Trinity XVII Sermon 2026

The Scriptures give us many metaphors. Now, a metaphor is a figure of speech. We say that one thing is another thing, even though the two things are different. Juliet is the sun, Shakespeare says. Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson writes. I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire, Johnny Cash sings. None of these statements are true, not literally. And yet, each one of them expresses a truth that, if described in a different way, if stripped if its symbolic character, would convey something else entirely. The relationship between metaphor and truth is not like a nut that falls from the tree. With the nut, you take it and you discard the shell—the figure of speech—in order to taste the flesh inside—the real meaning of the figure of speech. That’s not how this metaphor business is supposed to work. Instead, the metaphor as a whole gives us something to think with. Why is Juliet the sun? How is hope a thing with feathers? Why does falling in love burn, burn, burn? The fact that these metaphors stick with us—they stay in our memories, they occur to us in moments when we least expect—is evidence enough that we live in an ordered universe. All of reality is symbolic. This world that God created is entirely intertwined. And so, we live with metaphors. We think with them. And they give us understanding as we think with and through them.

In today’s Gospel, we encounter one of the central metaphors of the Scriptures. It is this: the relationship between God and his people is a marriage. This metaphor is the key to understanding today’s Gospel. If you miss this, then you’ll miss the whole thing. And, in particular the metaphor that we should keep in mind is the metaphor of the marriage feast. It does not originate in the Luke 14, which our Gospel lesson is taken from. It is a thread of meaning that goes back to the beginning of the Scriptures.

The first thing that we should make note of is that marriage is the foundational institution of human life. God makes man out of the dust of the ground. And, as Genesis 2 tells us, God makes the woman from the man and brings her to him, declaring that the “two shall become one flesh.” Marriage is a unity that arises out of two separated things. It is a total relationship that involves the whole human person. And out of it, the people and nations of the earth are born. The Scriptural narrative is very attentive to marriages: the marriage of Abraham and Sarah; the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah; the marriage of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel; the marriage of Ruth and Boaz. The Torah so prizes the institution of marriage that it exempts a newly married man from military service for a year so he can “bring happiness to his wife” (Deuteronomy 24:5). The wisdom literature teaches us that “he who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). The prophet Malachi says that God is a witness to marriages and will judge a man who has “dealt treacherously” with the wife of his youth (Malachi 2:14).

Marriage ceremonies are praised in the Scriptures. If you think that the ideal wedding is one that is done in secret, away from friends and family without all the fuss of a social event, you haven’t been reading your bible. One of the most joyful songs in all of the Psalter is the 45th psalm, which begins, “My heart overfloweth with a good matter; I speak the things which I have made concerning the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men; full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever” (1-2). The matrimony of the daughter of the king is a glorious occasion. “Kings' daughters are among thy honourable women; upon thy right hand doth stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours. Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house” (9-10). In marriage, the woman leaves her household and cleaves to her husband. Both leave a reality that they once knew—a way of relating to one another and their families—and they embark on a new reality together. “Instead of thy fathers, thou shalt have children” (16).

This praise of the civil institution of marriage, which is most glorious when it is entered into among royal households but which is a joyful institution shared by all people regardless of their station in life, is referenced by the prophets, particularly by the prophet Isaiah. He tells Judah that “your Maker is your husband” (54:5) and he promised that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (62:4-5). Jeremiah says that Israel was once devoted to God “as a bride.” And Ezekiel condemns the Israelites for having become unfaithful to their spouse, which is God himself (Ezekiel 16). The prophet Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute is a story told in the Scriptures for the purpose of dramatizing the relationship between God and his people. The unfaithfulness of God’s people—their disregard for his law, their worship of other gods, their spiritual lethargy and moral failures—is the unfaithfulness of a bride who will not love her husband. But the remarkable thing about the story of Hosea and his wife, Gomer, is that its tragedy and failure stands as an occasion for the Lord to make the promise his people that he will put all of this behind them. Their story will not end in failure: “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (2:19-20).

This promise of a future betrothal is expressed in the prophet Isaiah in this image of the feast that will occur on the mountain of the Lord:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
    a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
    of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

And he will swallow up on this mountain
    the covering that is cast over all peoples,
    the veil that is spread over all nations.

    He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
    and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
    for the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 25:6-8)

Isaiah makes this plain: In the Scriptures, a marriage is never just a marriage. And a wedding is never just a wedding. It means so much more. So, we should pay attention when, for example, as St. John the Evangelist tells us, the first miracle that Jesus performed was at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-11). Remember when John the Forerunner’s disciples come to Jesus and ask why his disciples do not fast like they do? Jesus’s answer is that his disciples are like the attendants or the groomsmen at a wedding. They don’t fast because they shouldn’t fast: the bridegroom is with them. They are entering into the feast. John the Baptist confirms this when he calls himself the “friend of the bridegroom” (John 3:29).

In the Scriptures, the feast that God’s people look forward to is always a wedding feast. Jesus says, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (8:11).

We should think with and through this metaphor. Why is the relationship of God with his people a marriage? Why is the fulfillment of this relationship a feast? Let’s think about this for a moment. A marriage is a new beginning. It is the beginning of a new little world, a new set of relationships, a new family, a new creation. Instead of fathers, you will have children. (This metaphor is on the cusp of being lost to us when we treat marriage as somehow divorced from the bearing and raising of children. A marriage is many things but the central vocation of marriage can be stated clearly: it is the institution by which the love between two people overflows into the creation of a new life.)

And the feast? Well, this is straightforward enough on its own: the marriage is to be celebrated because it represents new life. “Behold, I make all things new,” Jesus says in the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Revelation 21:5). The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is not the old marriage of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of Jacob and Rachel and Leah, of David and Bathsheba, of Hosea and Gomer. It is the marriage of Christ and his Church.

And so, as Fr. Glenn would say, with that introduction, we can turn to the text. Why does this section begin with a debate about whether it is appropriate to heal on the Sabbath Day? Because Jesus is correcting his listeners: the Sabbath is about restoration and the fulfillment of creation. Don’t let the ritual laws be misunderstood. That’s what the Sabbath is for.

What does this have to do with a wedding feast? The wedding is where all things are also made new, where the purpose of all things is fulfilled. It is in the marriage of God and his people that grace perfects nature. Just like the man who had the condition of dropsy, God will heal all of us of our sin and our imperfections when this feast is made.

The parable teaches us about how we are to enter into the Kingdom of God. None who are invited into the Kingdom should presume to take the best seats, which is to say that the posture of the Christian is not one of boasting, bragging about one’s own merits as if you’re better than others. The proper posture of the Christian is one of humility.

That is not say that there are not excellent Christians. Of course there are. This is why we tell the stories of the saints and we venerate them. And even some saints who are not well-known, whose stories will never be told in this life—some of them excel in virtue, excel in spiritual growth, excel in prayers. We should strive to follow their examples. We should seek to learn from them.

The problem is not with excellence but with arrogance: those who presume to take the chief seats. We see this attitude most often among those who are “overly complacent” because of their “confidence in their long practice of a moral way of life.” They think of themselves more highly than they ought. And they will soon be forced to give up their seat to another, which is to say, all will be  revealed one day. Those who merely have a reputation for holiness but do not cultivate it sincerely and inwardly will experience shame before those who run the race of the Christian life with devotion and discipline. 

But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room. To the extent that you are great, St. Bede says, humble yourself in all things. The is the means that God gives us for restoration, for being made new. And it is the first stage in a process. It is through humility that we become glorified. This is the pattern laid down by Our Lord Jesus Christ, who endured the sufferings of the cross for the joy that was set before him. As we follow Our Lord in the path of humility, Jesus will walk with us through the trials and temptations and challenges of this life. We look forward to the moment when God will come down to us and say, “Friend, go up higher.”

Jesus leaves us with a spiritual principle gleaned from this parable: “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” In the new world, in the new creation established by the marriage between Christ and his Church, the way that we achieve greatness is by becoming ambitious for humility. And humility is not about running ourselves down and thinking little of ourselves. It is about seeking to realize who we actually are in the eyes of God and being open to what God has for us: being ready to accept God’s own raising us up.