Christian Art | Parables Of Jesus | Parable Of The Marriage Feast / The Wedding Feast
Matthew 22: 1-14 | King James Audio Bible | King James Version KJV | Parables Of Jesus | Parable Of The Marriage Feast | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
1 AND Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said,
2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,
3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.
4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.
5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:
6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.
7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.
8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.
10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.
11 ¶ And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:
12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen.
In the parable of the marriage feast, Jesus continues to attack the scribes and the Pharisees, the Jewish authorities, who have found themselves threatened by Jesus and who reject him. It is a bold and dangerous message to those who have established power in the Jewish community. Jesus could hardly be telling them more clearly that they have got it wrong, that they were called, by God, long, long ago, and yet they have rejected God’s invitation, that, for all their trappings of piety, they are not with God; they have rejected Him.
To put this in context, we may ask the question: what actually is it that the Jewish authorities fear about Jesus, dislike about Jesus, hate about Jesus, and so why are they seeking, ultimately, to discredit him and put him to death?
Christ’s message, that he is God the Son, that we are to love him and believe in who he is, is so extremely wrong to those who think that their understanding of the Law, of God, is the correct and only way. It is, in this theological sense, an affront. But it goes deeper than this. For all the theological objections, for all the sense that blasphemy is being committed, we find that the refusal of Jesus by the Jewish religious authorities is rooted in self-interest and self-preservation.
Jesus is obviously a good man, even if the Jews didn’t believe in his divinity. Jesus’ teachings offer a beautiful and radical shake-up of orthodoxy. Jesus’ teachings are all about love, of God, of our neighbour, and about how to love.
But these people are not listening to Jesus with an open mind. Their minds are closed because their mind-set is so much locked into their current worldly position, their status, their financial incentives in maintaining the status quo, such that their spiritual sense has atrophied, becoming occluded, and so the spiritual posturing of the scribes and Pharisees has more in common with the law of the market place than it does with God. These people have made themselves of the world, rather than of God.
Christ’s message, then, is uncompromising. He says to them: You were called to the banquet, to the kingdom of God, and you refused to show. You’ve made your excuses: you were busy on your farm or with your business; you have clung to your attachments to the business of the world, when heaven could have been yours. You’ve gone so far as to kill my messengers, who were the prophets. You have gone out of your way to refuse salvation, so entrenched in you is your refusal of God.
Well, says Jesus, so much for them. If the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of God’s first chosen people, don’t want to receive what could have been theirs, then we’ll go out there and invite everyone, both good and bad. The humblest sinner can have more than the scribes and the Pharisees. Indeed, he can have everything. The wedding hall will be filled with guests.
Verses 11-14 of this parable seem to be an addition from another saying of Jesus. They may seem not to flow particularly well from the preceding verses. After all, if we take this literally, it may seem a little unfair that a man has been pulled off the street to come to the wedding and is then punished for not wearing the right clothes. Of course, this is not Jesus’ intention.
We can, though, draw an important truth from these last verses of the parable. We are all called to the feast. We can all be God’s children. The Old Law is overwhelmed in the New. We are, though, called to approach the wedding feast in appropriate garments. We are called to live in the ways Jesus wants us to, not with the empty, ritualistic observances of the scribes and Pharisees, but with true, loving faith, our whole lives becoming focused around our relationship with Jesus. Then we shall be living God’s Law in ways which those Jewish elders could not bear to contemplate.
‘Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ Revelation 19: 7-9
Christ prepares to be crucified. This may seem very strange as we look forward to Advent, and these really are the events of Holy Week. And yet this declaration of Christ’s coming again can be seen as a wonderful culmination of the Church year. Christ’s promise of resurrection and eternal life marks the summit of Christian faith. The declaration of Christ the King, our knowledge Christ is King, is a wonderful thought to carry through the coming weeks of Advent as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s birth [ … ]
Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, contrary to what we are taught to say, Mary isn’t my mother. Rather: Mum is. One bit of the Bible-text says this: And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself.” … And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Mark 3: 21; 31-35.) Here she comes. She is in considerable distress. I can imagine that. I can relate to that. To save her boy from whatever he’s got himself into this time. And you’re not telling me there isn’t something inside that. Her boy is beside himself. Radical. Radicalized. Radicalizing. A misunderstood word. /ˈradɪk(ə)l/ adjective & noun. 1 Forming the root, basis, or foundation; original, primary. 2a Inherent in the nature of a thing or person; fundamental. b Of action, change, an idea: going to the root or origin; far-reaching, thorough. c Advocating thorough or far-reaching change. d Characterized by departure from tradition; progressive; unorthodox. ‘He has a demon! And he is mad!’ – thus ‘the Jews’. (e.g. John 10: 20.) Come home! It’s all she wants. His family want him back now. But it is an exclusive cult: there is an inside and there is an outside; and on the outside, they are not meant to understand, lest they be converted. He has defined himself as different from anything she was. Only at the end does Jesus say to his Mum – and with savage, bitter irony: ‘Woman, behold your son.’ And then he dies. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. We ask that we might find Mary in our hearts as a Yes! place for Jesus. It is also recommended that we pray to Jesus that we may be further in oneness with Mary. It is self-emptying, such that we only exist insofar as we are responsive to God’s Word. * Last term, and put-out to pasture, the old Archbishop Emeritus came over to stay for a few days and did the odd class with us. He spoke of Yes! as the meaning of Mary’s virginity. And we were not very nice about him. One or two took umbrage. One or two got the hump. In a sense, his Grace, the Arch, basically wanted to move anyone he’d ever known from a high-place – a mountain – received theological ‘truth’ – to an imminent, human plane. Earthing the spiritual. Recalibrating metrics of life’s believability toward a spiritual sense of things. He might have asked the impermissible question: what happened? His Grace described it. God’s love as a cloud. This descended upon Mary – and subsumed her. Within the cloud, Mary capitulated utterly. She became only and purely a response to God’s love. As he spoke, the Arch cradled her. He carried her in his lap – in his hands. His Grace was a consecrated bishop. He was faith. He sat squat, a rounded man, hands cupped and ankles crossed, fingers interlocked, with parted thighs. Rumpled, washed, speckled. A lifetime’s skin… There could be no doubt His Grace spoke through long-term personal relationship with Mary. It was Julian went for him: ‘So are you saying Mary was a Virgin? Or are you not saying Mary was a Virgin?’ Nasty. No, it wasn’t pretty. Julian twisting his silver ring. For a moment, what Julian had said to the Arch simply failed to communicate. No, for a moment, that dumped on the air meant nothing. Then His Grace said: ‘There is a range of possible meanings we may understand in the question of Mary’s virginity. For example, there are understandings of the word virginity entailed in the action of giving birth.’ Julian said: ‘Duh! So had she had sex or hadn’t she?’ Trigger words. No, it wasn’t pretty. On that went for a little while. At length, Julian’s point seemed reluctantly conceded. Then the Arch told us a new story, an additionally human event, the more to baffle us. Controversially, he told us that Mary could not have been Joseph’s first wife, for this would not have been the way of things in the society of that time. His belief was that Joseph must have taken Mary into his household through pity. That would be normal, he said, for Joseph to bring a young, vulnerable girl, who is about to have a baby, within his protection, not meaning to enjoy with her marital relations, but through kindness. ‘And this story of the inn and stable,’ the Archbishop said, ‘it can’t have been like that really. Joseph has travelled with Mary to stay with his family, at home in Bethlehem, and they don’t want Mary in their house, for reasons which I am sure we can understand. It must have been there was considerable resistance to Mary. But Mary gives birth, and who can resist a baby? That’s what happened. It must have been. ‘I’m convinced that must have been how it happened really.’ Later that term, toward the beginning of Advent, we met boys who had been here before, in Valladolid, and now were in regular seminary. They had heard and recited verbatim all the Archbishop had said to them. Their spot-on impressions of each of the fathers were scathing. […]
There is a beautiful lesson in love, which is to test ourselves when we are offering gifts of love to our beloved/s, and this is by imagining that we actually don’t know the person or people to whom we are giving. This way, we can make sure that what we are doing is giving, rather than making an investment and expecting something in return [ … ]
