Thoughts for the Day

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, maltreated 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.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

The Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE with the Edict of Thessalonica. However, almost twenty years after his death his nephew Julian, succeeding him as Emperor, sought to turn the clock back and return to the old gods, because his complaint was that the Christians he knew were:

“Hollow eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted, and they brooded their lives away, unspurred by ambition. The sun shone and they did not see it, the earth offered them its fullness and they desired it not; they decide to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die.”

The Parable of the wedding banquet seeks to dispel this notion. In the first instance it was a message for the Pharisees and others who sought to silence Jesus. Those guests who were invited but at the last moment refused to attend stand for the Jews whom as a nation God had originally chosen for His kingdom, but who now turned His Son down. The 'good and the bad' found in the highways are the sinners (eg tax collectors and those who break the Law of Moses, etc) and Gentiles who had no thought of an invitation into God's Kingdom.

In the second instance this parable is for us. The invitation to the Kingdom of Heaven is a joyous thing, like the occasion of a wedding banquet. Christianity is not about giving up things and being solemn, it is about laughter, happy fellowship, and joy, all of which we miss if we get side-tracked by the things of the world.

Almighty God,
when we get side-tracked by today's issues
so that we put You on the back-burner,
help us to realise that we may be like those guests
who turned down their invitation to the Kingdom of Heaven..
May we embrace Your call to us with joy,
and express it in the way we live,
so that all may see it.
Amen.