Being invited to a wedding can be a great honour. Wedding receptions can be very expensive so often the number of guests is limited, and couples can’t invite everyone they would like. So people usually celebrate weddings by dressing up for the occasion. Men might either pull the suit out from the back of the wardrobe or at least put on a nice pair of pants and a collared shirt. Women might choose their nicest dress or see the event as an opportunity to buy something new. It is hard to imagine people turning up to celebrate a wedding in their gardening clothes, trackies and ugg boots, or shorts, tank top and thongs. A wedding is a joyful celebration, so people usually dress in ways that are suitable for the event.
Jesus used a wedding celebration to illustrate the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 22:1-14. The King who sends out invitations to his son’s wedding represents God. His Son, of course, is Jesus. This illustration of a wedding feast to describe the eternity God has prepared for his people is used a number of times in Scripture. At this never-ending banquet, what a lot of people think of as Heaven, God puts on a never-ending party with “the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isaiah 25:6 NIV).
The first group of people who are invited to the wedding feast refuse the invitation, make excuses for not attending, and even mistreat and kill the messengers. They are usually understood as the Old Testament Israelites. God had sent his messengers, the prophets, to call them back to himself and invite them to be part of his eternal banquet. However, they refused to return to God in faith. They ignored and even murdered the prophets God had sent to them, so they were excluded from the banquet.
In their place, God invites others to his banquet. These are understood as New Testament believers in Jesus. In passages such as Ephesians 5:25-32 and Revelation 19:6-8 and 21:2, the Apostles Paul and John use the image of a wedding to describe the union between Jesus and his Church. God sends out the invitation to all people to join the celebration of this union in the gospel of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for us. We accept God’s invitation by believing the good news. All people who accept the invitation through faith in Jesus are welcomed to the feast which represents new life with God as members of his Kingdom.
This parable becomes more challenging when the King sees a person among the guests “who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding” (v11 NLT). Most of the guests were clothed in their finest garments, the wedding suits and dresses they had saved for the special occasion of the royal wedding. In sharp contrast, the person spotted by the King wasn’t dressed in a way that was appropriate for the occasion. We might imagine him turning up to the wedding in his gardening clothes, maybe the trackies and ugg boots that he wore while he was lazing around the house, or possibly shorts, tank-top and thongs or flip-flops on his feet. Even though he was invited to celebrate the union of the King’s son and his bride, and he had accepted the invitation, he wasn’t dressed in a way that showed he appreciated and valued the invitation, or that he wanted to join in celebrating their union.
Jesus continued the parable by saying, “Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (v13 NLT). This might sound harsh and unfair to us. Our mental images of a loving God might suggest that God would look the other way and let the poorly dressed guest stay and enjoy the celebration. However, even in earthly terms, we know that if we turn up to a restaurant or some other venue without the appropriate clothes, we can be refused entry. Most of us know that no shoes or no shirt means no entry. Some commentaries suggest that in a first-century Middle East culture, a wealthy person who was hosting a celebration such as wedding would have appropriate garments to give to those guests who didn’t have any of their own. The implication is that this inappropriately dressed guest wasn’t wearing the right clothes because he had no other choice, but because he had deliberately chosen to dress down when he should have been dressed to celebrate the wedding of the King’s son.
There are various ways that Bible scholars interpret what the clothes might be that our King is looking for. One way is to hear what Paul wrote in these words to the people of God:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14 NIV)
It’s important to understand that when Jesus talked about clothes, he wasn’t actually talking about what we wear. Jesus was using the illustration of the wedding guest’s clothing to talk about the way we live our lives as people who are part of God’s celebration feast now and for ever. As people who have been invited to participate in the union of Jesus and his Church, our host and loving King wants us to celebrate by the way we live and how we treat the people around us. Paul explains that we honour God and his invitation to celebrate what Jesus has done for us by showing compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience towards the people around us, just like Jesus shows to us. We join in celebrating the forgiveness we receive in Christ’s Kingdom by accepting others just as they are without expectations and freely forgiving people when they do wrong to us. The one quality that covers all of these and brings them together is Christ-like love, as we learn to follow Jesus’ teaching to love one another in the same way that he has loved us (John 13:34). This is what our King and host is looking for in our lives to show that we have accepted his gracious invitation through faith, and we want to participate in his eternal celebrations of the love he has shown to us and to all people in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for us.
The Parable of the Great Feast challenges us to ask how we live in response to the invitation God gives us to celebrate our place in his Kingdom. Do we live like it doesn’t matter? Or do we dress up and celebrate what Jesus has done for us by showing compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and Christ-like love to the people around us? God give us faith in the love Jesus has shown us, so that we accept his grace-filled invitation by trusting in him and celebrate what he has done for us in the way we live.
More to think about or discuss:
- What did you wear to the last wedding you attended? Why did you dress that way? What did the clothes you wore say about your relationship with the married couple?
- What do you think about the way the Bible describes eternal life as a wedding banquet? What do you like about it? What might you find difficult or challenging about it?
- Do you see life in God’s Kingdom as a celebration? How can you celebrate your inclusion in God’s Kingdom by living in the way Paul describes in Colossians 3:12-14?
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