Final bit in the “trying to get himself killed” series of parables. Have fun!
Matthew 22:1-14; Philippians 4:1-9; Psalm 23; Isaiah 25:1-9
So we’re on item 3 of “Jesus baiting the Pharisees” this week. This is the last in that series; next week it’s “The Pharisees try to trick Jesus but it totally doesn’t work.” Anyways, let’s get caught up. 2 weeks ago, Jesus told the parable of the 2 sons whose words and actions disagreed, and led the Pharisees in figuring out which son was actually doing the will of his father. Last week we had the parable of the tenants who killed the servants of their master sent to collect the rent, culminating in the death of the master’s son. Now after that, the Pharisees started actively working against Jesus, looking for a quiet time when they could arrest him. This week, Jesus starts on yet another parable that set the Pharisees a-raging.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son,” Jesus begins. The king sent out invitations to all his nobles, but when they were summoned to the feast they refused to attend. The king sent out more servants, encouraging them to partake of the bounty he had prepared for them, but their reaction wasn’t great. Two ignored the servants to focus on their work, the rest captured, tortured, and killed the messengers. The king, in a rage, made war against his nobles, killed them, and destroyed their cities.
Then, not wanting to have an empty feast, the king told his servants to go out to the streets and get everyone they could to come, whether good or bad, so that the king’s hall would be full. When everyone was gathered, the king noticed a man who was not wearing his wedding clothes. Now, since the new guests were more than likely poor, the king provided wedding clothes for them, in line with a custom of the time and place. So this person wasn’t just not dressed for the occasion, he rejected the gift of the king and showed up in his “street clothes” — something of an insult to the king.
When confronted, and asked the rather simple question, “How did you get in here without wedding clothes?” the situation gets even messier. The person in question gave absolutely no answer, and the king had him arrested and thrown out to Jesus’ standard euphemism for hell. And then, in the next verse after our gospel text, “the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.”
Now, after 3 parables actively against the Pharisees, they very much got the picture. They knew that they were the second son, the evil tenants, and original invitees who denied the wedding feast, and they were not happy about it. But the people who were overhearing these discussions in the crowd, they were the first son, the new tenants in the vineyard, and the second invitees to the wedding feast. They were as happy about these parables as the Pharisees were unhappy.
But here’s where things get interesting. You see, these parables work a little bit different today than they did nearly two thousand years ago — then again, maybe they don’t work as differently as we think. We’re used to seeing ourselves as the second group of people — those who didn’t deserve to be at the feast but got invited anyways — and not as the Pharisees. But the trick is, if you really look at it, we’re the Pharisees.
Remember who the Pharisees were: they were the religious people; they spent a good deal of time debating what actions meant you were “in” or “out” of God’s favor; they didn’t really like being around people they identified as “sinners”. The Pharisees are exactly how Christians today act, at least they are how the most vocal Christians typically act.
I’m reminded of a scene in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov. It’s quite possibly the most popular scene in the book: it’s the chapter called “The Grand Inquisitor”. Jesus shows up in Seville, Spain at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. He does miracles, and the people love him, but he is arrested by the Inquisitors and sentenced to death. In the inquisitor’s mind, Jesus’ arrival hurts the church, as it gives people the freedom to choose to ignore God and doom themselves to destruction. In the end, after berating Jesus the whole time, Jesus’ only response is to give them man a kiss of peace.
Just like the Pharisees, and like the inquisitor, the church all too often chooses God’s rules over God himself. We seek to categorize people based on sin, and ranking them on scales from bad to worse, in order to make us forget that we are just as sinful, since there is no sin better or worse than any other — sin is sin in God’s eyes. Then, instead of accepting rebuke, we too often figuratively kill the one giving us the message.
Now there is hope. I don’t think we’re anywhere near as anti-Jesus as the Pharisees were, but we do sometimes focus too much on people’s sinfulness instead of on the people themselves. Remember who was invited to the feast the second time? “The servants went and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad.” God, like the king, doesn’t discriminate between good and bad, because without his gift of forgiveness, we are all of us “bad”.
To put it in the context of the parable, God invited everyone to the wedding feast of his son, and provided us with the wedding clothes, which are forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Now, he doesn’t force anything on us, like the man in the parable we can reject the wedding clothes, but why would we want to? Why miss out the promised feast? There’s nothing that we have to do to attend the feast — the invitation is free, the clothes are free, the food is free — we just accept it and eat.