This was an interesting weekend. I preached on the assigned Gospel, Matthew 22:1-14. It is the famous 'wedding garment' parable which has confused me for many years. You have probably heard it. There is a king who has a wedding feast, the invited guests refuse to come and instead they maim and kill the messengers. The king raises an army, destroys the city and then says, "Hey the food is on the table, let's get some guests!" So the servants go round up everyone they can find and the party is on. Then as the king walks through the party he spots one guy with no wedding garment. So he asks him, "Where is your wedding garment?" The guest is speechless. So the king ties him up and tosses him into the alley. We then hear, "Many are called but few are chosen."
Most people, including me, think this is a strange teaching from Jesus. It isn't that we do not want to honor and obey Him, it is just that we cannot follow the logic. How, for example, can a king find time to raise an army and destroy a city in a couple of hours? More pressing, why would you tie a guy up and through him in an alley because he didn't have on the right clothes? And why would you expect someone who was invited, unprepared, to show up in anything else but what he was wearing? (and who wears wedding garments around all the time, just in case?) So why is a man tortured like this?
The key to the answer would seem to be the man, but he is speechless (not unlike Jesus at His trial). Who is this man and what is the rest of the story? Most of the explanations I have heard did not help me terribly. One is that a wedding garment is really just clean clothes. Can an 'unexpecting' guest be expected to carry a change of clothes? And wouldn't it be enough to ask him to leave? Why tie him up? Another is that the host provides the wedding garment. Well, why did the king not simply redirect the guest to the place where he can get the garment?
My thinking is this was a hard parable for lots of people. My thinking is that we frequently try to "cover for" Jesus (or the Biblical writer) when a reading is hard to understand. We live in a world where people reject the authority of Scripture so we get worried. For years I did that. But, now I think I understand the parable. My sermon is online at the church website, but I intend to walk through the interpretative process the next couple days. It is pretty exciting to me. I think I can make sense of the parable, even the 'torture.'
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