Jesus spoke to them 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.
Then he sent some more servants and said, "Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.
'But they paid no attention. and went off-one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreating them, and killed them. The king was enraged. he sent his army and destroyed those murders and burned their city. " then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find. So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, good and bad, the wedding hall was filled with guests.
But when the King came into see his guests, he noticed a man not wearing wedding clothes. Friend he asked, " how did you get in here without wearing wedding clothes?" The man was speechless.
" Then the King told his attendants,' Tie him hand and foot, throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are invited, but few are chosen.
Although the son was killed in the previous parable, here he is alive again. As Jesus tells these parables on Tuesday of Holy week, he is saying good Friday will most certainly be followed by Easter Sunday. That point might have gone right over their heads at the time, but after Jesus resurrection, when his disciples had the benefit of hindsight, they were able to see things they had missed before. And that is why we should read the scriptures over and over again. Nobody gets it all the first time.
Not only is the son alive again, He is getting married. John was given a glimpse of this wedding, which he records in Revelation 19:7-9 and 21;2; " Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him:
for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen clean and right, for fine linen is the righteousness of Saints. Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is his bride. Husbands and wives will no longer be married to each other in heaven, as Jesus says in Matt. 22:30, because we will be married to Christ." Don't you realize that God was speaking directly to you when He said, 'I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? So God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matt 22;31). God intends our marriages to be a preparation for and a foretaste of the wedding feast in heaven.
The people who are invited first are the Jews. When the refused the Kings invitation, the gentiles are invited.. In this parable, Jesus warns both Jews and Gentiles that Judgment will surely fall upon all who show contempt for God's gracious invitation. The Jews show their contempt in two ways: " some paid attention" to the messengers and went about their business while others actively mistreated the servants and killed them. the Gentile shows his contempt by failing to wear the wedding clothes the the King had provided. The former was killed and their city is burned. ( A reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70), while the latter was thrown out into the darkness where their shall be weeping and gnashing of the teeth., an expression Jesus often uses for the eternal suffering in Hell. It is significant that the King invites us to a wedding rather than a funeral. "It is the same invitation Jesus issues in a subsequent parable,"
Come and share your Master's happiness. and the bountiful table the king has prepared is the same feast Jesus referred to earlier: I say that many will come from the east and the west , and will take their places at the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven" ( Matthew 8:11) A Foretaste of this feast is offered every Sunday, at the Altar.
All the people who are invited to the kings banquet re unworthy of his invitation.
When the original invitee's refused to come, the king said to his servants, " Those I invited did not want to come. So he sent his servants out into the streets to invite anyone who they could find. Jesus sends us out into the world to invite to the banquet. This is the mission of Christ's church, which began on Good Friday as the penitent thief, and the Roman centurion were moved to confess their faith in Jesus: and one of the criminals which were hanged railed on him saying, if thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But, the other rebuked him saying, "Dost not thou fear God", seeing thou art in the same sentence? and we indeed justly.; for we receive due reward for our deeds: But this man has done nothing wrong, And he said unto Jesus, Lord remember me when thou come into thy kingdom. and Jesus said: And Jesus said unto him; for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready. (Matt, 23; 40-43; Matthew 27:54) now when the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earth quake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying Truly this was the son of God. Every sinner who receives this invitation in pentitent faith must confess with Luther, " I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my lord, or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel. When you bring sin into being, you distort the whole world, that much more. The story of Noah, for instance, says that the "Earth is corruptly on earth." and God himself put the blame where it lies: " the Earth is full of violence because of them" (Gen 6:11-13). So, when one person sins, everybody has to put up with the consequences, too- sin is a sort of air-pollution: You can't hide it, and it ruins the quality of life everywhere, even far from its source ( as in Is 24:5). We're all tied together in the great scheme of things, which explains why bad things happen to good people. If we were all the way Adam and Eve were before the fall, there wouldn't be any death or taxes or crime or traffic jams or anything. God made the world, but we spoiled it.
But note that original sin only changed man's state; it didn't change human nature. People were made in the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:26). and created good.; people can act badly, but people are by nature good.
You have to be perfectly clear about this one point, because a lot of Christians separated from the church teach that humans are by nature depraved, sinful, and wicked- this is the point that all those fire- and brimstone preachers have tried to make for the past three hundred years.The innate goodness of human beings is a pivotal point in the cycle, because it means that people can attain Heaven, where nothing bad is allowed (Mt.5;8, Rv 21;27).
. These are the people who come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb, which cleanses from sin, which is provided by God. The Hymn writer teaches us to sing,"Jesus your blood and righteousness are my beauty and, my glorious dress. " The righteous robes are given to us in in Holy Baptism, as Paul explains, " All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
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