The Parable of the Wedding Banquet is Extremely WTF

Photo of a huge group of wedding guests. Image source.

In Matthew 21:28-22:14, Jesus tells 3 parables:

1. The parable of the two sons
2. The parable of the tenants
3. The parable of the wedding banquet

(go over to the link and read them if you haven't)

The basic idea of these 3 stories is the same: At the beginning of the story, there's a certain person or group who is "in" and has the favor of an authority figure, but later in the story they disrespect or disobey the authority figure, so they are rejected/punished and a different/unlikely/underdog group becomes the new "in" group.

Different Christians can interpret these parables in COMPLETELY different ways, depending on their understanding of who the "in" and "out" groups are supposed to represent:

• In the evangelical church, I learned that the "in" group at the beginning of the story was religious people who worked hard to follow all the rules and believed they were earning God's favor. And they get rejected and in the end there's a new "in" group, which is people who have a personal relationship with Jesus.
• Currently, my interpretation (as a Christian feminist) would be that the original "in" group is religious people who think they're "in" because they believe all the correct things and have a "personal relationship with Jesus." And then in the end, they are rejected in favor of the new "in" group, which is poor and marginalized people and those who are working to bring the kingdom of God (which I define as equality, justice, etc) regardless of whether they believe the "correct" things about God.

I'm not going to make an argument about which one Jesus "really means" is the "in" group and "out" group, because it comes from one's overall big-picture understanding of what Christianity is. In other words, in order to convince an evangelical that my interpretation is right and theirs is wrong, I'd first have to convince them to stop being evangelical. Both interpretations I mentioned above are totally logically consistent with their corresponding ideologies about what the bible is, what the gospel is, what the point of Christianity is, etc. So no point in trying to argue about this one little parable- I'd have to make an argument that addresses that whole ideology. (Hey actually, that's more or less what my entire blog is. So there.)

But wow, we have to talk about the parable of the wedding banquet. Because, like, these 3 parables are more or less the same story, until the parable of the wedding banquet goes REALLY OFF THE RAILS.

So you have a king sending invitations to his son's wedding. And then this:

“But they [those who were invited] paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

Meme that says "Well that escalated quickly." Image source.

o_O

Okay...

And then the timeline is incredibly weird. Like, the king sends messengers to tell people "everything is ready", then they kill the messengers, then the king burns their city, and then he sends more messengers to tell people "the wedding banquet is ready." Like, I don't know how long it takes to attack and burn down a city, but it seems like maybe the food would be cold by then?

I mean, it's not real, it's just a story that Jesus told, so maybe we shouldn't get stuck on the fact that the timeline makes no sense. (Sort of like how it's better not to try to figure out exactly how long Luke was on Dagobah.) But............ like how could Jesus expect his listeners to just overlook such an obvious, giant plot hole?????

But this is the really WTF part:

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Whatttttttttt

All right this sounds like the worst-nightmare scenario for anyone who's ever worried, "I don't know what I'm supposed to wear to this event... What if I'm overdressed? What if I'm underdressed? What if everyone else stares at me because I'm wearing the wrong thing?" Like why would the king (who apparently represents God) treat this poor embarrassed guest so cruelly just because he didn't know what the dress code was? 

And the part that really gets me is when he says "friend," like he's pretending to be all nice right before he has this guy violently kicked out of the wedding. That's downright creepy.

I've done a bit of googling and most of the interpretations I've found fall into these two groups:

1. The "wedding clothes" represent living the way a Christian is supposed to live. Yes, God invites everyone, but God still has requirements you have to follow. This isn't "cheap grace"- you have to take God's rules seriously. (This article on Desiring God takes this approach.)
2. The host of the wedding would have given all the guests wedding clothes. So this guy really has no excuse for not wearing them. (See here and here for articles which take this interpretation.) If we think in terms of modern American weddings, it would NOT be like "why aren't you wearing wedding clothes?" it would be like "why don't you have a card with your table number?"

Here's my issue with option 1: It takes an economic issue and changes it into an entirely-spiritual issue. Some of the guests in the story would have been too poor to afford nice wedding clothes- Jesus makes it clear that the king's servants are just going out on the streets and bringing in anyone they can find. I think Christians often treat parables about poverty and economic issues as if they're only about abstract spiritual things, and that's a HUGE PROBLEM. (See my post The Parable of the Living Wage.) So I'm very much not okay with taking the issue of a guest not having enough money for wedding clothes (which seems, to me, like the most likely explanation for why this character isn't wearing them, even though it's not stated in the story) and then claiming it's not really about that at all, it's actually about living in obedience to God or whatever.

And here's my issue with option 2: It seems too easy. Like, as a reader, I'm shocked that the king would be so cruel to this poor guest who turns up wearing the wrong thing. To explain it away as "the king would have provided wedding clothes" takes my shock and confusion and turns it into... nothing. Like "...oh, okay then" and we just shrug and move on with life because as good Christians who believe everything God does in the bible is automatically good, we were desperate for an explanation to excuse the king's actions, and we got a very nice convenient one here. But... doesn't it seem like Jesus must have included that "shocking" ending for a reason?

(I feel the same way about every explanation I've ever heard for that passage in John 6 where Jesus says his followers must "eat my flesh and drink my blood." Church people have all sorts of ways to explain how it's actually a metaphor for some completely normal spiritual practice that Christians should do. But I don't buy that. Jesus was using very graphic language here- he intended it to be offensive and shocking, and a lot of followers ended up deserting him because of it. If you explain it in a way that completely removes that shock, I think you've missed the point. Personally I don't know what his point was, but it definitely wasn't something as tame as "this is a metaphor for our reliance on God.")

I did find an article that had a different take on it:

This parable makes no sense to me if attire for the banquet was not included in the invitation. How can a host invite “all the people they could find” so that the hall could be “filled with guests” and then get upset that someone in there was not wearing the proper attire, if such attire was not also provided? Did the host really think that everyone they found on the streets, even the poor and barely-scratching-by artisans, would have fine clothing for a wedding banquet of the wealthy?

I’ll freely admits that this is taking an interpretive liberty, but let’s assume for a moment that attire was provided as an option for those who needed such, so that no matter how poor you were, you had no excuse not to attend. If that’s the case, that gives us an entirely different ending. Who is the parable being told to in Matthew? This cluster of parables is aimed at “the chief priests and Pharisees” (Matthew 21.45) and the political place of privilege they held. In the story, someone refuses to wear clothing appropriate for the event. Whether this is a wealthy person refusing to be associated with the poor, or the poor refusing to be seen along side the exploitative rich, it’s a show of arrogance or separateness. It’s possibly an expression of one’s exceptionalism in protest to the inclusion of those he feels are “Other” or beneath him. For him to don the same attire as everyone else would be to intimate that there was no difference, at least at this banquet, between himself and those he feels should not be present. He is better than the others around him here and he will not be included on their same level. For him this is a rejection of the reality that we are all interconnected, we are part of one another. We are not as separate from one another as we often think. We share each other’s fate. In fact, we are each other’s fate. It could be because of the guest’s desire to be seen as separate, or as reluctantly participating with everyone else, that the host so angrily responds to his lack of attire.

The context is the eschatological banquet that some people in Galilee and Judea believed symbolized the distinction between this age of violence, injustice, and oppression and the coming age where all injustice, violence, and oppression would be put right. But this new age in Jesus’ world view is egalitarian: everyone receives what is distributively just. No one has too much and no one has too little, we all, together have enough. So garments could have been justly distributed, making everyone equal. But if a person has spent their life working to be “first,” few things could be worse than to be faced with a world of equity and equality and being thrown into the same group with everyone else. They believe they are better, chosen, extraordinary, or exceptional. They are not like everyone else and they refuse to embrace our connectedness. But whether we acknowledge the truth of our reality or not, we are already in this together.

Those who choose the path of exclusion are themselves eventually excluded from a world that’s being put right through inclusive egalitarianism. As we discussed previously, exclusionary thinking is a self-fulfilling ethic. Again, when you see who is welcomed and affirmed, when you see how wrong you were about those you thought should be forbidden from attending the same “banquet” with you, it’s going to make you so angry! This is the gnashing of teeth Jesus and Luke describe (cf. Acts 7:54) So if any end up in outer darkness, it will not be because they could not accept their own invitation. It will be because they could not accept the inclusion and equal affirmation of those they feel should be excluded.

I don't take a position on whether or not this is the "right" interpretation, but my initial thought is it makes a lot more sense than the other 2 explanations I mentioned above. So the host provided wedding clothes, but that one guy refused to wear them because he thought he was better than the other guests and didn't want to be seen as the same as them. Now that gets into some interesting territory about how not everyone will see "inclusion" as a good thing, if people they think are "unworthy" end up being included. (And I personally believe there have to be limits to inclusion- you can't "include" dangerous/abusive/violent people who make the environment unsafe for others.)

(Note, though, that this interpretation doesn't really help with the last line of the parable- "For many are invited, but few are chosen." Yeah I'm very NOT OKAY with that line.)

All right those are my thoughts on this section of Matthew. 3 parables which are basically the same, until the parable of the wedding banquet gets REALLY WEIRD at the end. Readers: Any other thoughts or interpretations about it?

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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

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