This is the third parable that Jesus tells to the temple leaders after they tried to trap him in a conversation about his authority. (Remember that Jesus had cleared the temple the previous day, and the temple leaders bandied together and confronted Jesus when he came back to the temple to teach the crowd.) The first parable focused on obedience to the will of the Father (21.23-27), the second built upon the rejection of God’s servants (21.33-46), and both of these included Jesus asking the temple leaders a question about how the God-figure will respond to the actions of the characters. With each of their answers, the leaders condemned themselves.
Instead of asking the temple leaders to answer a question this time, Jesus combines the point of the two previous parables into one. The link is found in the contrasting pictures of the king. First, he is a benevolent, patient, involved, and just king. He’s more involved in preparing and inviting people to his Son’s wedding feast than any king actually needs be. Like the good landowner, the king is preparing and making sure that all is ready, sending his servants out. And this time, the king acts the way in which the temple leaders said the landowner had a right to: he brings down destructive judgment upon those who rejected his messengers with violence (verses 6-7).
But back to the king’s benevolence. It is further exemplified by the extension of the invitation to anyone and everyone. Notice how Jesus says that the servants gathered the good and the bad, all were called. The actual word is kaleō (to call or name); God’s invitations are callings with purpose; God’s callings are invitations to a different way of being. In a word, they are life-changing for the “good” and the “bad.”
The good may find they are a called to a new practice or servanthood, a new experience of faith or God’s faithfulness. But what about the “bad”? The word ponēros can mean two different kinds of “bad.” Often, the word has a moral meaning: “evil” or “wicked.” But it can also be used to describe a physical quality, or being deficient in some way. As Dale Bruner describes in his commentary, this pairing “points to the gratuity of the gospel, its grace and nondiscrimination, its distinctive openness to outcasts and failures, to problem people and the unimpressive. The flawed, as this Gospel has taught repeatedly, are especially dear to Jesus’ heart (cf. most recently the blind and lame in the temple, 21:14).”
So here we see the point that Jesus made to the temple leaders: because of their rejection of God’s messengers like John the Baptist and himself, their arena of authority is being destroyed (Jerusalem in AD 70) and replaced by a new community of those God gathers (the same root word as synagogue). God calls even the riff-raff, the known sinners and blight to society, because they heeded and did not abuse God’s servants. Instead, they obey the message that was really an invitation to change and have found a great life-calling embodied by the image of a wedding banquet.
“Invited” (kaleō) is the keyword in this parable, appearing in verses 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 14 (as well as “called” klētos which is from the same root). Jesus makes repeated use of the perfect tense of invited (verses 3, 4, 8): God’s call is a standing-invite; it lasts no matter what we do with it.
But, the unending invitation can be matched by an unending rejection on our part. Jesus shows this in two ways. First, he uses the imperfect past tense to depict the wedding guests as continuously rejecting the invitation to come to the dinner in verse 3. Then, more drastically, Jesus describes an encounter between the king and one of the guests in verses 11-14. This guest is not wearing (in the perfect tense) the appropriate wedding robe. Because of this, our king has him kicked out and sent to a pretty awful place. It seems like a stark contrast to our benevolent king who allows anyone and everyone to come to his table.
In this parable, it’s a point about obedience. When we accept the invitation from God, heed the message of his servants, we respond with obedience to the will of the Father in heaven. To do so is to clothe ourselves with righteousness– the appropriate attire for the things to which we have been called by God. Those who do not do so, who refuse to do so, who fail to see how the two are connected (the invitation and attending to what’s required of us), are warned to not be caught off-guard at Judgment day.
The inappropriately dressed wedding guest could make no defense against the king’s query. His silence is meant to imply he knew better. It’s another connection to the themes of the previous parables: the fruit shows who have taken up the mantle of the call, who have made the changes that show they have accepted the invitation to obedience and are bearing the new identity of God’s chosen people in the world.
God’s calling to a new life in Christ does not end with the invitation to faith. It runs deep and wide, transforming our living, breathing, everyday walking around existence. Those who accept the invitation will find that along the way to the wedding banquet of heaven, they will put on the ways of our faithful Saviour.
Textual Points
There is a version of this parable in Luke 14.15-24. Some of the details are similar, namely the refusal to accept the invitation because of other responsibilities and the ever-expanding invitation to others to become guests of the Kingdom. But there are some marked differences that makes it clear Jesus is making different points with these stories, and he used the wedding banquet as a story backdrop on multiple occasions. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus adds an additional scene to the story (verses 11-14) as well as the violent treatment of the slaves and the King’s destructive response in verses 6 and 7. These additions connect this parable to the previous two. Luke sets this story at a much less combative dinner gathering, nor it is told in the temple. Further, Luke pairs this story with different themes than Matthew.
Illustration Idea
The fanfare and craze over British Royal weddings is well-known, and the most recent example of Harry and Megan’s nuptials rivaled that of Diana to Charles a generation earlier. Have you noticed the fascinators (women’s decorative headwear we might be tempted to call hats) at British weddings? In North America, women wearing headcoverings at church services belong to either ultra-conservative churches or to the vibrant tradition of African-American congregations. At formal weddings in the UK, the fascinator is appropriate attire. Imagine, then, if the wedding planner looked out at all the women in the pews and said to one, “Friend, how did you get in here without a fascinator?” It would seem arbitrary, but it’s also a reminder that there is a right way (righteousness) to conduct one’s self, based upon the kind of call one has received to the event.
