Remain Humble and Wear the Robe – Matthew 22

A text – Matthew 22:1-14

22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:
22:2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
22:3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.
22:4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’
22:5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,
22:6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.
22:7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
22:8 Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.
22:9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’
22:10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
22:11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,
22:12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless.
22:13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

A reflection:

This is a story of a wedding banquet that had more than the average number of hiccups. The invited guests wouldn’t come, for some reason, and beyond that they killed the messengers who brought the invitations. So the king took vengeance on those murderers, and then invited the whole rest of the world to the feast. The parable is usually interpreted to mean that the chosen people, the Jews, had treated all of God’s servants badly through the centuries, and that at the end of time they would discover that God’s generosity extended far beyond the chosen people to the gentiles from every corner of the earth. As a gentile myself, I have always been very grateful for this generosity of God.

The part of this parable that has always stopped me and made me wonder is the detail of the man without a wedding robe. I had always pictured this guest as a poor man, perhaps a beggar, who wouldn’t have been able to get fine robes to wear to a feast. But the text does not say that. He may have been a rich gentile, after all. I read recently that the wedding robe was a simple garment designed to cover the guests’ clothing so that their status was not apparent, the way a choir robe covers a suit or dress and renders everyone in the choir essentially the same. Perhaps the man without the robe was being too proud to wear the plain robe, and the king punished him accordingly. Whatever the circumstance, we know from this story that the king is to be obeyed, and we cannot expect or demand entry into the presence of God if we are not willing to humbly obey. We have to admit who and whose we are, and that the Holy Trinity is Lord. This is hard, especially for 21^st century Americans. But I think we can get it right. We must never forget who we are.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you inviting us to your heavenly banquet, whether we are from the chosen tribes or not. Help us to remember that we don’t get there except by your invitation, and that we are to humbly and gratefully receive it as a gift from you, Lord God of the universe.  Amen.