Today’s parable is one of those that makes most of us cringe when we respond as a community: “praise to you, Lord Christ.”
And I get it…there is certainly a lot of violence in this parable…and the final image of a guest being thrown out into outer darkness…because they weren’t wearing the right clothes…is a bit harsh.
And if that wasn’t enough, Jesus seems to pour salt on the wound with his closing line: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
I think most people walk away from this parable feeling more threatened than loved. And there is good reason for that…Jesus is in fact issuing some strong warnings of impending trouble with this parable. But, we should ask, who is Jesus warning?
Whenever we read scripture it is always important to read it in context. If you separate any passage of scripture from what comes before it and what comes after it, then you can easily make the Bible say whatever you want it to say.
But if we want to actually understand what God is saying through scripture (rather than what we want to use scripture to say for ourselves) then we must place it in its wider literary context.
This parable comes in the 22nd chapter of Matthew. And at this point of the story Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem. And he is teaching in the Temple.
Jerusalem is of course the political and religious capital of Israel. And the Temple is the central hub of that political & religious authority.
The Temple, in a 1st Century Jewish worldview, was God’s House, God’s Court, and God’s Throne. The Temple is where all religious authority, which essentially was political authority at that time and culture, comes from and is based upon.
And in Jesus’ day, Jersualem…the city where God’s Temple was…was occupied by Rome.
Rome…with its worship of the Emperor as God, its systems of taxation, its pursuit of peace through violence…had come to make an alliance with the religious and political authorities of the Temple.
And people knew it.
While the Temple still of course honored YHWH, the God who had delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt; those who were leaders in the Temple, the chief priests and the scribes, were often suspect because of their collusion with Roman Imperial power.
This is who Jesus was warning.
Jesus doesn’t tell this parable to the general crowd that follows him around…he isn’t even speaking to his inner circle of disciples.
Jesus is speaking to the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees.
And in the following chapter, chapter 23, he gives a litany of these political and religious authority’s sins:
-they saddle people with too many and too stringent of laws
-they put more emphasis on tithing, paying your Temple taxes, than they do on justice, mercy, and faith.
-they make the money and gifts offered at the Temple more important than the Temple itself
-they pay lip service to the prophets of the past, while killing the prophets in their midst.
In this litany of sins, Jesus is calling out the religious and political leaders of his day for creating a system of oppression and violence.
This is of course, not a Jewish problem…
Christian religious and political authorities throughout the centuries have also created systems of oppression and violence. One example being the Doctrine of Discovery which we’ll be talking about during Zoom Coffee Hour.
But this continues today, with “Christian” leaders creating and perpetuating unjust systems of violence and oppression
Perhaps the addition of the wedding guest wearing the wrong clothes
is in fact a reminder to the early church that they are prone to the same sins as the religious-political elite of Jesus’ day.
So in confronting a political system of violence and oppression, Jesus uses strong language which communicates a warning in dire language.
Language that tries to get the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees to pay attention…to repent and change.
Pay attention to what though?
To pay attention to and say yes to God’s invitation to the wedding feast.
Do you know what a 1st century Jewish wedding feast was like?
It sounds like it was amazing!!
It would be a weeklong, village wide, holiday & celebration. Everyone would have had a year’s notice, plenty of time to prepare.
The whole village would gather for delicious meals, lots of wine, and lots of dancing. Everyone would be fed for that week. Everyone would have something to rejoice about.
There would also be elaborate and joyful religious ceremonies and rituals…processions through the village, blessings and prayers from family, friends, and religious leaders of the village.
And the wedding feast that Jesus compares God’s Kingdom to is the wedding feast of a King’s Son.
This is the best of the best of wedding feasts!
Don’t let that image get lost, God’s Kingdom is an amazing celebration and holy time of rejoicing.
And everyone is invited.
Those who had already been invited would have been everyone in this king’s city.
And if this king is a metaphor for God, then the city is Jerusalem, and those religious/political elite who Jesus is speaking to.
They are invited to the banquet.
But not only them.
After they have dismissed this invitation, the invitation also goes out to the whole world.
The Greek translated as “main streets” could be translated as “public plazas” or also those points where the city’s roads connect to the country side roads which go everywhere.
To Jesus’ & Matthew’s audience that would have meant the Gentiles…everyone in the world outside of the Jewish faith.
It also would have meant to the morally outcasts…the prostitutes and the tax collectors. Both would have set up shop at the points where the city streets meet the country roads because of that bottleneck.
All of this seems to be made bluntly clear in the text when it says:
They gathered all that they found
the good and the bad.
Everyone is invited to this banquet…to this huge celebration and holy rejoicing.
To God’s Kingdom.
But what about that wedding robe situation? Why is this guest thrown out?
What is this “outer darkness?”
It would take too long to fully answer these questions…but let’s suffice it to say that the elaborate belief in hell which the church has developed over centuries is probably not what Jesus had in mind.
And if you have questions about that, please get in touch with me.
What I have time to say right now is that one commentator helpfully directed my attention to
Colossians 3:12 – 14:
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
It’s not enough to just receive an invitation.
If God’s banquet…God’s extravagant outpouring of love and rejoicing doesn’t change you…doesn’t make you want to live today with a little more compassion, kindness, humility, forgiveness, and love than you did yesterday.
Then it’s like you didn’t even say yes to the invitation.
In partaking in this banquet, eating of the food, drinking the wine, dancing with the community, and saying prayers of blessings and thanksgivings…if this doesn’t change how you live in the world…then what is it for?
Perhaps, we can say that if in witnessing and receiving God’s love you do not grow to mirror that in your own life…then that must be a very dark and painful place to be indeed.
So friends, while this parable’s initial audience may have been one very different than ourselves…
The postscript about the guest & the wedding garment reminds us to ask ourselves:
Have we come to the banquet?
Has the banquet changed our lives?
