NOTES for Mat 22:1-14

The meaning of the parable of the wedding feast is, on the whole, clear enough: even in the pre-Christian period such a feast was a symbol of the messianic Kingdom, with the King understood as God Himself and the son as the Messiah promised by God. The wedding, in turn, was the marriage between the Messiah and the people of God, marking the moment of the Kingdom's complete and final triumph over all who oppose God and the Messiah He has sent. But on Jesus' lips the traditional plot takes on new shades of meaning.

We have an antithesis before us: on the one hand, those who were invited and expected turned out not to be ready to come, so that the King had to gather people from the streets, collecting the destitute and the poor, who are ready to come into any house where they are invited and received; on the other hand, for the person who refused the wedding garment, entry to the feast is closed, even though he readily responds to the invitation.

Strict requirements about clothing could seem out of place when the matter concerns the poor, if not for one historical detail: the host himself usually sent the feast clothing to the invited guests along with the invitation, and this clothing was proof that the person sitting at the table was not an impostor, but had truly been invited to the celebration. As can be seen, by those invited the Savior in this case means those who considered themselves the messianic remnant spoken of by the prophets.

The Pharisees, above all, considered themselves such a remnant. They were certain that the Messiah would come first of all to them and for their sake: they had long been waiting for Him, were always ready to meet Him, and would do so not simply with joy, but also with a sense of a duty well fulfilled, since they had made the goal of their whole life following the Torah as they understood it.

But the whole people of God, of course, were also expecting the Messiah, although popular ideas about Him were very far from the Gospel. Yet when they met the real Messiah, everything turned out to be entirely different from what both the Pharisees and the common people had expected.

Those who seemed to have been waiting for the Messiah's coming and the arrival of the Kingdom proved, in practice, not to be ready to meet Him and accept the Kingdom He brought. Some were distracted by the cares and values of the untransformed world ("fields and trade"); others preferred their own tradition and their own religiosity, hating both the Messiah and the Kingdom, which did not fit their ideas in any way and did not correspond to their concepts.

The destitute remained, the poor, those who have nothing to lose because they possess nothing. Such people respond readily. But they, like everyone who comes to the feast, absolutely need the wedding garment.

Meanwhile, some of those invited evidently decided that they were already good enough, and that their poverty itself gave them a right to the Kingdom. But this is not so, and those who disregard the wedding garment very soon become convinced that no one has a right to the Kingdom, not even the poor. Only the garment given by the King Himself opens the way into the Kingdom for those invited and appearing at the threshold. And that means the way to salvation as well.