Week 36 Matthew 22
Jesus tells a fairly long & fairly detailed two-part kingdom-of-heaven parable about a king who invited people to a wedding feast: the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son…
This parable – and parables like it – create a bit of a problem for me because a) I prefer parables that are short and don’t have too many moving parts and b) I prefer parables that Jesus explains afterward (which takes the guesswork out of the story).
In the parable of the wedding feast I have to dope out several things: the king. The feast. The slaves. The guests. Murder of the slaves. Revenge on the guests. The second invitation. A menagerie of guests. The wedding-crasher guy who gets thrown out.
I could go in a couple of directions with all these. But for now I’m sticking with just three elements (and what I think they mean):
1. The wedding feast = the kingdom-of-heaven
2. The invitation = an invitation into the kingdom-of-heaven
3. People who decline the invitation = people who decline the kingdom-of-heaven.
The one Big Thing in the parable is that a lot of people are invited into the kingdom but quite a few decide they have better things to do. I think that’s why the parable ends with: many are called, but few are chosen.
The kingdom-of-heaven invitation list started out pretty large. But there were a lot of no-shows. So the celebration is smaller than expected.
Note: quotes from Matthew 22:1 14 (ESV)