& when you get damned in the popular opinion
it's just another damn of the damns not given A sermon on the parable of the irrepressible wedding banquet : This is one of those parables that make us blush. Isn’t it? If last week’s parable hit too close to home, this one strikes too far afield. As far as the likes of us are concerned, this parable has a number of strikes against it. First, there’s the fact this parable compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who’s all too willing to raze a city and even toss out a poor guest just for wearing the wrong duds! But that’s not the real problem we have with this parable. Is it? No, the real problem with this parable is that it dares to depict the kingdom of heaven as infringing upon our own present one! If the kingdom of heaven has any place in our daily affairs, it’s mainly in the background . The kingdom of heaven is something that’s distant . Distant in both time and space. As Jesus would tell it, though, the kingdom of heaven is not so far off. W...