NOTES for Mat 22:1-14
After the Lord told the people the parable of those invited to the wedding feast, the Pharisees, as Matthew the Evangelist writes, went and plotted how to trap Him in His words. So it was after this parable that the Pharisees' patience ran out, and they began looking for a respectable pretext for doing away with Jesus. Why? What is there in this parable that annoyed the Pharisees so much? We can answer that question if we apply the parable to ourselves. The parable needs no special explanation, at least not for religious Israelites, including the Pharisees. The king and the royal feast are familiar images of the Kingdom of Heaven and reward. Those invited to the feast are the ones whom the king could not fail to invite. They are his military commanders, governors, chief priests, cupbearers, landowners: the whole elite of the kingdom. It is clear that the Pharisees considered themselves and their people to be precisely that elite, since it was Israel that had been told that it was the Almighty's chosen portion, the God-bearing people.
But the Teacher from Nazareth says something impossible: not that the King did not want to invite his close associates and friends, but that they themselves did not want to come to the royal feast. They preferred their own affairs and their own pride, and they rejected the royal invitation. The Pharisees expect that in such a situation God will value their historical and personal merits and wait for them alone in the banquet hall. But Christ says that the king sends servants to bring in anyone at all, and the royal feast is filled with all kinds of riffraff, but with people ready to answer the royal call. For us this means that you can gain the favor of the Heavenly King only when you personally answer His call and go to Him, counting everything else as less important. But if you suppose that He will wait for you because you are such a good person, you may end up outside the door.