicated tax collectors and prostitutes as being on a fast track towards the kingdom. Now he includes all those at the town's crossroads.
This marks a very important and radical shift from Judaism. It underlines the break between what was before and what Jesus proclaimed. It is an axis displacement which unveils who is really at the centre and the borderlines of the kingdom.
The concluding words of today's Gospel that "many are called, but few are chosen", have always been interpreted in terms of a God who is choosy to the point of sounding arbitrary and even at times unfair. But the point made here is that, many a time, we make our choices in life. And in the way we choose to live, many continue to miss the point, to be alienated, to proceed 'business as usual' even while still claiming to be believers. This is what the parable is all about. Probably many of us still need to come to terms with what makes one a believer. God cannot be just a stopgap in life.
The Eucharist, which is what the banquet or wedding feast in today's readings are referring to, is the symbol of what is to come. But in our liturgies we seem to have lost this future connection and, as a consequence, we also lose connection with life. It explains, as in today's parable, why people just substitute the liturgy with what seems to be more urgent or, still worse, with what appears to make more sense.