Imagine, if you will, looking upon a married couple whose child has just died. To lose a child, they say, is one of the hardest things a human being can suffer, so your sympathy naturally goes out to the couple. You feel regret for their loss, a sympathy for their grief. But your sympathy is not the same as their grief: you can feel for them, but not entirely with them, for their loss is uniquely their own.
“Tell those who have been invited: ‘Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’”
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I don’t suppose I will be going out too far on a limb when I guess that for many of you our Gospel passage is your favorite Bible story. “Yes, Matthew, my mother used to tell me this story of the king killing the people and sacking their cities when I was a small child.” Or, “yes, Fr. Larsen, I too, like the king in the parable, have a highly developed sense of haberdashery and fashion propriety. Many times have I wanted to throw someone out of my party for improper attire. The courage of the king to do just that! Wow!”
On my first Holy Week as an Episcopalian, I remember coming to that somber moment when we chant Psalm 22. We used the Coverdale Version, which says, “Lord, save us from the unicorns!” This distracted my worship. I giggled as I thought to myself, “Check! God already addressed that request already—by not making them!”
Do you believe in unicorns? In griffins? How about in angels?
Up the hill at Yale Divinity School, there is a framed drawing hanging outside the dean’s office of the Rev. Scot Sloan from Garry Trudeau’s well-known Doonesbury cartoon. Sloan was, of course, based on William Sloan Coffin, the fiery outspoken university chaplain of the 1960s and 70s, and in this drawing he is shown walking outside the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle.
Scrawled across the drawing of Sloan, in William Coffin’s own handwriting, are the words, “Lots of hope! – Bill”