I took myself away again to another church as part of my sabbatical. Tried to sneak in quietly but was outed and welcomed from the front, 'But don't talk to him about religion'.
In the Church of England lectionary churches are still working through Matthew's Gospel. Towards the end of this book we reach a number of parables of the kingdom and yesterday it was 22:1-14 - known as the Parable of the Wedding Banquet although it is by no means the only thing Jesus is reported as having said or done with the context of weddings. More wine anyone.
Dick Lucas, who has devoted a lot of his ministry to helping preachers successfully handle the word of truth, has a number of key questions for the preacher to use in preparation. One of them is 'What seems odd to me?' When you have lived and breathed the scriptures for as long as I have it is hard to take this question fully on. Nothing much seems odd to me anymore. But, trying to be a newcomer to this passage (the preacher, in a place where the tradition is of short addresses only, gave us some helpful context about Matthew but not about culture) I wondered how odd this parable would be to those unfamiliar with the culture of the big, society wedding in Jesus' day.
(Friends I know every day is a Jesus day, that was shorthand.)
Here is an odd wedding.
1. It's the son of a king getting hitched. So it's special.
2. The banquet is prepared. Banquets in those days were prepared in the guests' absence and cooked in their presence.
3. The servants go to get people who have been invited. Invitations in those days were probably word of mouth. Once invited you got ready to come when you were told. It was not 7.30 for 8.00 on Tuesday 5th.
4. They don't come. This is outrageously rude. The king would normally be respected and it would be the well-to-do who had been invited, countrywide.
5. They are re-asked, reminded that the food is ready to be cooked. It isn't 'on the table' but the butchery has taken place and there are no fridges,
6. The invited guests kill the servants who have invited them. OK, now it gets really odd.
7. The king sends his army to destroy the city of the rude guests. That escalated quickly.
8. Then he invites anyone who is hanging around - good and bad - to come in their place.
9. Then he seriously chastises a guy who is not wearing the right clothes. Maybe he didn't have any? Where did the others get theirs from?
So what, apart possibly from all of it, seems odd to you?
Because it is a parable. And it tells us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. And in parables the secret to understanding is often in identification of the characters. I think this parable (which appears in slightly different form in Luke and the rarely referenced Gospel of Thomas) has been through several stages of redaction. The verse about the army destroying the city may have been Matthew's own commentary on what had happened to his people between Jesus' death and his writing.
But if we wrestle with these questions:
1. Who is the king?
2. Who is the son?
3. Who are the servants who have been put to death?
...we will be well on the way but will have no application. If we take this final question we will be there:
4. If I have been unexpectedly invited to something special, and I am 'bad', what do I have to change in order to come in? What is appropriate behaviour, for a guest?
(Thanks to Tom Wright 'Matthew for Everyone' and Geza Vermes 'The Authentic Gospel of Jesus' for the help.)
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