The Parable of the Wedding Feast, which is the Gospel Reading for today, is a part of a larger narrative arc in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph. He has cleansed the Temple, and now he is teaching before the Temple, instructing the crowds who have gathered in the city for the Passover celebration. The atmosphere is tense and highly charged, because the Passover was the commemoration of the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, but now the feast has to be held while the people of Israel are under Roman occupation. The Roman occupiers know full well that the city might go up like a tinderbox during these days, so they have reinforced their garrison with sufficient numbers to subdue any unrest.
As Jesus is teaching in the Temple, the religious leaders, most of whom have already decided to reject him, take turns at challenging him. Their goal is to trip him up, getting the crowds to turn on him or drawing the Roman soldiers in to arrest him. Jesus, for his part, has harsh words for the religious leaders, who are leading the people astray.
In last Sunday's Gospel Reading, we saw the Parable of the Tenants and that the leaders would lose the blessings they had been given, because they had rejected the grace of Christ. The Parable of the Wedding Feast is similar. In this parable, the king throws a lavish wedding party for his son, but the invited guests refuse to come. Some just ignore the invitation, some make an excuse, and others mistreat and murder the messengers. In response, the king punishes the murderers.
The message of the parable would not have been lost on the religious leaders of the time of Jesus. Throughout the Old Testament, the relationship between God and the Israelites is described as a marriage, with God as the husband and the people of Israel as the wife. In the Gospel of John, we see that Jesus starts his ministry by turning water into wine at a wedding, thereby associating himself with the divine marriage imagery of the Old Testament. In the Book of Revelation, we see that Jesus is the Divine Bridegroom and his bride is the Church. The marriage between God and his people comes to its completion in Christ coming among us and offering us union with him, the closest possible union between the Creator and his creation.
All of the Israelites are invited to the wedding feasts, which symbolizes that most intimate union with God. Many Israelites accepted the invitation. But most of the religious leaders at the time of Jesus did not. As we see in the Parable of the Tenants and the Parable of the Wedding Feast, those who rejected the grace offered to them by Christ lost the blessings they had been given - and those blessings were given to others.
But there is a deeper significance of the new people being invited into the wedding feast. As discussed in the reflection for last week, God had established a covenant with the people of Israel in Old Testament times. With the coming of Christ, the Covenant is reshaped. The New Covenant is still for Israel, but not just for Israel. The New Covenant is now open to the whole human race. The focus of the New Covenant is Christ himself, who is God Incarnate. We are all invited into the eternal, infinite love relationship that Christ offers us.
Some in the parable refuse the invitation. We do not know why. But one thing we need to bear in mind is that accepting the invitation is not a choice between various possible good outcomes. Accepting the invitation is a choice between true life and our own self-destruction. Our culture likes to tell us that all religions are just as good and that it doesn't matter which one we choose, as long as we are a nice person, as defined by the secular culture. But Christ is always very clear in the Gospels that the choice he gives us is life and death. If we choose him, we receive complete, absolute fulfillment, joy, peace, and contentment for all eternity. But if we reject him, we turn away from our only true source of satisfaction and we plunge ourselves into darkness.
Nor is it enough to accept Christ just once. Some Christians have the notion of "once saved, always saved," claiming that once they have been saved by Christ, no sin could cause them to lose the grace of God. But this is a false position. Just like a marriage relationship requires daily acts of love to build or sometimes restore the relationship, so also our relationship with God requires a daily, minute-by-minute commitment on our part. We should not be like the man who came into the wedding but then wasn't properly dressed. It's not enough to just get into the Kingdom of God here on earth. We need to live out the Christian life each day.
In the Second Reading, St. Paul shows us that when Christ is in the center, all suffering in this human life is bearable. He says: "In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:12). The suffering of this life is temporary, just for a few years. By contrast, in the First Reading, the Prophet Isaiah gives us a glimpse of the eternal reality that awaits all those who accept the love of Christ - a life of infinite, unending happiness.
||
The readings for Twenty-eight Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A are:
Isaiah 25:6-10a
Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6
Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Matthew 22:1-14
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Image Credit: Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven, from Fra Angelico Wikimedia Commons.
