In this parable of the wedding banquet, we have another tale that sounds like it’s been put together rather clumsily from two or maybe more sources not related to each other, which the Evangelist has combined to back up a point that perhaps was circulating around the Christian communities, without a story to support it. So the Evangelist assembled a tale which begins calmly enough, but which quickly turns into a tale of violence, retribution, and apparently arbitrary abuse. All of this is supposedly coming out of the mouth of Our Lord. We may rightly ask, What is going on here? What point is the Evangelist making, and how is it related to the content of the story? Why is this story in Scripture at all?
It’s clear almost from the beginning, that the king in the story is disliked and disrespected. His kingly rank is not enough to attract or compel anyone at all to come to a wedding banquet for his son. Apparently the son isn’t respected any more than the father is. The king’s agents are unable to entice the invitees with a description of the delights that await them. Some of the invitees go so far as to kill the king’s agents. The king responds in kind. This is not an edifying tale.
The king sends his agents into the streets, to gather guests, and they succeed in gathering enough to fill the hall, “both good and bad.” Apparently all of them but one are dressed appropriately for the event. The king tosses out the wrongly-dressed guest, rather unfairly it seems, not into the street where he presumably came from, but into the “outer darkness.”
The king, and some of his original invitees at least, remind me of gangsters. Some of the invitees, as the story says, turn on the king’s agents and kill them. The king responds in kind. He then seeks to buttress his position by seeking support among ordinary people, much as someone like Al Capone would have done, back in the day. But even then, the king’s gangster-like character comes through, in his rough treatment of the ill-dressed guest. The king is reminding everyone who’s boss.
What is this story doing in Scripture? In our world, we are accustomed to hearing about violence, but for the most part, it can seem remote from us, until we witness it or experience it. The story reminds us that violence is never far away, that even a wedding banquet can be a cause of violence. Not even good intentions, not even an opportunity for celebration, can keep it at bay all the time. The story is in Scripture to remind us that we need to be aware of the choices that are always before us. The original invitees could have gone to the banquet, could have included themselves among the chosen, could have realized that they were among the chosen, as indeed we all are, even before they heard the invitation. Some of the invitees choose the darkness, when they attack the king’s agents. This stark choice, between light and dark, between celebration and, ultimately, murder, between life and death, runs through the story. The original guests are so attached to their idea of the king as a person not to be respected, that they can’t let go of this idea long enough to celebrate his son’s joyful occasion. In other words, their egos get in the way of their chance to grow spiritually in a celebration of life, and they cling instead to a love of the outer darkness.
That is the meaning of the story of the ill-dressed guest, missing a proper wedding garment. We are all provided with such a wedding garment at baptism. We sometimes shed it, or we lose it, or we cover it with other garments not suitable to our calling. If we come to the banquet without it, we are in effect choosing to send ourselves into the outer darkness. This serious parable presents in stark terms the spiritual choices before us. The violence of the tale we may understand as the spiritual violence we can do to ourselves and each other, when we reject or ignore an invitation to join the wedding celebration, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Let us all accept the invitation, and come attired in the garment that Our Lord has provided us in baptism. Amen. (15.X.17 Adv.not preached) (10.X.20 Adv. Latin)
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