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“A second time the king sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’ Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.” (Matthew 22.4-7)

Back in the day before cell phones, when people had to use public phone booths to call a person, a clever entrepreneur came up with something called “The Excuse Booth.” While it looked like an ordinary pay phone, it provided more than just a telephone, the booth also having a comfortable chair and–more importantly–having background sound effects that would mislead the listener on the other end of the call into believing the caller was somewhere other than where he was.

Not coincidentally, these excuse booths were designed to be used by men, with the background sounds, selected by turning a switch, replicating the noise of an airport, or a copier machine, or a busy highway, to name a few of the options intended to mislead the listener who received the call. And where better to have these excuse booths than in bars and in strip clubs, since these were places where men were most likely to need an excuse to give to a wife, or a girlfriend, or even a friend.

One frequent user of the excuse booth explained that it helped him juggle his many relationships. “With these kinds of phone booths,” he said, “you can convince anyone anywhere you’re somewhere where you really aren’t.” He used the booth to break dates, finding it very convenient, because, as he said, his “date didn’t question because she could clearly hear the planes being announced in the background.”

Although this technology may have made excuses easier to fabricate, people have used excuses for as long as men and women could speak, using them to shift blame, to justify actions, or to defend decisions. Already in the Book of Genesis, the very first text of the Hebrew Scriptures, we find the first man and woman making excuses for disobeying the Lord God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Finding the pair cowering in the bushes after the deed, the Lord God asks Adam if he has eaten from the tree that was forbidden. With no second thought, Adam makes up an excuse, “The woman whom you put here with me–she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it,” his excuse becoming the first of many in the Bible. The second follows seconds later when the Lord God asks Eve, “What is this you have done?” She also has an excuse ready, just as her husband did, saying, “The snake tricked me, so I ate it.”

With humanity’s long-standing penchant and proclivity for excuses, then it is no surprise to find similar instances of excuse-giving in the sacred texts, as we do today, in the story the Galilean Teacher tells the chief priests and the elders in Jerusalem, a story directed at them as he strips them of their excuses and lays bare their departure from the ways of the Most High God.

Following after two other stories similar in tone and message that he has addressed to the same group of religious leaders, the setting of this story is a wedding banquet, a motif frequently used to refer to a special relationship with God, this banquet offered by a king in honor of his son, with many invitations issued far and wide, the king hopeful and expectant of guests joining him for this special event.

Told by Matthew, whose version we have today, and by Luke, whose version differs slightly, we find both evangelists describing the guests’ refusal to respond to the king’s invitation, Matthew saying “some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,” while Luke says “they all alike began to make excuses,” providing the listeners with a list of every day excuses we’ve all heard and–just as likely–all used.

As the Teacher continues with his story, the king tries again, but meets with the same excuses, enraging him and prompting him to say, “The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come,” commanding his servants now to “go out into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.” With this wide sweep, the hall is filled with guests, while the earlier ones who had refused, offering every excuse in the book, find themselves in a city burned to the ground.

As with the previous two stories in this sequence that the Rabbi told to the chief priests and to the elders, this story condemns them for their recalcitrance and refusal to abide by the wishes of the Most High God, for their choosing a path contrary to the commandments and covering their hardness of heart with decorated robes and long sashes. They are, as he makes clear as day, the guests who, when invited to the banquet, go about their business, ignoring the invitation.

Writing as he does after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., Matthew’s rendition of the story extends the inclusion of the other guests who are more amenable to the invitation beyond the tax-collectors and sinners that the Rabbi originally intended, moving the guest list now to include the Gentiles and pagans, these groups showing themselves to be more open to the way of the Divine One than the Pharisees and the people of Judea.  

As we listen and lest we become over-confident, we should not think ourselves necessarily in the coterie of welcomed late-comers simply by right of our membership in the non-Jewish crowd, an assumption that overlooks the decision to attend the banquet made by those late invited to it. As the story makes clear, it is the decision to attend that renders the second group worthy, not a religious affiliation, the story emphasizing that the invitation now goes to “whomever the servants find on the main roads.”

These many years since the telling of the story of the wedding banquet, the situation remains much the same as it did, an invitation to participate in God’s life still open to whomever, but, as the Galilean Rabbi said when concluding the story, “Many are invited, but few are chosen,” a reminder to later listeners that the decision not to attend is still made by many others, ourselves perhaps included, offering excuse after excuse for our not wanting to be a part of God’s life.

When confronted by an honest self-examination of our failures to live as God would have us live, our excuses fall easily from our lips, passing the blame onto others or other causes, hoping to present ourselves as blameless or, at least, not wholly responsible for our decisions, much like the main character, Pierre, in Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace, who, when forced to face himself and to make an honest assessment of his life, says, “Yes, Lord, I have sinned, but I have several excellent excuses.”

Similar to Pierre, we have several, if not more, excellent excuses for not feeding the hungry, for not clothing the naked, for not sheltering the homeless, any, if not all, our excuses plausible and believable, allowing us to go about our own business, while ignoring the business of the Most High God, who continues to call us to join him in the remaking of the world.

Were our own inclination to excuse our failures to participate in God’s work not sufficient in itself, we find ourselves living in a world where excuses are the coin of the realm, where every irresponsibility is excused, every selfish action explained, and near every failure expunged from our conscience. Surrounded as we are in a culture that excels at excuses, we find it second-nature to excuse ourselves from the heavy lifting of discipleship.

Back when Ann Landers was still providing advice to Americans, she once shared a list of excuses that a teacher in a school had received from the parents of students. Wanting to provide a dose of humor with the improbability of excuses offered, the list also showed the absurdity of excuses others are willing to give when asked to explain an action.

Among others that she offered, three give us enough evidence. For example: “Dear Mr. Thomas, Jennifer missed school yesterday for a good reason. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.” Or, “Dear School: I hope you excuse John for being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33.” Or, “Dear Miss Larson: Jack didn’t go to school yesterday because he had two teeth taken out of his face.”

While we may find some humor in the excuses other people offer for particular actions, we see that the king in the story told by Rabbi Jesus did not find any humor in the excuses his guests offered to him, faulting them for failing to show him honor, calling them unworthy of his company. In other words, he didn’t buy the excuses.

Near the end of Matthew’s gospel, as the Galilean Teacher nears the end of his life, we will see the Teacher tell another story where people have failed the Most High God and where their excuses again carry no weight with him. Called the separation of the sheep from the goats, the story focuses on the last judgment

As those who have not followed the way of God are brought before him and accused by him of their failures, they must stand and listen to the charges against them: “For I was hungry, and you gave me no food, I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.”

Those charged with these failures, always ready with the excuses, answer back, “But when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or ill or in prison and not minister to your needs,” with these words seeking to excuse themselves for their failures by claiming not to have seen any of these opportunities to join with God in his work. That story, as with this story of the wedding guests, does not end well for the folks with the excuses, a lesson to be learned by later listeners.

Back in June of 1990, on a Thursday afternoon, a woman jumped off the Washington Street Bridge into the Chicago River. As the news account of the story noted, there were five people nearby–four men in business suits and a 24-year-old woman named Heidi Ronnegren, who worked as a manager of a local gift shop. 

Heidi, seeing the tragedy unfold, said aloud, “Someone better go in and save her.” One of the guys in the business suits said, “I have an appointment. I can’t get my suit wet.” Hearing his excuse, Heidi simply answered, “I’m a good swimmer.” She went down the steps and jumped into the river.

For the next five minutes, Heidi worked to keep the woman afloat in the chilly water, a crowd gathering on the bridge, watching Heidi single-handedly save the woman. Then someone tossed down a life ring, which allowed Heidi to tow the woman to the river’s edge.

Firefighters arrived on the scene and pulled the woman from the water, prompting the crowd on the bridge to break into applause. Heidi, for her part, was hesitant to go ashore. As she said, “I was wearing a white linen dress and the water made it completely see-through. I didn’t want to give them a show.” 

Hearing that story, we can conclude a few things. Heidi may not have wanted to give them a show, but, in her selfless efforts to save the drowning woman, she showed what a RSVP to the wedding banquet looks like. Meanwhile, the guy in the suit who refused to help, excusing himself because he didn’t want to get his clothes wet, shows what a refusal to go to the wedding banquet looks like. 

Excuses, then as now, never look pretty, even when dressed up in a suit.

Jeremy Myers