Matthew 22: 1-14 Wrote:22 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

This is a fairly well-known parable, but certainly not one of the go-to parables everyone thinks they can recite from scratch, like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that it's a parable that unsettles even as it teaches. The imagery used is violent, scary even and it seems, towards the end, that the treatment given to the man without any wedding clothes might be more than a little unfair - even assuming you've understood what's going on in the rest of the parable.

Actually, as Jesus' parables go, this one isn't too difficult to unlock, and nor is it supposed to be. The context, from the previous chapter, is that Jesus is teaching within the confines of the temple courtyard. Here would be a mixed audience of those who had followed him in, those visiting the temple and the temple authorities themselves: priests and teachers of the Torah, many of them Pharisees, the most influential group amongst the religious leaders. As Jesus tells this story, his listeners could be in little doubt about who the king represented - that one is God, of course - and equally little doubt could surround the identity of those originally invited to the king's banquet. The Pharisees must have been livid!

The king's servants, who Jesus accuses the religious leaders of ignoring, mistreating and even murdering, stand for the many Prophets who delivered God's messages of judgment, repentence and also reconciliation to the nations of Israel and Judah. The other guests then, rounded up from the streets, represent everyone else. What a nice affirming story for those who wished to reject the current establishment, eh?

Except that isn't all the story conveys. Firstly, there's the undercurrent of the story, that perhaps the original guests might mean the Jewish people and thus the other guests could only mean the Gentiles, which would have been a scandalous thing for a good Jewish teacher to suggest. But even if that possibility didn't sink in, there's that slightly baffling coda to the story: the guest without wedding clothes and his sudden, harsh treatment.

In ancient Palestine, weddings like this would often provide garments for their guests to wear and, though Jesus doesn't mention it, it seems fair to assume that that is what was going on here. Thus, a guest without wedding clothes is not someone too poor to be properly attired, but someone who has deliberately rejected the offer of suitable garments and thus the hospitality of their host. In the story, it's a rejection of the king, an implicit insult, which rightly leaves the freeloading man speechless when confronted and facing the wrath of that same king. Outside of the parable, this makes the most important point in the story: Jesus is not merely condemning the Pharisees, nor the Jews, for their lack of attention to their God - he's pointing out that everyone can be guilty of this - that God gives us the opoprtunity to enter his kingdom wearing the clothes of righteousness, but that this open invitation is not without the expectation of a loving, respectful response. We are not merely to take advantage of God's great generosity, but to respect it, be grateful for it and, though this is extrapolating beyond the parallels of the parable, to love and worship Him for it.

The Kingdom of God is, ultimately, one of relationship and one where we get in on the basis of the Father's relationship to the Son, whose robes we get to wear. It is only right that we accept that with loving grace and not prioritise other things in our lives (like the original guests), nor turn our nose down at Christ's offer of Grace and think we can get by just fine on our own (like the ungrateful guest). The practice of loving gratitude for all God has done for us and given us is one that will serve us well as we follow Him.