October 11, 2026
Pentecost 20 / Proper 23, Year A
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Exodus 32:1-14 ~ Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 ~ Philippians 4:1-9 ~ Matthew 22:1-14
The next time you hear someone talking about the “violent” God of the Old Testament and the “loving” God of the New Testament, I want you to remember these parables we’ve heard over the past couple of weeks from the 21st and 22nd chapters of Matthew. This morning, we get one of Matthew’s favorite refrains about being cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it certainly sounds as if these people are being cast into eternal torment in hell. I don’t know about you, but that seems a bit excessive for someone who didn’t have time to go shopping for proper wedding banquet attire.
The listeners of Matthew’s time would have immediately understood the “robe” this person was supposed to be wearing to be the baptismal garment. If you are invited to this banquet, you had better be all in, because this young community of Jesus followers is not going to survive if it’s filled with those who take it lightly or casually or don’t care enough to show up ready and equipped to walk the path that Jesus walked, even if it means all the way to the cross. The way to be fully part of the community was through baptism. Many may be called, but how many are ready to go all in, to suffer persecution and ridicule and maybe even death? That would be the “few” Jesus refers to.
Another way of reading this would be to remember that the divisions in the Jewish community between the followers of Moses and the followers of Jesus meant that people were being cast out of their communities. Like an Amish shunning, you would lose your connections, your friends, your family. To lose those kinship ties could be a fate worse than death. And baptism meant that, while you were part of a new community, you were rejected from your old one.
Later this morning, we will be dedicating a Witness Stone for Thomas Sobuck, a member of the Nehantic Native Nation who was indentured to a founding member of this congregation. You will hear more about Thomas later. What is striking to me is the way the early settlers of this country looked at indigenous people as if they showed up without the “right” wedding garment. They weren’t like “us,” didn’t look like us or talk like us or establish communities the same way we did. And we cast them out.
The Nehantic peoples had dwindled in number by the middle of the 19th century, and that provided a great opportunity for local officials to simply declare them “extinct” and take their land.[1] 4,000 years of history were simply washed away until about 40 years ago when this history began to be uncovered, surviving members of the tribe were identified, and a new, if far-flung Nehantic Nation, was reestablished.
In those years of exile from their land, I imagine there was plenty of weeping and teeth-gnashing. To be separated from your people and your land through no fault of your own must have felt like wandering in the wilderness for decades. For a child or young man like Thomas Sobuck, to be detached from his community was to be unmoored from his very identity. Whatever the reasons for his indenture, whether compassionate or done out of greed, Thomas was not with the people who knew who he was, who spoke his language and understood his culture.
Placing a stone will not undo the wrongs of the past, but it is a way to acknowledge our own history and seek to make amends for the actions of our ancestors.
So, what are we to do with this angry God who wants to smite down the Israelites for creating an idol and to separate the unbaptized from the rest of the community, casting them into darkness? I don’t really have an answer to that. I don’t believe that God wills our suffering, but I also know that when we neglect those behaviors that build up the community of the baptized, that strengthen our faith and our common life, we detach ourselves from the grace and mercy that is freely ours. When we have more important things to do, we may well find ourselves on the outside looking in. When we are tempted to create idols that craft a god in our own image, we are headed for trouble of our own making. When we worship a savior who was publicly executed and then turn around and cheer a public execution, we have most certainly lost our way.
On the other hand, when we show up and actively nurture our faith in community, not only will there be no outer darkness, there will be rejoicing. When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, he was in prison, and yet he could write, “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). If we “Keep on doing the things that (we) have learned and received and heard and seen in (Paul)…the God of peace will be with (us)” (4:9).
Friends, surely that’s a party worth dropping everything for.
[1] https://lymeline.com/2026/10/lyme-anthropologist-works-to-bring-nehantic-story-to-new-and-old-audiences/