God's Place at the Wedding Banquet

The gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary this week is a parable from Matthew's gospel involving a king and the organization of a wedding banquet. As always, the parable is set in a context that Jesus' listeners would have been very familiar with; in this case, a wedding banquet hosted by the king. And as always, someone in the parable does not comply with the unstated cultural norms and mores that everyone knew and expected. Jesus then uses this anomalous behavior to make a statement about the Kingdom of God.

The king extends invitations throughout the kingdom. Although not explicit in the story, we can imagine that those invited to the wedding would be those who had influence and prestige in the kingdom. The guests do not show up. The king is enraged, and has the guests murdered. The king then goes out and invites everyone who was not originally invited. We can imagine that this set of wedding guests were those who did not have any influence or power in the kingdom. Picture the king rounding up the residents of the local prisons and homeless shelters.

The parable ends with the king noticing that someone at the wedding banquet does not have a wedding robe. The king is incredulous, and has the individual murdered. The individual does not offer any response, despite the fact that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the individual does not have a robe (i.e. since the guests were gathered up at the last minute, this particular guests might not have had time to dress, and if the guest was poor, there is no way that the guest would have had the financial resources to purchase a robe).

Most readings of this parable identify the king as God. I think such a reading is inaccurate. Identifying the king as God then requires all sorts of theological gymnastics to reconcile God's nature with the king in the parable, who is villainous, capricious, and unstable.

The king in the parable is actually in line with ancient Israel's expectation for kings. In the ancient world, there were no limits on the king's authority. Ancient Israel had suffered through king after king who committed atrocities that were unthinkable. Remember that Jesus' listeners were living in the time of the Herod dynasty--local rulers who were put in place by Rome. Recall that Herod the Great was so paranoid and unstable that he issued an order when he was unable to find Jesus that all infant and toddler males be murdered.

Rather than identifying God as the king in the story, another reading that has been suggested by modern scholars that I find persuasive is to see the unnamed individual at the end of the parable as representative of God in Christ. Like Jesus, the unnamed guest at the end of the parable is accused unjustly, and is executed. Throughout the process, Jesus remains silent to the charges, as the unnamed guest does not protest his execution.

The unnamed guest in the parable, by remaining silent, sheds a light on the idiocy and mental instability of the king. Similarly, the silence of Jesus in the face of his accusers and the crucifixion event shed a light on the corruption of the Roman occupation and the uneasy alliance between Roman authority and the temple authorities. In a broader sense, the crucifixion sheds a light on all of us and our sin. The parable does not expressly say what the Kingdom of God is. It simply says what the Kingdom of God is not. The Kingdom of God is the exact opposite of the kingdom that is implicit in the parable. The Kingdom of God is so unlike the parable, that there is no way for the two kingdoms to have any way of communicating with each other. They might as well be speaking different languages.