Matthew 22:8

“Invite to the banquet any one you find.”

I find this story deeply disturbing.  I cannot understand why those the king invited did not come.  The king went to great lengths to prepare a royal banquet for his son’s wedding. The list contained the important people in the kingdom and the king’s friends, no doubt. What an honor it must have been to be on that list. Then the story takes a weird turn. Horrors!  Every one of the invitees had the temerity to refuse the King’s gracious invitation.

We have no idea why no one who was invited came.  Was it because the son married someone they despised? Maybe. Or did they have something against the king himself? We will never know for sure.  Be that as it may,  I stand amazed at their refusal to honor the king and his son by not attending such a landmark in the nation, a royal wedding, maybe the wedding of the heir to the throne. That they turned down such a coveted invitation boggles the mind. Is Jesus insinuating that the Jews were the invitees?

In any case, the preparations were complete, the meal was ready. Now, what?  What the king did next lay at the heart of the story.  He surprised everyone. “Go to the street corners,” he commanded, “and invite to the banquet anyone you find.”  They did so. The banquet hall was filled, not by those who were invited but by those not on the king’s list at all.  These people have the unexpected honor of participating in the king’s marriage feast for his son, the most important invitation in all the kingdom. They got in because the original invitees despised the invitation, and in so doing, despised the king himself.

Listening to Jesus were the rulers of the Jews.  Jesus had just described them!  And he described all of us in one way or another.  This parable, this little story, warrants a lot of pondering!