The Great Supper –A king throws a wedding banquet for his son. Trouble brews
when the hand-delivered invitations are repulsed and the messengers ill-treated. In the
end, the king gathers a menagerie of guests who never dreamed of attending until at last
the wedding hall is filled.
How does Matthew portray the story? – Matthew binds the previous
story with the two sons story to form a narrative trilogy; all are referents to
Israel’s resistance to God’s invitation, and judgment. In Matthew’s
allegorical retelling, the original invitation equates the plot with the call of Israel
and the rejection; in the earlier parable, the servants are the messengers or prophets
that God has sent. The blanket rejection of those invited suggests a conspiracy or
rebellion. [1]
Double-Edged Point –Those who find themselves the intended
guests, the original guests must take care that they do not miss God’s day of
visitation, miss the invitation to participate in God’s plans. But on the other hand,
those who find themselves surprisingly in God’s great banquet hall cannot presume on
grace, and are thus warned of what happens to those do nothing but show up.
- Wedding planners suggest that about 25% of a couple’s wedding invitees will not
actually attend the wedding or reception. What wedding invitations have you declined? Why?
What would cause wedding invitees not to come?
- Ever show up at a gala ill-dressed? Isn’t the king being a little too rash when he
banishes the ill-clad guest?
- If this suggests some type of mission, how might this story change or transform our way
of doing outreach or mission?
Barbara Brown Taylor has published a
homily on this passage that focuses primarily the appropriate dress part of the parable: Home
By Another Way, by Barbara Brown Taylor (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1999), pp.
192-196.
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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible VIII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), page 419.
