Matthew 22: 1-14
Offered to the First Presbyterian Church of Succasunna, NJ, 2008
Mel Prestamo, Elder, PCUSA
Well, we’ve got a lot on our plate here. We have a Kingdom Parable. It is one in which Jesus begins by saying, “The kingdom of God is like…” A couple of weeks ago, Pastor gave us some insight into kingdom parables. He told us that when Jesus starts teaching with the phrase “…the kingdom of God is like…” that we must carefully consider the whole of the lesson and not rush to extract out elements like how many rooms are there in my Father’s house or where will I be seated … on your right or left hand? You don’t want to be too specific or narrow in your interpretation.
More than that, we have a parable that is in a word – UNCOMFORTABLE – to listen to. Here we see a king angered concerning the treatment of his servants, raising an army, burning homes and destroying cities and killing those who had offended him. It is a very Old Testament, Sodom & Gomorrah like story. Who is this king? Who is this guy and what have you done with my God of love and mercy?
I read one commentary resource that said that most preachers will opt out of using this version of the parable and choose to use a similar text in Luke’s Gospel. That one is a more listener-friendly version with no armies, destruction of homes or wars.
Well, let’s deal with this difficult question right away. Where is Jesus going with this parable? Why is he using all this war like military imagery? Well, the answer may be that Jesus may not have taught this story as one continuous parable. What we have here may actually be two parables. We have one parable in verses 1-6 & 8-10 and a second one in verses 11-14.
How do we know that? Well, when the two are separated, they are very similar to two very well know rabbinical stories of Jesus time. What Jesus does is to change them a bit to suit his own purposes.
The first story is completely in accordance with Jewish custom at the time. When there was a wedding, invitations went out to the invited guests similar to our “Save-The Date” invitations. They were an advanced notification. Except, they didn’t specify the date or the time. All they really said was that you are invited. As an invited guest, you were expected to prepare for the wedding feast and then wait. When everything was finally prepared by the host, then a final summons would go out, and you were expected to be ready and to show up at the feast. So then as this story goes, the original invitation to this wedding had long since gone out and the invited guests knew well in advance that they were invited.
So, what happens in our story when all is prepared, and the final summons goes out? The invited guests make excuses. One had to go to manage his estate. Another went to oversee his business. They make a choice to forgo the “joy” of the wedding feast. Their reasons seemed to them [and perhaps to many of us] to be very earnest and worthwhile reasons. But still their refusal is an insult to the host.
So, what does the king do? He sends his servants out to bring in people from the highways – passers by [if you will] – people who had no expectation whatsoever of receiving an invitation. These are people who perhaps know nothing of this wedding feast or even of who this king is. This is an important distinction. The invited guests expected an invitation. The passers-by had no expectation of receiving an invitation from the king.
But understand this, one way or another, the king will fill the wedding hall with guests and the celebration – this joyous celebration will go on.
Let’s stop for a moment and assess what we have thus far. Now this is the thing, it would be simplistic and shallow of us if we just skimmed the surface meanings of this parable and said, the king represents God, the son at the wedding feast represents the Son, the invited guests who refuse to go to the feast represent the Jews and the people who are brought in from the outside into the wedding feast are – well that would be us – the good Christian faithful.
Yeah, but that would be too easy, and you wouldn’t need me up here to tell you something that obvious.
When Pastor and I discussed this parable, one of the things that he mentioned was that in Kingdom Parables whenever you think Jews draw an arrow directly to Christians and when ever you think Israel draw another arrow directly to the Church. That is because these parables should be just as convicting of us listening today as they may have been for the Scribes and Pharisees who were listening the first time Jesus spoke these stories. Stop for a moment and consider what we are doing here in this sanctuary. Haven’t we been invited to a great feast in this worship of God’s holy name? Take a look around. Why aren’t the seats filled? Why are so many of them empty? How many of our friends – how many of this congregation are making excuses as to why they can’t be here?
Now here is something to think about. In the parable, the invited guests who refuse the invitation have very fair and reasonable excuses for not going into the wedding feast. None of them was going off to do anything immoral or wrong. One needed to tend to his business. Don’t many of us work on the Sabbath? Another had business at his estate. Isn’t it reasonable if someone has an important issue to resolve and that they go to see to it? Then if we look at the parallel story in Luke, we find one person had to take delivery of a team of oxen and another had just recently gotten married himself and felt that he had a better offer.
These are all fair and reasonable excuses. But look how seductively the idolatry of business and daily life has replaced worship of God. Picture this if you will in terms of the first commandment, “Thou shall have no other gods before me. And then the second, You shall not make for yourselves a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, … you shall not bow down to serve them;” What have these guests done that is so terrible. They have replaced the opportunity to be in joyous celebration with the king for the mundane responsibilities of every day life.
What Jesus is trying to explain to us is that whether you are prepared to answer the invitation or not the feast will go on – with or without you. The king will still celebrate his joy with those who answer the call. Those who refuse – be they Jew or Christian will be left standing at the outside of the door watching the joyful feast within but not participating. The tragedy of life is that so often second bests shut out the things which are supreme. Missing the feast is not so much a punishment as it is a tragedy of lost joy.
Does that make sense? Christian theologian William Barclay commented, “If we refuse the invitation of the Christ, some day our greatest pain will lie not in the things we suffer, but in the realization of the precious things we have missed.” [Wm Barclay]
Now if you have been attentive, you are aware that I have skipped over verse 7. It has to do with the king raising an army and destroying the people who refused the invitation and then murdered the king’s servants. The reason for that is because Jesus probably didn’t teach this as part of his parables. Modern scholars look at the text and point out that a Jewish rabbi probably wouldn’t have gone there. They point out that the writer of Matthew was recording these stories somewhere between 80-90 CE. If you look at the history, there is a cataclysmic event that took place in Palestine around 70 CE. It was the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman army. What we may have here may be an editorial comment by the author sticking it to the Jews saying, “You see. If you had followed Jesus when you had the chance, none of that would have happened.” It would have been out of character to the stories for Jesus to have said that. So, there is at least the possibility that verse 7 might have been added text.
Now let’s consider the second parable in verses 11-14. This is the part of the story where the king spots a guest who is improperly dressed without wedding attire. The king goes to him and challenges the guest and asks why he is not in wedding clothes. The guest has no good response. So, the king has him bound up and thrown into the darkness where Jesus says, “…there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called and few are chosen.”
Now on the heals of the first parable and the inserted text about the king destroying the insulting guests, you have to be taken aback. You might scratch your head and ask, “Jesus, what are you saying here? You go out and drag people in from off the highways and then because they are not dressed rightly you throw them into a pit of darkness. What gives?
But when we break apart the two stories, we find a separate parable again based on another rabbinical story of the day. But Jesus changes it a bit for his own purposes by tacking on to the first parable.
What is Jesus saying here? He is still talking about the guests who are called from the highway. These people have no expectation of being invited to the king’s feast or to put it more directly – of being included in the promise of salvation from the Jewish God. This one god – no idols allowed, Sabbath is holy – Shalom God is just some anomaly that those annoying Jews invented. It has nothing to do with us Gentiles as they call us. But yet this Jesus, their Messiah, is specifically calling and inviting us in.
And that is true. Jesus is restating that the promise of salvation is universal and open to all. All are invited into the Feast. But there is one proviso. You can’t live a life of sin and show up at the king’s feast still dressed in the clothes of a sinner. You can only enter in if you have let go of and shed your sinfulness and have re-clothed yourself in the proper wedding garments and are prepared to sit with the king at the wedding feast.
You may have been called but if you stubbornly come clothed as a sinner, the king will scrutinize you. The king will see you for what you are and have you cast out into the darkness. We are all called but we have to make the choice to be among the few are chosen.
