In our
Genesis reading Adam and Eve were decisively EXCLUDED from the Garden of Eden. In
Jesus’ parable, the good and the bad, the throng on the town streets, were ALL
just as decisively INCLUDED in the King’s invitation to the wedding banquet.
Adam and Eve
disobeyed God’s command and tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. Their eyes were opened, their innocence destroyed, and the freedom
to choose became an awesome responsibility, a terrible burden and a dangerous
liability.
In that first
bite, in their surrender to the lies of the serpent, Adam and Eve denied God’s
truth (‘did God really say?’); denied God’s goodness (‘when you eat, your eyes
will be opened’) and denied God’s otherness (‘when you eat, you will be like
God’.)
They set
themselves up as the centre of their universe, the sole arbiters of truth,
goodness and godliness. In so doing, they excluded themselves from the
privileged relationship of intimacy that they had enjoyed with their Creator.
Exclusion and
judgement followed.
NEVERTHELESS
The Creator’s
desire to draw people back into the Garden of Eden, into intimate relationship
with himself, is evident in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet.
In this
parable, God’s invitation to sit at table at his Son’s wedding feast is
rejected by those who saw themselves as God’s favoured few and goes out to all
and sundry. INCLUSION and salvation are offered to all, the good and the bad. Simple
acceptance of the invitation is all that is required, although, interestingly,
those who try to come in by the back door on terms of their own are summarily
ejected.
INCLUSION and
EXCLUSION, salvation and judgement, are both central to the nature and purpose
of God.
God’s holiness is an exclusive holiness that
necessarily banishes all that is not godly; God’s love is an inclusive love that seeks to embrace the whole of his
creation. Only God can draw the line that determines what and who is IN (and) what
and who is OUT.
INCLUSION and
EXCLUSION, salvation and judgement, are also both central to our activity as
human beings. We are stewards of the creation and of the Gospel, beings made in
the image of God, descendants of Adam and inheritors of the freedom to choose.
So we too have to make judgements and proclaim God’s salvation.
Woe betide us
if we fall into the same temptation as Adam and make ourselves the arbiters of what
is good and true. That is God’s sole prerogative and we should not be too hasty
in our assumptions about who will sit at table in God’s heavenly banquet.
As we
exercise our stewardship of the Gospel, we should be cautious in passing
judgement and generous in proclaiming salvation.
We should
seek to cultivate integrity of intellect, as we seek to discover God’s truth; obedience
of heart, as we allow ourselves to be shaped by that truth; humility of spirit,
as we engage with other seekers of truth; and awareness of our imperfect
apprehension of God’s truth as we enter into debate about how to apply that
truth to the issues that confront us as individuals, as community, as church
and as nation.
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