Pentecost 20 -2026
Matthew 22:1-14
Marian Free
In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-Bearer, Life Giver. Amen.
There are at least three versions of the parable of the banquet – the awful, vengeful, bloody and violent version that we have just heard, the more irenic version recorded by Luke and one attributed to Yohanan ben Zakkai who tells a story of a king who invited some servants to a wedding feast but (who purposely) omitted to give them a time. In Zakkai’s version those with foresight dressed for the wedding and waited at the king’s door while the remainder continued with their work. When the king announced that the feast was ready, those who were dressed and waiting were allowed in and the others were made to stand in the dining room and watch the others eat.[1]
In Luke’s account the person extending the invitation is a man not a king and the occasion not a wedding but simply a banquet. The excuses of the guests are more sincere and more justifiable – I have married a wife, I have bought five yoke of oxen, I have bought a field. Each asks to be excused – whereas in Matthew the invited guests offer not excuses in the first instance and in the second instance their reaction is either to pay no attention and continue whatever they were doing or to seize, torture and kill the servants sent with the message. When the servant reports that those invited have refused to come, the host in Luke sends the servant to bring in the poor, crippled, blind and lame, to go into the highways and byways and to compel people to come so that the house may be filled.
According to Matthew however, the king is so angry that he sends his troops to destroy the cities of those who had refused to come and/or had killed his servants. It seems like a gross over-reaction and the only plausible explanation is that Matthew (or his source) is referring to the destruction of Jerusalem which would have been fresh in the minds of his listeners. (Such violence, though of a completely different level, is not inconsistent with the “miserable death” inflicted on the tenants who tried to take control of the vineyard in the previous parable.)
It is a long time (over thirty years) since I have been forced to admit that I really don’t understand the text set for the day – and this despite presumably preaching on this parable more than ten times! This week, as I meditated on the parable and read a number of commentaries, I realised that I really don’t understand what it is that Matthew is trying to tell us. (And that is even if I omit the second parable about the guest without wedding clothes.)
There are, unsurprisingly, a number of social-cultural factors that need to be taken into account when approaching the parable. The first, as I have mentioned on previous occasions, is that of honour and shame. An invitation to dinner, especially an invitation from the king is a great honour and not attending slights the host in such a way that the his honour is diminished. Refusing to attend, especially with such flimsy excuses (or none) as is the case In Matthew is a great slight. No wonder the king is angry, his position has been disrespected and worse, his servants have been killed. In order to recover his honour, he needs to demonstrate that the original invitees can be destroyed and easily be replaced.
In each version of this parable there are two invitations – given or as in Luke implied. In the Ancient Middle East, much as in the Asia-Pacific today, time is much more fluid than it is for us. Two thousand years ago time was told by the sun and the seasons by the moon. Banquets, as the texts suggest, included slaughtering and cooking whole beasts. It was impossible to give more than a general idea of the time. There was no such thing as a nine-to-five working week. Those who were invited could be assumed to be of a certain social status, with slaves to do everything that was required and very little in the way of work that could not be done at some other time. An initial, generic invitation gave the intended guests due warning of the event and the second “invitation” indicated that everything was ready.
Scholars believe that Luke and Matthew are so different that they must have come by their material from a different source. What they have in common is the determination that the banquet hall be filled and if it cannot be filled with those who were invited, guests appropriate for a king or a rich man, then those who would not typically have been invited will be brought in to fill the wedding hall.
Here Luke is more specific, true to his interest in the marginalised, his reproduction of the parable insists that the poor and the crippled, and blind and lame take the place of those who have refused the invitation. Matthew’s final invitation (or demand) differs in that the servants are sent out twice in order to completely fill the hall and the king insists that the bad and the good be brought in. The new invitation is completely indiscriminate. (His original listeners however will have immediately remembered the parable of the net, in which the haul of fish includes the good and bad, but the two will be sorted at the judgement and the bad will thrown into a fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.)
So, what does Matthew want us to take away from the parable of the banquet? That the king is a vengeful, easily offended despot who will utterly destroy not only those who refuse the invitation but who will also destroy their cities and and all that is in them. Or, is a key message that the king is at liberty to invite whomever he will – including the least expected?
Unfortunately, we don’t have a Time Machine, so it is impossible to determine what Jesus actually said, or what message the evangelists intended that their audience receive.
Consistent with all that we know of the gospels, it would be logical to conclude that what lies behind the parable is an insistence on God’s unconditional, indiscriminate love and a deeply held belief that no one is outside that love.
God does exclude or judge, but we, by our refusal of the invitation, a failure to accept that we are loved, exclude ourselves and are thereby self-condemned to a Godless existence.
It is my fervent hope, that each person here can confidently affirm that they have accepted the invitation and now bask in God’s love.
[1] Cited in Matthew – a New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by W.F, Albright and C.S.Mann, The Anchor Bible, 1971.
Tags: historic/culural, honour/shame, invitation, Mediterranean, Pacific time
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