One of the great blessings of being a pastor is the number of weddings you end up being involved with.  Weddings are, for the most part, such joyous occasions.  To begin with, you tend to only invite to weddings the people that you love the most, family, friends, those kinds of people are the ones that typically get invited to weddings.  They are celebratory times in which love between a couple is celebrated as being given through the Lord.  Of course, I can’t help but remember my own wedding day as the topic of weddings come up.  Ours was a simple, joyful affair filled with friends and family and just enough drama to let you know we’re a real family.  One funny thing happened.  You see, my sister’s 5-year-old boy was drafted to be the ring bearer.  But, at the time, Alex, my nephew, was a bouncy, trouncy little boy.  So, my sister, not wanting for her son to lose our rings, really tied those rings onto the pillow.  Sadly, somehow, they got really knotted on their such that we couldn’t get them off the pillow.  Now, you can imagine.  There we are, in front of all our guests ready to put rings on one another but, no, wait, they’re stuck.  They aren’t coming off!!  Thankfully, the pastor who was marrying us was a bit of a boy scout.  Next thing you know, the pastor is reaching up under his robes to remove, ta da, a pocket knife.  He very deftly cut those rings off the pillow and got us back underway.  It’s a humorous moment looking back on it now but, at the time it was quite hair-raising.  But it was a minor hiccup on an otherwise flawless wedding day. 

  Chances are you have some fond memories of your own wedding day, don’t you?

  Well, today’s parable is about a wedding.  I will confess up front, this one isn’t quite as popular as some of the other ones we’ve already looked at for good reason.  Hear now the parable of the wedding feast from Matthew 22:1-14:   “And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son,3 and sent his servants[a] to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited,  “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.  11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

  As I said, this parable isn’t as popular as some of the others we’ve already looked at for good reason, I think.  We tend to favor depictions of God which cast him more as a benevolent grandfather type who just loves and loves and loves and is never involved with a cross word.  This parable, with its emphasis on judgment, casts God in a fairly different light than we’re typically accustomed from hearing from our pulpits. 

  But that’s jumping the gun.  The first thing we need to get a handle on is the context of this parable.  Jesus at this point is in the city of Jerusalem where he will soon be arrested.  Already by this point, people are grumbling about Jesus, he is upsetting the status quo at a time that’s already filled with tensions and the energy of the anticipated Passover.    This is the third parable Jesus teaches at the time.  The first parable, the parable of the two sons deals with making choices.  Two sons are approached by a father, calling each out to work in the vineyard.  The first says he will unto go but ultimately does.  The second son says he was going to go but doesn’t.  The second parable of the tenants where a landowner puts tenants in charge of his fields only to have them refuse his wishes and kill his son.  These two parable point in a negative light towards the very priests and Pharisees that Jesus was teaching to at the time.