Matthew 22:1-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”
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This is a difficult parable, and has been used both as justification for exclusion by Christian groups of those who they believe are not "wearing the right wedding robe," and well as a supporting text for the belief in the eternal conscious torment view of hell in a dualistic afterlife configuration. I disagree with both of these readings, but, largely I think due to the long history of those interpretations, it is very hard not to read this parable within a dualistic/moralistic framework.
The context of the parable is very important, as it is a continuation of the narrative in Matthew 21 in which Jesus is trying to get the temple priests and Pharisees to change their way of thinking about God and what God wants for God's people, which started with Jesus being questioned about where his authority comes from.
As James Alison points out in his video homily on this passage (see below), there are a number of references in this parable to the immediately preceding 'Parable of the Wicked Tenants' (Matt. 21:33-46): there is a king and a son; the king sends out his servants twice at the beginning of the parable, but both times does not get the hoped-for response, and the second time, as in the previous parable, there is violence against the kings' servants; the king also responds to this in the way his interlocutors had suggested earlier, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death...” The interesting inversion is that in "The Wicked Tenants" it is the king dealing with the "tenants" on their own territory, as it were, but in "The Wedding Banquet" the king is inviting them into his 'territory'.
The vital clue in interpreting this parable, according to James Alison, is a play on words, or possible two meanings, of an Aramaic word, "mil-lehamma" (that's probably not 100% right, but it's something like that), which can mean "go to war" or "go to feast [literally bread]." There is a clear basis for this interpretation in the fact that the things the people give excuses for not coming to the banquet closely match the things that men of Israel can be excused for not going to war as presented in Deuteronomy 20. The parable then becomes a story of people who think that God is calling them to "holy" war, when in fact God is calling them, and all people, to a feast.
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"Jesus is playing with how the call of the wedding and the call to a holy war could be exactly the same thing, and which one you think you're in is going to be tremendously important. ... The chief priests and scribes seemed to have thought of themselves [involved in a holy war] when they regarded the proper response to the killing of the son [in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants] being an act of vengeance. ... But you have to decide what you're which one you're involved in when you come to the reality of the Son coming in, you're going to have to decide whether you're part of a holy war, in which case you're tied up in vengeance, or whether you're being called into the wedding banquet, in which case it's going to be plentifulness, entirely unmerited plentifulness, from here on out.
"Let's have a look at the passage from Zephaniah which is going to be key to this. Here is Zephaniah 1:7-9. “Be silent before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is at hand. The Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests, and on the day of the Lord's sacrifice I will punish the officials and the king's sons and and all who dress themselves in foreign attire on that day. I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill their master's house with violence and fraud.” Now I hope you can see that this is tough stuff for the chief priests and Pharisees, chief priests and scribes, to be hearing in the temple.
"This is how he says it: the king came in to see the guests he noted a man there who was not wearing a robe (so here we have someone in foreign attire) and he said to him friend (the Greek ... means companion and the interesting thing is that it can be either a military companion or a banqueting companion, this is part of the key distinction: are you part of a holy war or are you part of a guest feasting?) how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And he was speechless (you see it in Zephaniah, it says “Be silent before the Lord God,” and remember what Jesus had been doing was putting the chief priests and the scribes in a position where they needed to say by what authority he was doing these things if they wanted to get him to speak but they wouldn't; they were tongue-tied, they were bound by fear) ... so the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into outer darkness where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In other words, if you are self-bound into your fear and scandal at the coming in, you will remain bound and scandalized. That's not how you come into the feast.
"Then he says, for many are called but few are chosen, and that's an Aramaicism, Hebrew-ism if you like, for a way of saying being called and being chosen are not the same thing. And he's going back to the account of the two sons who were called at different times, one said yes and didn't, the other said no and did. In other words, the being called is one thing, the finding ourselves chosen, that's actually finding yourselves invited into the wedding banquet. For those who know themselves invited, this is something that is free and wonderful and they know that they're a part of it, they would never be inclined to take revenge. On the contrary, this is what is being set up for them.
"I hope you can see that what Jesus has been doing here has been continuing if you like the previous parable. The murderous tenants have killed the son, the son's wedding banquet is now being opened up by the same king who was the absent landlord before. The previous tenants are now the guests, but they seem to think that they have been called to a war and for that reason they've engaged in perfectly good delaying tactics for not going to war because that's what the book of Deuteronomy allows them to do. They failed to see that they're actually [invited to take part] in a wedding banquet. They can't imagine that this is what is being called, so they've rejected the invitations. And all the others are now being called, all those who didn't think of themselves as having been worthy to be called into the banquet and now are, good and bad alike. Then we get the inspection where the state of stunned silence, scandalized silence, of the ones who were not prepared to decide whether they were there as soldiers in a war, thinking the whole thing was about vengeance, or guests at a wedding banquet who were being taken into the kingdom of God."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 28 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdFbR4hpDXU)
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