Matthew
22:1-14
Jesus
responded by speaking again in parables: 2 “The kingdom of
heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding party for his son. 3 He
sent his servants to call those invited to the wedding party. But they didn’t
want to come. 4 Again he sent other servants and said to them,
‘Tell those who have been invited, “Look, the meal is all prepared. I’ve
butchered the oxen and the fattened cattle. Now everything’s ready. Come to the
wedding party!” ’ 5 But they paid no attention and went
away—some to their fields, others to their businesses. 6 The
rest of them grabbed his servants, abused them, and killed them.
7 “The king was angry.
He sent his soldiers to destroy those murderers and set their city on fire. 8 Then
he said to his servants, ‘The wedding party is prepared, but those who were
invited weren’t worthy. 9 Therefore, go to the roads on the
edge of town and invite everyone you find to the wedding party.’
10 “Then those servants
went to the roads and gathered everyone they found, both evil and good. The
wedding party was full of guests. 11 Now when the king came in
and saw the guests, he spotted a man who wasn’t wearing wedding clothes. 12 He
said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But he
was speechless. 13 Then the king said to his servants, ‘Tie his
hands and feet and throw him out into the farthest darkness. People there will
be weeping and grinding their teeth.’
14 “Many people are
invited, but few people are chosen.”
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During a session of my Intro to Psychology class in my freshman year of college my
professor was lecturing us about “involuntary reactions” within the nervous
system. The explanation involved all sorts of technical terms like “parasympathetic
responses” or “autonomic pathways” that are rather hard to understand (at least
for me). Instead of diving into
scientific nomenclature, he settled on an “over-the-top” description. “Let’s
talk about the involuntary reaction of fear.
Imagine that a lion walked into the classroom right now…” he said,
pausing for effect, “…and he’s packing an Uzi!
That would cause you to have an involuntary reaction: fear.” We, of
course, laughed out loud: not only did his use of hyperbole make help make the
point, it helped me remember his subject 17 years later. It didn’t hurt that
his delivery was effective, making the joke that much more hilarious.
When we’re dealing with the parables of Jesus I
get the same feeling because these seemingly “simple” stories are anything but
straightforward. Jesus will start with a
relatively familiar setting like a wedding banquet, farmer’s field or group of
men fishing and his audience will immediately know what he’s talking about. But
just about the time his hearers think they know what’s going to happen, Jesus
will twist the story in such a way that things get confusing and people start
to think. Sometimes this occurs with
unexpected behavior from characters and on other occasions there is a great
deal of hyperbole (exaggeration).
C.H. Dodd’s definition of “parable” is a good
representative of scholarly thought: “At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or
simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness
or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise
application to tease it into active thought.”*
I often say that parables are stories that are meant to make you
say “Oh, yeah, I get it," as the story begins immediately followed by, “Wait a minute, really?” by the time it's over.
Parables
get you thinking.
Our story today starts out normal enough: a king
is throwing wedding party for his son and wedding invitations go out. Makes
sense right? Then things get weird. Not only do people refuse the invitation,
some grab, abuse and kill the messengers. You might be thinking “Who
does that?!?!?” and you’d be right, but we’re just getting
started. The king responds in anger over
the mistreatment and death of his servants (again, very understandable), and he
responds by destroying the murderers and SETTING
THEIR CITY ON FIRE. Say what?!?!? Presumably the fatted calf and oxen that
had been butchered are simply sitting there on the table while all of this is
happening. Finally, when the new guests arrive, the king throws one of them
into the “outer darkness” because of his attire. Wow!
All of this hyperbole is meant to make a point.
Much like my Psychology Professor who referred to Uzi-packing lions, Jesus is
giving us vivid images to get us thinking.
At this point, of course, we have to be careful. Parables get you
thinking, but it’s important to keep the rest of scripture in mind as we
ponder. Parables don’t just mean whatever we want them to: going down that road
will ultimately mean conforming Christ to our image rather than the other way
around. We need to look at the parables within the greater context of the
Gospel of Matthew and of scripture as a whole. So what’s going on here?
In Chapter 21 Jesus enters into the temple where
the chief priests and elders of the people begin a verbal “fencing matching”
with him. He responds to their questions
with parables and it gets rather dicey. The
Pharisees figure out that he’s speaking about them as well and they join the
group that is ready to arrest him; only their fear of the crowds stops
this.
Again and again in the Bible we see examples of the
high and mighty being brought down while the lowly are raised up (See what
Hannah has to say about this in 1 Samuel 2:1-11. Mary weighs in with the
Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55. Paul adds to this in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. Jesus himself talks about how the ‘last will
be first and the first will be last will be first’ in Matt. 19:30 and 20:16. The religious leaders, those favored in
society, the people with all of the prestige either don’t understand what God
is up to or they don’t care. They are
turning down an invitation to God’s party. Crazy isn't it? The lowly are coming instead.
And how about the improperly dressed wedding guest? There have been plenty of explanations out there
about why one of the guests didn’t have a wedding garment. Some scholars say that these types of
garments were handed out at the door, others say that if he had spoken rather
than remain speechless things would have been different. One of my favorite
stories about this comes from the amazing preacher and Professor Fred Craddock.
Craddock, Barbara Brown Taylor and Tom Long attended
an Atlanta Braves baseball game while in town for a preaching conference. After
taking their seats they noticed a group of college kids who were sitting a few
rows in front of them. One of these students had become rather drunk and belligerent.
He started yelling profanities, throwing empty (and not-so-empty) cups of
liquid and generally carrying on. When security finally came and forcibly
escorted him out of the stadium, Craddock turned to his companions and said,
“He must not have been wearing a wedding garment…”** Perhaps the guest’s lack of
wedding garment had everything to do with him rather than the host.
In the end, God is throwing a party and all sorts
of people are invited. You might scratch
your head and wonder why people wouldn’t want to show up, but then all you have
to do is look around at our world today and scratch your head at humanity’s
behavior around our globe. Not only do we choose to do evil because the
righteous option is hard, quite often it seems we choose the evil option when
the righteous path is MORE OBVIOUS.
Jesus uses exaggeration to get this across. Hopefully this can show us that there is a
party going on and that we are invited.
_____________________
* Quoted on pg. 121 in The Peoples' New Testament Commentary by Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock.
** I originally heard this story at a preaching conference at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, IN. Since then, I have heard it related by a variety of other people too.
