Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
“The wedding is ready”
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” Shakespeare’s famous sonnet begins. “The marriage of true minds” is a wonderful concept. It reminds us that there are different ways of speaking about marriage including metaphorically. Scripture, too, uses the marriage image in different ways that go beyond the literal and institutional. In fact, marriage is frequently used as the image for the union between the grand opposites: between man and God, between heaven and earth.
The Gospel for The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity is a case in point. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, who made a marriage for his son.” The parable is rich in its suggestive power. It points to the union of God and man in Jesus Christ, to the marriage feast of human redemption, as it were. But the parable is also about the impediments, the obstacles, that stand in the way. The wedding is said to be ready but are we? What does it mean to be ready?
This Sunday falls within The Octave of All Saints’. All Saints’, too, is about a kind of marriage, the union of God and man in the Communion of Saints. In a way, the Communion of Saints is a wedding celebration where everyone has on “a wedding garment” for all have been made ready for the marriage feast.