Matthew 22:1-14           Invite everyone you find

The parable we hear today is the third of three parables that Jesus aims at the chief priests and the elders about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a great wedding banquet and this is symbolic of God’s relationship with God’s people. When invitations to this feast are rejected, we are told that the king sends troops to destroy the city. It’s a rather fierce reaction when we consider the king represents God. The context here is important, as Matthew’s community would have been trying to make sense of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (AD 70) including the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the holiest of places in Judaism. Some probably saw it as punishment from God for Jesus ‘death. The judgement sound harsh, but the criticism here is directed at some of the religious leaders and how they have interpreted the Law for ordinary people, often in extremely oppressive ways. If God is portrayed as a tyrant in this parable, it is because some of the religious elite have inflicted this image of God on the people. If the parable challenges us to do anything, it is to critique certain interpretations of how God operates in the world. In Jesus’ teaching, the Kingdom is opened wide and new guests are invited from the ‘main streets’; he says: ‘invite everyone you find’. The invitation to the banquet is not restricted to the social elite and powerful; it is wide open to those considered unwanted and the hall is ‘filled with guests’. Matthew’s addition to this parable about the wedding robe seems harsh; how could this poor man be expected to find wedding robes at such short notice? There was a tradition in the early Christian community that ‘putting on’ a new robe was symbolic of a new way of life, ‘cloth yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience … cloth yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:12, 14). These are attitudes that the Christian community are to wear so that everyone can attend this mighty feast. Copyright © Triona Doherty & Jane Mellett. The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Matthew (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2022).

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“The Church is not a select circle of the immaculate, but a home where the outcast may come in… a hospital where the broken-hearted may be healed, and where all the weary and troubled may find rest.                           James H. Aughey