Matthew 22a

22: 1-6.  Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 

 The first phrase, “once more Jesus spoke to them in parables,” confirms what I hinted at last week. This is not the beginning of a new episode. The phrase “once more” tells us that we are in a series; so, what came before? 

 It was the chief priests and elders who raised the question of authority (21: 23), and Jesus turned the tables on them by asking them to first tell the crowd by what authority John the Baptizer preached. They said that they didn’t really know. Then, probing further, Jesus questioned their own authority to control the temple practices as if they owned them. They forgot that the temple is not about them, it’s about God.  

 Jesus told three parables to make this point. The first one portrayed a simple distinction between a son who refused his father’s command, then thought better of it and did what was asked, and a son who voiced assent to his father’s command, but then abandoned the task and went his own way. In the end, which one had the approval of the father?  

 The second one was a story about a landowner who had to punish his tenants because they repeatedly refused to pay him rent. The tenants grasped at authority, but finally the landowner chased those crooks away. The landowner then brought in new tenants. Which tenants have the authority of the owner? 

 Today, in Chapter 22, we come to the third parable. Jesus has upped the ante by changing the main character from a father, then to a landowner, and now to a king. The use of the word king should remind some in the audience of the Kingdom. As with all the parables, the framing fits the social conditions of the time. Remember that first century Palestinian culture, whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish, was built around patron-client relations. These carried obligations, including the client’s obligation to honor the patron, not to shame him. 

Second, common practice of the time called for two invitations. The first was a ‘RSVP’ kind of invitation. The second one came when everything was ready and it was time for the people to come. We see this in the parable when the slaves make the second trip to call “those who had been invited.” Since the man is a king, everyone who was invited is his client, and the size of the party reflects well on the honor of the patron. 

However, those who were invited and presumably accepted now refuse to come, so the king sends slaves a third time to remind his clients to fulfill their obligation. The king is going out of his way here to give the invitees another chance. This is a festive occasion if he has butchered and cooked more than one ox (the word is plural) and prime beef (again plural). Even when they knew what was prepared for them and that the king had fulfilled his part of the relationship, they made excuses and thus shamed the king. ‘You don’t bite the hand that feeds you’, or so I have heard.   

22: 7-10.  The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

 This parable is about a king as the first century Jews and Romans knew kings. There were plenty of historical references to broken treaties or other offenses that resulted in a king besieging a city, storming the walls, and burning down the whole town. Not only had that happened in the past, Jesus’ words might also be a veiled prediction of what will happen to Jerusalem about 40 years after his death. The Romans invaded the city, overcame its defenses, and burned Jerusalem to the ground, except for the Western Wall of the temple area, which is today’s Wailing Wall. BTW: burning down the temple was a way to separate the gold from the ashes so that lumps of gold would be found lying in lumps on the bricks. 

 Is this parable built on extended analogies with the characters or is the meaning in the outcome? To a certain extent, the father, the landowner, and the king do represent God, but that does not mean that we should take the analogy too far. Remember that the king did act graciously in sending out invitations to the wedding banquet, then sending out the second invitation, and finally sending out a third invitation in case the others were misunderstood. However, remember also that the catastrophic end of this parable sounds like other apocalyptic passages in the Bible.       

 The last section of this parable may remind us of Jesus’ part in God’s gracious invitation (Witherington, Matthew, 2006, page 409). Jesus is the last in a long line of prophets or messengers sent by God, and he in particular made sure that the lame and the blind, the sick and the outcasts, the marginalized people knew that they were invited into the Kingdom as well. Jesus ate and drank with them, and that is a major theme of this Gospel so far.

22: 11-14. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

 This sounds to our ears like a really strange ending to the parable. So far these three parables have been about obedience and relationships, and the issue of who has God’s approval and the authority to act on God’s behalf. All three parables put the spotlight on the chief priests and elders, comparing their authority with the authority of John and Jesus. But this last note is jarring, especially for those who think the invitation is to a ‘come as you are’ party and that means ‘you don’t have to repent or change your ways’.

 However, we have heard something like it from Jesus before. When the Centurion came to Jesus to ask that his servant be healed, and he implied that Jesus could heal at a distance, here is what Jesus said.

 “When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’. And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go; let it be done for you according to your faith’” (Matthew 8: 10-13).

 The implication in the response to the Roman Centurion fits with these parables in Matthew 22; some who think they are already in will be thrown out and some who seem to be out to begin with will be seated at the banquet because they acted on their faith.

 Perhaps in our parable the problem is that we have the image of the slaves herding the people into the banquet hall right off the streets. That is misleading. After all, the text clearly says that the king instructed his slaves to “invite” whoever was walking on the streets to a royal wedding banquet. Surely most people realized that the everyday clothes that they were wearing at the moment would not be appropriate attire. An invitation means they should go home, wash up, and put on the best they have.  

 This person slipped in without a wedding robe; and that is another way of shaming the patron. Receiving an invitation from the king is one thing. After all, the king behaved graciously with his invitations. However, responding properly to the invitation is another thing. This man did not change himself nor don the proper attire for the king’s wedding feast. 

 The Wedding Supper of the Lamb, that is, of Jesus the Son of God, becomes an important theme in Christian theology. Perhaps a quote from Revelation, as suggested by Witherington (page 410), will help us understand the parable. 

 “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” And the angel said to me, “Write this: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb’” (Revelation 19: 6-9). 

 What are the memes here that connect this passage to Jesus’ parable? “The Lord God the Almighty reigns,” that is, God is like a king. Our response to our patron should be to honor him, that is, to “give him the glory.” What is the occasion? It is “the marriage of the Lamb,” that is, the king’s son. Who is “his bride”? Elsewhere in scripture ‘the bride of Christ’ is the body of believers. How did the bride make herself ready? By putting on “fine linen, bright and pure.” 

 No need to wonder what ‘fine linen’ means because the angel explains it to John in his vision. Simply put, fine linen represents the deeds of the saints in faithful obedience to the king. The linen is the equivalent of the wedding robe in the parable.   

 How do we, the saints, find those righteous deeds? Certainly not by deciding for ourselves what deeds we can do, odd as that may sound. Rather it is by following Jesus, by being in a relationship where, at every turn, Jesus can point the way and we can be obedient. 

 Can we just go with anything that pops into our heads? Are there any guard rails? John has some advice along these lines. 

 “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (I John 4: 20). 

 Finally, Paul makes a pretty good distinction between behavior prompted by the Spirit and works of the flesh, by which he means ungodly behavior. 

 “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5: 19-21). 

 I guess it is pretty obvious, at least Paul says so. One cannot be involved in these behaviors and claim that God told you to do it. 

 Then Paul tells us how to recognize righteous deeds occur when someone follows Christ. 

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5: 23-26). 

 I cannot say it any clearer.