"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, mistreated 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." [Matthew 22:1-10]
If this parable bothers you, if it feels like Jesus is poking at you somewhere, well, good. I believe that is exactly his intention. It means your and my ears are working if we hear these words and start to squirm.
But I'll be honest. I don't think the most scandalous part of the parable is how vengeful the king in the story is toward the near-treasonous subjects who insult the king by not going to his son's wedding. Truthfully, I think we all understand that feeling--that impulse to be bitter and brutal when we feel we have been slighted or insulted. I suspect that, after maybe a moment or two of blushing, we are actually pretty comfortable with the king's act of revenge--that's what any of us would do, quite probably. Someone is mean to you--you lash back out at them with equally mean words. Someone slights you or insults you--you return the same back at them. Someone embarrasses you in an attempt to shame you, well, you just go right back and do the same back to them. We can relate to the whole revenge fantasy in this parable--we just picture the faces of people we don't like, or don't agree with, in the parable on the receiving end of all the king's righteous indignation, and we can probably swallow all of that violence just fine. This is because we are, to use a technical term, jerks. And beyond that, we are often the worst kind of jerks--the kind who don't realize that we are jerks in the first place.
But like I say, I don't think that the king's retribution on the rebellious citizens who refuse to attend the crown-prince's wedding is really the part that rubs us the wrong way in this parable. I think there are four other words that shake us to the core even further... because they are words that stop us from indulging our wishes for revenge against the people we cast as villains. Are you ready for them? Because once you read them and notice that they are there, you can't unread them or pretend it isn't a part of Jesus' parable.
Ok, now you've been warned.
The real scandal of this story of Jesus lies in the words, "both good and bad."
Who gets invited and included on the guest list at the end of this parable? "Both good and bad."
Who does the king make room for at his grand royal celebration? "Both good and bad."
Who is now declared worthy of being at the celebration? "Both good and bad."
And who is it that, now at the end--by their mere presence at the party itself--makes the party un-poopable? "Both good and bad."
The scandal is that in the end, the people at the party are not just "good" people. In the final celebration, belonging as a guest doesn't depend on your behavior, your "permanent record" from grade school, your rap sheet, or even your politeness and manners. At the big celebration, Jesus says, the reception hall is jam-packed with nice people and rude people, pleasant people and bitter people, Boy Scouts and tax cheats, pageant-winners and prostitutes, people you would want to want to have a cup of tea with and people you would think have already had too many beers. The "bad" people don't change before being "gathered" into the party. And the "good" people don't seem to have a fit that the "bad" ones are there on the dance floor, either. Somehow the sheer magnitude of the celebration itself overrules the impulse to moralize or kick people out because they are unpleasant to be around. The party--the royal celebration of the king in the story, and the great eschatological final victory party of the living God--is a motley crew of good AND bad.
And if that hasn't upset us and our legalism enough yet, I suspect that when we get there, to that grand celebration day, there will be people who would put you in the "good" category... and there will be people who take a look at you and are dead-certain that you belong in the "bad" category. But here's the thing: the celebration party is not a reward for good behavior. The celebration is Jesus' party, and he has determined that the party is un-poopable, and that the celebration will go on, regardless of the rottenness of anybody at the reception. Jesus doesn't only let in the "nice" people or the "polite" people, or limit the celebration only to people who have never so much as had a parking ticket. Jesus packs the party with people who are rough as a corncob, mean as a rattlesnake, and crooked as a dog's hind leg--and that is his choice, because it is his party, so he gets to include the people he chooses. There will be people you respect, and people for whom you have lost all respect. There will be people who respect you... and people who used to respect you. There will be people who dress and speak and vote like you... and there will be people who do just the opposite. We should be clear here at the get-go--this is just how Jesus does things.
Scandalized yet? See--it's so much harder for us to deal with grace, and a truly audacious grace at that, than the revenge fantasy in the middle of the story. We have this way of turning Christianity into a story about rewards for "good people" (who, what a coincidence, are the people who look and think like us already!) and punishments for "bad people" (who break rules, cross lines, and don't do things the way do them around these parts), when Jesus himself envisions surrounding himself with "both good and bad" when it comes time for the party. The festivities were never about carrots and sticks for behavior, but about the joyful Reign of a God so good that even the nastiest and rottenest of stinkers gets included. Like Jesus says in Luke's Gospel, God is, after all, kind to the ungrateful and wicked. And like Paul would say to the Philippians, one day every knee will bow. The Reign of God is so good, and the reach of God is so wide, that even at the wedding party, it is more important to Jesus that the hall be full, than that we dicker and haggle over keeping out the riff-raff.
Billy Joel famously sang, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints--the sinners are much more fun... only the good die young." He was wrong on both counts. At the party, Jesus envisions that "both good and bad" are packed into the party hall. And secondly, if anything, it's the ornery, stubborn stinkers who are doing their damnedest to ruin a good time but ultimately can't; the saints are the ones in on the joke of God's audaciously graceful divine comedy. The party will go on. The guest list of Jesus people includes Goofuses and Gallants, black hats and white hats, sinners and saints... of which we all are both.
Welcome to the party, people of Jesus. Look around at the people Jesus chooses to celebrate with.
Lord Jesus, gather us in to your celebration and give us a good honest look at how wide and big your gathering of people are.
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