Parable of the Kings Wedding Feast - Matt 22:1-14

The parable of the wicked husbandmen looks really bad for the chief priests who are listening and plotting on Jesus. They can’t arrest him right then because the people believe him to be a prophet, and arresting someone perceived to be a man of God because he speaks out against your ungodliness is pretty telling to the crowd of people you’re supposed to lead. Using this time, Jesus continues with another parable, one that is very similar to a previous parable from Luke, which we will compare and contrast later, because it’s quite profitable. In this parable, Jesus tells of “a certain kind, which made a marriage for his son.” Apparently, during the time of Christ, marriage was mostly arranged by parents, so a father arranging a marriage for his son was not unusual. Another point is that during this time an invitation from a king was more like a command then a request.

Once the marriage banquet was ready, the king “sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.” Let’s stop for a minute and discuss who would have been invited to the wedding. Who do people usually invite? They invite their friends and family, people that they love and want to share this special time in their life with. But then there are always those people that you’re not close to who would be offended at not receiving an invitation, and even though they aren’t necessarily close, they have a right to be there.  Who would that be representing in this parable? If the king is God and the bridegroom is Jesus, then who would have a right to be at the wedding?  Who did the true and living God covenant with to receive “the gospel and was ordained to the higher priesthood, and he entered into celestial marriage, which is the covenant of exaltation?” That’s right, the Guide to the Scriptures answers, “Abraham received a promise that all the blessings of these covenants would be offered to his mortal posterity.” God promised Abraham that his descendents would be blessed with the gospel, thus giving them the right to receive the culmination of the gospel, the coming of the Messiah, when it happened.

In relating this parable to that promise, The king (God) promised to his family (the covenant Jews) the marriage feast (the coming of the Messiah). But now that the time had come for the wedding feast, or the time of the Messiah had come, those who were invited, or had a right to be there responded in unexpected ways. The servants were sent out with the message of the coming of the feast, and some “would not come.” Let’s just remember exactly what these people are being invited to, they are being invited to a wedding feast, not a public execution. The king even laments, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.” He’s not saying, “come or else,” those who refuse to come are simply left alone, their decision respected. He’s also not asking them to travel far and wide for no reason, he’s saying, “Come to a huge party, I really want you to come.” I think that most of us would be hard pressed to pass up the opportunity to go to a “spared no expense” dinner party, especially when we are being asked to come not out of obligation, but because we are genuinely loves and our company is appreciated.

This begs the question, how is the gospel like a wedding feast? I think the obvious difference is that a wedding feast is a one time event and the gospel is all day, everyday. But the wedding feast isn’t symbolizing the gospel in general, it is symbolizing the coming of the Messiah, the cumulating of all the gospel, and because Jesus is telling this parable to the men who are about to kill him, He’s not just saying “you rejected the gospel,” he’s saying, “You’ve reject me, the Messiah, the one thing you say you’ve been anticipating for millennia.” When Christ came to establish a higher order of the gospel, he brought peace, joy, hope, and love, these are all amazing aspects, similar to the luxurious feast that he’s comparing it to. He’s not saying, “come to death and destruction and sadness and hopefulness,” he’s saying, “come enjoy great things, eternal life and prosperity.”

Another group of servants taking out the invitations saw that those who were invited “made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise.” When they said “made light of it” I had no idea what it meant, so let’s think about it, how could you “make light” of a wedding invitation? You could say, “oh I’ve heard that one before,” or “it won’t happen, no one will marry his son.” In the gospel comparison, that could be similar to “he’s supposed to have been coming for the last 700 years, I’ll believe it when I see it,” or just the attitude that spiritual things don’t matter. The invited persons went back to their ”farm” or “merchandise,” all physical things, this could be commentary on people’s disregard for spiritual life in favor of the physical life, or materialism. The disinterested person doesn’t understand that while the Messiah might not come during their lifetime, every one, even them, will face their own personal judgment when they die.

It’s difficult to understand, from our current perspectives, why the spiritual matters so much more than the physical. I fully believe in the gospel, I believe in and love Jesus Christ, and I do my best to be a better disciple. However, even with all that going for me, I still struggle to put the spiritual first. For instance, I’m tired so I really didn’t want to work on a blog post about the scriptures. I’ve been in the primary for the last 7 years and I’m really tired of it, so I don’t really want to go to church on Sundays and do my calling. I’m an alcoholic at heart, and I really just want to escape from all the stuff I have going on. I haven’t had a drink in 12 years, and sometimes it’s still a struggle everyday. So I get how it’s difficult to focus on the “spiritual” things, when we really live in a “physical” world.

One saying that I like is “we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.” The perspective shifts who we are and what our purpose in this life is. I honestly think that when we die and we don’t have our bodies anymore, there will be a completely different truth and purpose and I think it will surprise us. It’s kind of like living your life just trying to survive, then learning after you die that the most important thing is peanut butter, everything everyone does is about peanut butter, and that’s all the focus is on. That’s probably a terrible example, but I feel like it’s going to be one of those mind shifts that we literally can’t even comprehend in this life, everything we know about spirituality and the gospel is infinitesimal. The prophets have said as much, saying things like “even the most spiritually enlightened among us has only a fraction of the knowledge of the gospel,” or “even us in this room are babes in the gospel.” So I get that it’s difficult to look at these parables sometimes and relate more to the people who blew off the invitation than those who didn’t. 
However, the third group of servants extending the invitations weren’t simply ignored, “the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.” Now it’s getting out of hand. It’s only thing to ignore an invitation, or even to decline it, but to kill the messengers that brought tidings of great joy? That’s too far. Even in ancient times with Sparta and Persia and the Greeks, the messengers who carried propositions or terms from one enemy group to another were considered off limits, to the point where killing one would mean an instant declaration of war. So just a person bringing an invitation being killed is more than just murder, it’s a declaration of war. In terms of this parable, we can interpret it the same way. The invitation was sent and those who ignored or declined it weren’t punished, their wishes were respected and they just missed out on an awesome party. But the people who turned violent were not only refuting the power and authority of the king, they were in essence declaring war on Him and his kingdom.

So far we’ve seen examples of people who were supposed to be in the kingdom by birth or conversion, but then rejected the Savior when He got there and rejected his message and his gospel and his servants. And they’ve done so in a number of ways, anywhere from just ignoring Him to continue on what they are doing, to killing his servants out of open hostility. In real life, surely there were many Jews who believed in Jesus and became converted, so it’s not necessarily an all or nothing deal. The king is not pleased, “he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” One article speculated that this was a foreshadowing to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Romans, but regardless, the message is clear, the people who rejected the message by murder, it wasn’t going to turn out the way that they thought it would, vengeance and justice were coming for them. This strengthens my theory that the destruction of a people comes around the time they start to kill the prophets.

Now the king has a feast and no one to be his guests, saying, “The wedding in ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.” And the servants went and invited all the people that they could, “both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.” The king doesn’t say, “only invite the nice people” or “ don’t invite anyone who is sick or ugly or divorced,” he wants everyone to come to the feast that wants to come. Likewise, all are invited into the gospel who will come.

The next part was really confusing for me and it took some perspective for me to understand what happened and why it’s significant. First, some background, the IM says, “in ancient times, it was sometimes the custom for wealthy individuals, such as kings, to provide invited guests with proper clothing to wear to events such as weddings.” So assuming that the king had in fact given everyone super nice clothes to wear at the wedding, it’s surprising that “when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.” Why would you come to a wedding, take the clothes offered to you for free, and then not wear them to the event? The king asked the same question, “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.”

This was the part where I struggled. I didn’t know that usually the nice clothes were provided to the guest. When I first read this I thought, they go out and ask these people who are probably poor, to come to a party and then get mad at them because they weren’t wearing nice clothes? That’s a problem. But then I learned that the clothes were provided and this man was just refusing to wear them. That’s a different story. The king gave this man a chance to explain himself, to give an excuse, “my donkey ate the clothes,” etc. but the man said nothing, he had no excuse other than “I want to do it my way.” The IM says, “Despite being invited to the wedding, this man chose to attend on his own terms rather than those of the king, and he was not permitted to remain. There are requirements for entering the kingdom of God, even though everyone is invited… We cannot participate in the great ‘marriage supper’ of the Son of God unless we have accepted and put on the protective clothing of His Atonement.”

God gives us everything we need to be deserving of entering the kingdom, but when we want to do it our way, or blow off the commandments, then we can’t stay there. Likewise, the king commands his servants, “bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.” One article suggested that the binding of hand and foot indicated that there is no escaping the judgments of God. As far as “many are called, but few are chosen,” I feel like that might imply a principle of “try to come to the kingdom of God and maybe we’ll choose you,” but in actuality, as I understand it, the principle is that anyone is welcome, He’s just stating the fact that not very many people will choose to be in the kingdom of God.