An invitation to a banquet.

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Found Art

A precis: “Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come . . . For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

No doubt you—like I—have a whole repertoire of much quoted scripture passages that we don’t “quite get.” Like “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, any sin and blasphemy can be forgiven. But blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” Google, Yahoo or Bing can find any number of explanations that, taken together, will possibly confound more than enlighten.

The parable of the wedding feast is the angriest, bloodiest of all the parables. On its face, it simply seems to say that although God through Christ is inviting many to the heavenly feast, most reject the invitation and will suffer for it. Also, anyone that attacks the appointed “invitation deliverers” are warned that they will suffer mightily for it. And then there’s the part about the invitation to all and sundry—anyone who’ll come—and the one man who slips in through this general invitation, perhaps because he’s hungry. He too will be punished mercilessly.

A heavenly feast where the principals are wading up to their ankles in apocalyptic blood, some might say.

But it’s a parable, not a history and there’s plenty of evidence in the gospels that Jesus’ parables went over the heads of even the disciples (See Mark 4:13, for instance), one argument for guessing that some writers might have reported inaccurately what Jesus actually said. My difficulty arises when Jesus’ reported actions or words appear to be inconsistent with his character and role, (applying just one of the tools of textual criticism).

The parable obviously became an orally-transmitted Christian, early-church legend, the retelling of which appears in similar but slightly different versions in each of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). And if you or I have a problem grasping the reason for the wedding-feast parable, we’re probably not helped by Jesus’ reported answer to the disciples who want to know why he preaches to the crowds in parables: “The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that (quoting from Isaiah), ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.’”

Would a teacher ever speak to a class in code so that only his pet few could follow what he was teaching, and doing so with the purpose of preventing the befuddled rest from understanding it and perchance becoming educated?

Interpretations are plentiful regarding “what this means,” what the “secrets of the kingdom” that only the disciples must know might be. I could launch into my own interpretation but I’ve become aware that my interpretations primarily tend toward what’s called “confirmation bias,” finding in a passage a meaning that’s consistent with my personal theology, what I hope it means.

Was Jesus really preaching in code to prevent “those on the outside” from understanding? Was his speaking in parables actually a strategy of exclusion? Can this parable be squared with the one about the good shepherd? the prodigal son? the treasure hidden in a field? It’s hardly surprising that such questions would arise when parables and passages are read 20 centuries removed from the context in which they were written and supposedly understood . . . at least by some.

But as followers of Christ’s life and ministry, we must settle finally on THE MESSAGE AS WE COMPREHEND IT, or else abandon the project. Hopefully, we learn how to prevent our sinking into the abyss of frustration over the barrage of know-it-all, often-fundamentalist explanations which are, in effect, little more than attempts at consolidating preferences, a whittling away at parables like the wedding feast until they’re compatible with a specific, often-inflexible theology.

A world where love, justice, mercy finally prevail would be like a wedding feast. We ought not abandon the hope that such a banquet is possible; that the alternatives can only lead to unhappiness. This hope urges us to drop what we’re doing, accept the invitation, take a seat at the table.

That’s how I’ve chosen to puddle my ignorance, whittle-down the wedding feast parable to fit my homemade theology. What’s your version, your take?

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