Proper 23A 15 October 2023

 

Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

 

The series Yellowstone on the Peacock network is a parable about family idolatry. Set among the majesty of the landscape of Montana and portraying the pastoral life as a paradigm of human society, the story centers on John Dutton. He’s the seventh generation of white Americans to live on his ranch in the aptly named Paradise Valley. John, played by Kevin Costner, is no saint. But he’s something of a god.

Dutton has four children—including three natural children and one adopted son, whose identity doesn’t arise until season four. All of his children are devoted to him, and he loses his much beloved eldest son in the opening sequence of the series.

I’m writing about the series today because I’m fascinated not so much by the central character but by how those in his orbit work out their relationships and devotion to him—mostly through brutality.

For the eldest son Lee, who we don’t see much of, following his father is a natural act that springs from his privileged position in the family. Like the patriarch Abraham and his descendants, following his father is an act of deep and sincere love, where the sacrifice of a son seems like an entirely logical response. Lee loves because he is loved, and the brutality of the pastoral life of the increasingly regulated range don’t require as much theology as loyalty.

The second son Jamie is adopted. He was rescued by John Dutton and his wife Evelyn after his own mother was killed by her drug-crazed husband. Jamie doesn’t know until his forties that he’s adopted, but he knows his father prefers the older son, and his life is lived trying to earn the love his father can never seem to offer him.

The third child is Beth, whose mother blamed her for causing her death. Beth adores her father to the extreme, and destroys companies and people and communities in the defense of the ranch that her father has sacrificed so much for. Beth is clearly one of the most evil characters I’ve ever seen on television—not so much for the brutality of her actions but for the unbound devotion to her father that gives rise to her own humiliation and destruction. Her love is reserved only for her father, her father’s ranch hand and her younger brother. The pivot point of her vitriol is the adopted brother Jamie.

The youngest son is Kayce, the Benjamin—the beloved. A war veteran, he’s married to a Native American woman and lives his life on the margin between the Native American community and his white family.

 

What does this dysfunctional, savage, insatiable family have to do with our readings today? What possible link to the stories of Moses and the King’s Banquet can we find in this Western parable?

 

In Jesus’ parable, a despotic king has invited guests to the wedding banquet of his son, only to be spurned by his friends and court. Even his relatives refuse to come. He finally impels the rest of the town to come—and then burns down the whole city when one of the guests shows up dressed inappropriately. Please tell me this guy is not a model for the Lord God Almighty!

 

But apparently he is.

 

And it might beg the question—why would I want to worship a god with such a short fuse?

 

The Israelites in the desert might ask the same question.

 

But I want to ask the question a different way.

 

What was that one wedding guest doing wrong?

 

Parables—whether they are set in urban Jerusalem, or the Sinai desert or the Paradise Valley of Montana, are not meant to give us concrete answers to philosophical questions. They are meant to make us grapple with our own internal lives. They’re not very good at answering questions, but rather provoking them.

 

One recent thought that came to me in grappling with the Banquet story is that the guest showed up for a party, perhaps even honored to be there. But I wonder if that wedding garment might be something else in disguise.

 

We tend to think that showing up and participating—in church, in families, in work situations—is the base requirement, the ticket in the door. But the Hebrew children spending the night in the desert while Moses went up the hill showed up! They actually sacrificed their gold to create an object of beauty and then celebrated a feast unto the Lord!

 

In Yellowstone, John Dutton ostracizes his daughter from the family because she had gotten an environmental activist sentenced to prison for having attacked the ranching way of life. She had mistaken her love for her father as a license to destroy the innocent.

 

Maybe that wedding garment was the garment of love. Maybe what he was missing was joy and love. Maybe he had not taken off his own garment, his self-centered mind, and what he needed was a garment of joy. Maybe the Hebrew children had gotten impatient and in their haste, had lost track of their love for the God of Moses.

 

Maybe the garment was that of forgiveness. Maybe the guest was too self-congratulatory to think about how he needed to change. Maybe he forgot that the invitation required new garments.

 

When we’re baptized, they dress us in new white robes to signify our entrance into the family of God, and in Revelation we see the celestial hosts enrobed in white sitting around the throne of the Lamb.

 

It’s part of all three of these stories that the love we seek, the acceptance and security we need, require very little in return other than love itself. Our attempts to deserve God’s love can spiral dangerously out of control, and end in rejection and tragedy.

 

What God requires of us is so simple. Love God. Reverence his Creation. Participate in his joy.