NOTES for Mat 22:1-14

A believer usually faces a difficult and important question: why do some people, like himself, see the meaning of their life in faith and in God, already now trying to live in His Kingdom, while others indifferently turn away, finding other meanings and values for themselves? This question also stood before the evangelist, who lived at a turning point when many of his people discovered Christ for themselves, while many preferred not to notice Him. He found the answer for himself in the words of Jesus addressed to the Jerusalem elders shortly before His execution.

"Many are called, but few are chosen": access to the Kingdom is open to all who desire it, regardless of their language, nationality, culture, or occupation; but those who truly want it enter, those for whom this reality matters more than the most important things - work, trade, or family - and who are ready to answer the King's invitation. And conversely, everyone who does not need all this, for whom it is not important, has the right and freedom to refuse, even after receiving a personal invitation. This is nothing like compulsory "universal happiness" or a closed club "for our own." All are called, and anyone who desires it will become "chosen."

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.

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.

When reading the Gospel parables, one way or another we put ourselves in the place of different characters. Perhaps at that time the disciples saw in the figures of this parable the Pharisees and sinners, or the Jews and Gentiles. Today we can read it closely and see ourselves both in those who were invited but disregarded the wedding feast—for we have been invited—and in the “bad and good” who entered undeservedly—for we did not deserve it. But something unites those who were “invited” with the man “not wearing wedding clothes”: they do not respect God. We have read more than once that the chief thing to which we are called, Christ’s chief commandments, is love for God and our neighbor. But great things begin with small ones, and if the small is absent, can the great be present? If the fire of love is absent, we can begin simply by paying attention to God’s Word and to another person. If He has invited us, then to say that we have more important business, or that we are “unworthy of such an honor and therefore will not come,” is simple disrespect, like failing to notice an outstretched hand. But one can be rude in another way as well: come to Him, but on one’s own terms; make the king one’s servant; deliberately mix the light of the Kingdom with one’s own darkness.