The Cross: Unrequited Love

Matthew 22: 1-14

“He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who recieved him, he gave the right to become children of God...” (John 1:12). Most people have at one time or another experienced the humiliation of rejection. It hurts sharply when someone we deeply admire, into whose embrace we long to be drawn or on behalf of whom we give ourselves fails to respond lovingly. Shakespeare called it unrequited love.

As a consequence of his sin, man lost his relationship with God at Eden. Throughout the ages, God makes many attempts to restore that relationship. For me the writer of Chronicles makes the most poignant summary of it and the end-thereof. “The Lord sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of God was aroused against his people and there was no remedy…” 2Chronicles 36: 15-16. When God has tried everything till he says there is no remedy, things are thick. For Israel, the consequence was that Jerusalem was destroyed and the chosen people were taken to exile, and their city was never fully restored to it's former glory.

Jesus faces the issue of his rejection by his people. Earlier, he compares God’s chosen people to the vineyard that has yielded only sour grapes after it has been tended so carefully. In today’s passage, God is the king who has slaughtered his finest oxen and laid out an extravagant feast. But those who have been invited to share in his bounty snub him; they also kill his messengers, a sign not just of rejection but serious hostility towards God’s love. Sometimes the people we love most are the ones who hurt us most. The metaphor of the vineyard and the great feast are to indicate that God has given his very best. Alas, even food and wine which always bring people together in merriment have lost their ability to draw people together in community. What is God to do?

Well, there is a logical consequence to rejecting God’s love. It is the choice of a tragic end—death. In this passage the enraged King sent his army to destroy those that snubbed his feast and killed his messengers. Thus as Paul says, the cross is the fragrance of life to the ones who accept to come to God’s extravagant feast and the fragrance of death to those that snub the invitation (2Cor 2:15, 16). The same cross that will save some will also condemn others. “We preach Christ the crucified, a stumbling block to one and foolishness to the other...to those whom God has called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1Cor 1:23-25)"

The cross is both the consequence of and the answer to God’s unrequited love. Man says, “We don’t want you here” and goes ahead and makes a painful public spectacle of him on the cross. Jesus takes this demeaning action, spreads out his hands and says ‘I love you this much. Come into my embrace. And then he dies, for “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13).

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