I keep saying that parables are tricky, and they really are. Using everyday images and experiences, Jesus told these seemingly simple stories to lift up surprising perspectives about who God is and how Jesus’ followers are called to live. Parables are not simply allegories, metaphors, or analogies, and they are not to be taken literally. Parables must be viewed in the context of everything Jesus did and taught and all that we know about God in scripture (and our own lives).
This week’s gospel includes another parable where Jesus calls out the religious leaders (and us) for arrogance and entitlement. It includes a lavish wedding banquet hosted by a king. Invited guests are uninterested and needlessly violent, and do not come to the banquet. They instead abuse and murder the servants who come to call them. The king is enraged at this insult and violence and destroys them. Then, this king sends his servants into the streets to invite everyone they find into the wedding banquet and the hall is filled. Finally, the king finds someone at the banquet who is not dressed appropriately and casts the man out.
I want very much to believe that Jesus is using hyperbole in the parable’s violence to get our attention, to help us realize that we are invited to an amazing banquet by God, and we are sometimes foolishly dismissive of that generous invitation. The king’s vengeance is troubling and inconsistent with a God known for love and forgiveness and second chances. Yet, it is consistent with God’s love and wide inclusion to gather everyone in the streets (the good and the bad) to come into the banquet. Then, as soon as we read about the full hall, we find that the king casts out someone who is not properly attired. What’s that about? How does that fit with a God who has thrown open the doors to the banquet and invited everyone in? Or does it?
Ideally, when we explore parables, they leave us with questions. How did the original audience hear the parable? What is the parable showing us about God? What is the parable inviting us to realize about ourselves? How is God speaking to each of us through this parable today? Sometimes those answers are easy to find, but other times they are not. Sometimes we find them comforting and other times unsettling. Each time we encounter a particular parable, we may find it speaks to us differently.
I’m going to keep trying to puzzle out the final encounter in this week’s parable. As I continue to wonder about it, I believe that God’s love for us is boundless, unconditional, and quite unreasonable. I believe that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more and nothing we can do to make God love us less. I believe we are used by God to share love and compassion and hope in the world, but I do not believe that God will toss us out for being ill-prepared or poorly dressed – God knows that we are always ill-prepared and poorly dressed and continues to welcome and work through us.
Peace,
Alicia
weekly prayer | Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet from Matthew 22