17th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 23A --The Runaway Bunny edition

17th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 23A
October 9, 2011
Our readings this morning are just chock-full of parties! There’s the party that Aaron and the children of Israel throw while Moses is on sabbatical that results in the construction of the golden calf and Yahweh’s wrath burning hotly against the people. And there’s the wedding banquet that is thrown by the king in honor of his son’s wedding which results in the murder of the kings slaves and the first round of wedding guests and then also results in one of the second string guests getting cast into the outer darkness.
Now, we’re Episcopalians, and we all love a good party. So, my question for you today is who wants to come to this party?
What is the good news in this parable of judgment? A king is determined to throw a party—a wedding banquet for his son. So he makes out a guest list of all the nobles in the land, and when he sends his servants with the invitation, the would-be guests refuse to come, even going so far as to kill the servants. The king acts and wipes them all out, but he is still determined to give this party. So he tells his servants to go gather up everyone, the good and the bad, and invite them to the party. Now these folks he’s inviting, literally gathering up off the streets, do not have appropriate attire so custom dictates that the king provide them with wedding garments that are fitting for the occasion. Everything is going along well, until the king sees one wedding guest who has accepted the invitation but who is unwilling to dress the part (and who won’t even answer the king when he asks him why), so the king has the guest thrown out of the party into the outer darkness.
So, who wants to come to this party?
In her sermon, "Wedding Dress" from the book Home by Another Way, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this party. I’ve changed her language slightly to make it more appropriate for this place, this party at which we find ourselves today.
“Everyone in Harrison County was invited to be here this morning, but as you can see, some of them had other things to do. Some are on the golf course and some are at work. It just so happens that, for our own good and bad reasons, this is the invitation we decided to accept this morning. But like the underdressed guest, some of us have rolled in here without thinking much about it. We have showed up with our spiritual shirttails hanging out, lining up at the buffet as if no one could see the ways in which we too have refused to change - refusing to surrender our fears and resentments, refusing to share our wealth, refusing to respect the dignity of every human being. These are the old clothes we wear to the king's banquet - the clothes we prefer to the wedding robe of new life.”
So, who really wants to come to this party?
I used to think that our relationship with God is like the children’s book—The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. There’s this little boy bunny who wakes up one day and arbitrarily tells his mother that he is going to run away; she tells him that she will chase after him, and so he constructs more and more elaborate disguises in an attempt to get away from her, but every time he changes, she changes into something so she can follow him. “I will become a sailboat to sail away from you,” he says, and she responds, “If you become a sailboat and sail away from me, ….I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.” Until finally, the mother’s love is so persistent that the little bunny decides to give up and stay at home with his mother. (And she gives him a carrot.)
Our Eucharistic Prayer C (that we will pray together in just a few minutes) says it this way: “From the primal elements you (God) brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another. [Now here’s the runaway bunny part.] Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.”
It is saying that ultimately, God wins; love wins. And do get me wrong, I still believe that with all my heart. But while I used to be more focused on the ending, how God’s love always wins, now, I’m more interested in the running away-- why we do it and what it does to us. It’s the same reason someone would accept an invitation to a wedding banquet, but not be willing to wear the appropriate garb. Because these days I see, day after day, this running away, in my own life and in your lives too. I see this refusal to put on the wedding garment, which is obedience to God, because our own holey-worn-out clothes of our own wills and desires and priorities are just much more comfortable. It is so much easier and more comfortable to worship a god of our own creating that to worship the living God who holds us accountable for our refusal to give and receive grace.
Gregory of Nyssa, one of the church fathers, says, “Sin happens when we refuse to grow,” and we can spend so much of our energy in running away from God, in refusing to grow, that we make our own lives and the lives of those around us a hell on this earth, a hell of our own choosing.
So, who really wants to come to this party? God’s invitation is there, waiting for us to accept it. But once we get here, we must decide if we are willing to clothe ourselves in the wedding garments, if we are truly ready to put on our party clothes. Another question you might ask yourself this morning besides the one, ‘Do I really want to come this party?” is “what am I clothing myself in these days?” or “How am I allowing God to garb me?”
For the apostle Paul, we are called to put on the garments of rejoicing, of gentleness, of getting along with one another, of prayer and supplication, of the peace of God. We are called to put on the garments of truth, honor, justice, purity, excellence . And we are called to put on the fullness of Christ himself, who has taught us how to be in this world.
The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich says it this way: “Our good Lord is our clothing that for love wraps us up and winds us about, embracing us, beclosing and hanging about us, for tender love.”
So, who really wants to come to this party?

Here's a link to the readings for this Sunday.
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp23_RCL.html