Prayer: Lord, we read in Isaiah 55 that you invite all to come to you, to seek you with all our hearts, we read that our thoughts and ways are not yours, we read that your word will not return empty. Lord, we pray that we will come and receive your word for us today and go out in joy and be led forth in peace. In Jesus name. Amen.
If you received an invitation to the wedding of the King’s son, what would your response be? Let’s go back a few years and pretend that William and Kate are about to be married and King Charles sends out an invitation to attend, not just the wedding ceremony but the full-blown royal feast afterwards, with an airline ticket and the best accommodation in London for you so there were no obstacles to you going. Would you say yes, thank you, I’ll be there!
Or would you not care, and rather go about your daily business, or get angry and rip up the invitation and abuse the postman who delivered it?
I think most of us would be honoured to be invited and thrilled to accept and experience the royal generosity that we didn’t expect.
In today’s parable we have another story from Jesus, pointing out the rejection by the Jewish religious leaders to celebrate the King’s son, refusing to come into the Kingdom of God. They are more interested in their own affairs, or angry and hostile to the messengers who send the invitation. Therefore, they give up their right to be in the Kingdom and they are severely punished. While those not expecting an invitation, the bad and the good, the outcasts, and the ordinary off the streets are invited, given wedding garments and receive the King’s gracious generosity and enjoy all the benefits in the Kingdom.
Matthew’s parable of the wedding banquet comes immediately after the two we looked at last week, where Jesus is responding to the chief priests and elders who had questioned his authority. In those parables the religious leaders were likened to a disobedient son and wicked tenants who rejected and killed the son of the owner of the vineyard they were looking after. They were warning parables.
This wedding banquet parable is both a warning to the religious leaders, and one that describes the Kingdom of God – a common theme in Jesus’ parables.
You will find a similar parable in Luke 14, but there are some marked differences in Matthew. This one seems to be more allegorical in style, and much harsher in its message to the religious leaders.
Let’s take a closer look…
Jesus clearly begins this parable as a description of the ‘Kingdom of God’. Or in similar terms, the ‘Kingdom of heaven’. Naturally there is a King in the kingdom, and that King we can safely presume refers to God. The king prepares a wedding banquet for his son. The son, we can presume refers to Jesus. The wedding banquet may be seen as a metaphor for the eschatological messianic kingdom. The last days when Jesus will reign, his kingdom come. In the book of Revelation which looks forward to the last days, we read in chapter 19:6:
“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him the glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready…”
The last days are still to come, but Jesus also declared that the kingdom of God was near, that his coming to earth ushered in the kingdom, though for now we await his return for the final judgement and establishment of his reign when every knee will bow.
So, I think there is both a now and not yet understanding in this parable.
An invitation had already gone out to Israel to come to the banquet, but when the servants go to tell them to come, they refuse. Remember he is telling this parable to the religious leaders. The King gives them another chance and sends more servants (like the parable of the wicked tenants we looked at last week, these servants may represent the prophets that God had sent). The servants are to tell those who have been invited that everything is ready and prepared, it’s going to be a wonderful feast, the oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered!
Perhaps we can picture the best spit roast, succulent meat, with all the trimmings. And the King says, ‘come to the wedding banquet’. We get the sense he really wants them to come. He wants them to join in the celebration.
But what do those who were invited do? Some pay no attention, and just carry on in their day-to-day lives, attending to their own business. Going to a board meeting, milking their own cattle and ploughing the fields, working in their retail shop etc. Others are extremely hostile to the to the bearers of the invitation, mistreating and killing them. Just like what happened to the prophets who brought God’s message. The most recent being John the Baptist who had been imprisoned and then beheaded. Or maybe those prophets were the first set of servants, and for Matthew writing this a few decades after Jesus’ death, the second lot of servants could include those persecuted followers and proclaimers of Jesus in the early church.
Naturally the King is enraged. ‘He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burnt the city’. If Matthew is applying his own lived observations, then the killings and burning of the city may be a graphic description of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Judgement from God to the nation that rejected the Messiah.
If you were reading this as a simple story the next section would not make sense as one might wonder that after the burning of the city, how is the wedding feast still ready to go ahead and how are there still people in the streets!
I think we can see that this is very much an allegorical parable and let’s not overthink it as a realistic story. Rather, it is a story with a message.
The King has more servants to send out (they might include you and me) and he tells them to go out into the streets and invite anyone to the wedding banquet. It is open to all. All nations, all peoples, regardless of race, gender, ability, the rich, the poor, ‘the good and the bad’.
The servants gathered all the people they could find, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
The next couple of verses are an addition to Matthew. You don’t find a similar part in Luke’s parable.
Once the hall was filled, we read that the King came in to see the guests. (possibly alluding to when Jesus comes to judge?) In amongst all the guests, he notices one who snuck in not wearing the right wedding clothes. The King sarcastically calls him friend (Jesus calls Judas friend when he comes with the leaders to arrest him in the garden) and asks him how he got in wearing his own attire? The man is speechless. He’s been caught out and he has no words in response. He is tied up and sent out, where there is ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. You will find that Matthew uses that phrase several times in reference to the place where those who do evil will go. Those who do not repent and believe in Jesus.
What was everyone else wearing, you might wonder? Why did this man stand out?
There are references in Isaiah and Revelation to wedding garments. Clothes that God provides equally to all who repent and come to him. Jesus looks on the heart not the finery or otherwise of what we wear on the outside. And he clothes us in his righteousness. We are all equal in his sight. When we get to heaven there will be no hierarchy of those wearing fancy ball gowns or rags.
We read this in Isaiah 61:
‘I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.’
The beginning of Isaiah 61 is what Jesus read in the synagogue, announcing that he was the one who fulfilled that prophecy, the one preaching good news to the poor, bestowing garments of praise etc.
We can enter the kingdom of God, not through our own merits, boasting about what we have done, but rather, what Jesus has done for us and through his death and resurrection we are clothed in his righteousness. The imposter in the wedding banquet must have thought he could get in on his own merit.
The end of the Revelation 19 passage I quoted earlier about the wedding of the lamb, and the bride that had made herself ready, finishes with this: fine linen, white and clean, was given her to wear.
Jesus clothes us in his righteousness, that is how and why we can enter the Kingdom of God. In the now and not yet time we should live as his righteous people, clothing ourselves as Paul says in Colossians 3, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other forgive and over all these virtues put on love. Let’s put on the clothes Jesus provides every day.
This parable finishes with the line; ‘For many are invited, but few are chosen’.
We are God’s chosen people. Many are invited, all of Israel are invited, all peoples are invited. But only those who accept the invitation and follow Jesus are chosen. To be chosen does not mean being thrust into the Kingdom without our own decision, we must respond.
Jesus invites me and you. What is your response? In John 7, Jesus stands up in the crowd at the great festival and echoes the words from Isaiah 55, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me and drink…and rivers of living water (the Spirit) will flow from within.
Once we accept the invitation then we are sent out as the Lord’s servants to invite others. At the end of Matthew, we read of the great commission. We are to go out to all people, regardless of socio-economic status, ethnic identity, religious standing, or moral condition – he invites the ‘good and bad’. God desires to call all people into his Kingdom, and he uses us to extend that invitation.
When the King invites us to come to the wedding feast, he says bring your whole family…your 95-year-old mother with dementia, your grandson with autism, your newborn great granddaughter, who cries and makes a noise. All are welcome. And don’t forget to encourage your neighbourhood to respond to their invitation and come too. The Afghan family on your right, the indigenous couple down the road, the Chinese students round the corner, the Jews at the other end of your neighbourhood and the Palestinians your son is friends with. Invite them all, the King desires that all would come, feel welcomed, receive his generous grace and find such joy and peace in his kingdom.
This parable illustrates both judgment and grace. Those who should be expected to accept, like the Jewish religious leaders at the time, are the ones who refuse to come. Today it may be the upstanding ones, the wealthy, those who think they have no need for God. While the unexpected ones, the poor, those in prison, those suffering in this world (think about the growing church in third world countries like Africa), they are open to accepting God’s invitation to come and receive his wedding garments and experience the joy and peace of living in his kingdom both now and for eternity.
Let’s pray: Dear Lord, thank you for your incredibly gracious and generous invitation to join you in the wedding banquet of your Son. Jesus thank you for dying for us that we might be forgiven and therefore clothed with your righteousness. Help us to remember that we are people living for you in your kingdom today. Give us boldness to go out and proclaim the good news of your kingdom. We pray for those who don’t hear your invitation because they are too busy living for themselves. We pray for those who do hear you but refuse to listen.
And Lord we pray your kingdom come and your will be done. We long for the day of your return, when all wars will end, when all will bow before your throne and those who choose you will join in the joyous celebration of heaven singing, Holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty, you are worthy to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they were created and have their being. (Rev 4: 11) Amen.