The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son.
He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.
At first glance an invitation from the king would have seemed like a great option. It wasn't as though there could have been many highly competitive offers. No one was offering free tickets to Disney or an all-inclusive meal at a fancy restaurant. This wedding feast was the only game in town, and it was likely to live up to the hype. Who was better able to provide all that would conduce to joy than the king? And the king would certainly go all out for the wedding feast of his son.
Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them.
It wasn't as though the people refused to come because they had something that could compete with king's invitation as an alternative. What they decided to prefer, the work of daily life, was emphatically not in the same category as the joy of a feast. So why prefer it? It must have been possible for them to take some time away from those things had they so desired. It is unlikely that the farm required twenty-four hour supervision or that the business could not be closed down for a few days. But still, the people felt that their daily lives, on the one hand, were reality, whereas, on the other, the celebration of a king they only knew distantly was an irrelevant fantasy. Their daily lives ensnared them as though they were legally bound to productivity and utilitarian value. They did not demonstrate the freedom of spirit required to enjoy a feast. But we too are like this in regard to the invitation to God's Kingdom. We aren't willing to modify our daily lives much in order to accommodate it. When there is the suggestion that we should do so, we tend to feel threatened, as if the king is encroaching on our rights. This is why prophetic voices are often mistreated and killed. And when we don't heed these voices it is at our peril. Although the response of the king seemed harsh it could be argued that leaving the citizens chained to their lives of servitude would have been worse. The destruction of the city opposed to the king could serve a wake-up call, exposing misplaced priorities.
Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The king was set on seeing the wedding feast of his son well celebrated. He would fill the seats no matter what it took. We see the same sort of enthusiasm in him as we do in the landowner who kept looking for laborers for his vineyard until the last hour. Neither was content until every possible candidate had been invited. People might fail to come as a result of preferring their own disordered will to that of the king, but not because of any omission on the part of the king himself. In this he represented the God who desired all to be saved and to come knowledge of the truth.
He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?’
But he was reduced to silence.
Although the king desired all to attend the banquet they could not come in any attire. Their old life in the world was one which they had to leave behind, symbolically, by wearing a wedding garment. So too for our own invitation to the wedding feast of the lamb. We are not invited on the basis of the cleanliness of our attire. But we must attend without too much dirt or detritus staining our baptismal robes. And in fact, we must attend without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But we do this by accepting the grace of perseverance given by Jesus himself.
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (see Ephesians 5:26-27).
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