Tuesday, 11 March 2008

How to choose guests for your wedding: advice from the New Testament

From Matthew Chapter 22

Jesus spoke to them again 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, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers 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, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.


This passage, of course, wasn't written to instruct on how to choose one's wedding guests. It's a parable, meaning that it's intended as allegory. It's apocalyptically eschatological and it’s messianic, meaning that it talks about the personhood and role of Jesus in the end of the world. It was written, I think, to challenge people on their response to God and to the people around them. Weddings, as such, don’t really come into it.

So I know that to take this as a literal model of how to respond to those refusing to come to our wedding would be to sidestep the point of the parable. By already having ended my quotation where I did, I'm aware that I've left out the most disconcerting and uncomfortable bit of the story.

However...

What would happen if I were to seek out and invite a dozen completely random and previously unconsidered people to replace those who've refused to come?

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