And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast; but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, Behold, I have made ready my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ 5 But they made light of it 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 is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the streets 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; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
The Wedding Feast in this parable takes place at the Second Coming of the Lord. This is Last Day, when all of creation will be brought into communion with God, when “all things” will be transfigured by the fire of grace. All falsehood, all possibility of evil will vanish.
The Second Coming, which is called the “Parousia” in the New Testament Greek, is often described as a terrifying event. It is a moment of fearful judgment, of wrathful destruction of the wicked and the unjust. This is the dominant description of the Last Day in the Old Testament and much of the New Testament. It appears also in some of the descriptions of the Parousia given by the Lord Himself.
But there is another description of the Last Day -- and that is the theme found in the two parables of the Wedding Feast (this one in Matthew, and Luke 14.15-24). In both parables, the original invitees (for one reason or another) fail to come to the feast, so the Giver of the Feast -- God the Father Himself -- opens the banquet to anyone and everyone (even street people, those “on the thoroughfares,” “both bad and good”).
This description is one of happiness and delight, beauty and joy and peace. There is only the possibility of gladness at a Wedding Feast. It is a Feast that is joyfully prepared for by the Feast-Giver.
So it comes as a shock that when the Lord of the Feast found a man “who had no wedding garment,” he asked him “how did you get in here?” It is even more shocking that the man who was improperly clothed was bound hand and foot, and cast out into the “outer darkness” -- a place where there is no feasting or gladness, but “weeping and gnashing of teeth” instead.
What is this wedding garment, upon which so much of this shocking conclusion depends?
The wedding garment is usually interpreted as the “robe of baptism,” and so people who are not baptized will be “cast out” into hell because they are not clothed by the sacrament of baptism.
There is another interpretation, though. Immediately before the Parable of the Wedding Feast in the Gospel of Luke, the Lord gave two instructions about Wedding Feast celebrations. First, in Luke 14.7-11, He told His followers that whenever they attended such a feast, that they should not seek a place of honor (like near the bride and groom at a wedding reception), but instead they should go and sit at the lowest place -- and maybe when the host comes, he might say “Friend, go up higher.”
The Lord here is calling His followers to meekness and humility: “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14.11).
The second instruction is in Luke 14.12-14, and it is about the “invitation list” for Wedding Feasts. Who should be invited? The Lord called His disciples to rise above the conventional “self-sorting” behavior (that is even more of a powerful rule today), in which people invite people who are going to invite them to their own banquets. Just as the Lord had already said “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6.33), the Lord now says: “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, just because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14.13-14).
So already, the answer to the question about the meaning of the wedding garment is starting to come into focus. The garment symbolizes meekness. It also symbolizes the righteousness of true goodness and love -- which is exactly why the Lord insisted upon giving to those who cannot give back. And, by the way, there is no other valid meaning of righteousness: the Pharisees tried to define righteousness as the complete fulfillment of the Law, or “perfect piety.” The Sadducees tried to define righteousness as the perfect performance of cultic rubrics. It should be noted that this was never taught in the Old Testament: the Psalms are chock full of God’s denunciations of such devolved -- and depraved -- definitions.
But there is one more element in the symbolism of the wedding garment -- one more thread in the warp and weave of the fabric. And this element is the most important one. It is the element that makes meekness and righteousness possible.
And that element is joy, gladness, beauty and celebration. You cannot be meek without happiness. You cannot be joyful without love.
This theme, too, is associated with the Wedding Feast. In a manner that is deeply haunting, the theme comes to the forefront at the very beginning and at the very end of Jesus’ earthly and Gospel ministry. The first miracle, or “sign,” of the Gospel is the Lord’s turning of the water into wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana (John 2.1-11). What is wine for? It is, as we sing Psalm 103 at Saturday Evening Vespers, given by the Lord (no matter what the winebottle label says) “to gladden the heart of man.” By this very first sign of His Gospel, the Lord miraculously provides something even better than water for the wandering Israelites in the wilderness of the Exodus: He makes possible joy, by providing the wine of His own Wedding Feast at the Last Day.
At the end of the Lord’s ministry, at the Mystical Supper (right before He entered the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples), the Lord served them that same wine: “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26.27-29).
Because this event of the institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is so much part of the grave steps of the Passion, and because it is so near to the unthinkable sufferings of Gethsemane and Calvary, we often do not recognize the promise. Jesus Christ, is at this moment, the Bridegroom Who is on His way to the Wedding … a Wedding that will occur at the Last Day. The Passion of Gethsemane, when the Lord experienced all the psychic agonies of sin, and the Passion of Calvary, when the Lord experienced all the physical and spiritual consequences of death, were both necessary steps that the Bridegroom had to take to win His Bride.
Salvation is the Marriage of Jesus Christ with His Bride, Who is the Church. That is why communicants of His Eucharist are called His “Body,” because in every marriage, the husband and wife become one flesh. This is the goal Jesus worked for, when He voluntarily gave up His glory in heaven and became man, submerging His divinity under His humanity. This communion, this marital union of the divinity with humanity, is exactly what the Holy Trinity planned for in Eternity. There was never a time when the Son of God would not become the Bridegroom.
That is why there is Joy Unthinkable in that wine that has become the Blood of the Son: it echoes and is illumined by the Last Day. But it takes meekness, and soft-hearted righteousness, to believe in salvation as marital communion. It takes humility to enter into joy. The gladness of the Wedding Feast is impossible for a person who wants to protect and inflate his ego.
The man who was not wearing the wedding garment in the parable was not meek. He was prideful. He probably wanted a salvation that consisted of the precise following of rules, the achievement of an exceptional pedigree. He was not interested in a wedding: he wanted a parade of heroes that highlighted folk like him, a parade in which one did not have to mix with the hoi polloi, the smelly masses, the lame, the poor, the street people of life.
He was obviously out of place. He was a black-suited mourner in the midst of bright-suited celebration. He was already bound hand and foot by his despondent pride. He was already weeping and gnashing his teeth, in his hatred of others, before he ever even started to elbow his way in toward the seat of honor. As in most parables, if careful attention is paid, what happens at the end is exactly what the characters of the story already were or had really become.
But for the meek and the ones who give themselves away in love -- exactly in the way of the Trinity and the way of Christ -- their joy is their garment. Salvation as marital communion is unimaginable in its infinite meaning -- but still, it makes a lot of sense to anyone who is “poor in spirit.”
We are all poor. We are all street people of the world. We are all infirm and lame. We are all neighbors who need the help of neighbors like us, who need to help and save. We, as the Body, all need the Lord as our Bridegroom and nothing less, nothing less than just to be and to become.
Because we are all invited to the one Wedding Feast at the Last Day that matters most of all:
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me,
“Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
And he said to me, “These are true words of God”
-- Apocalypse/Revelation 19.7-9 --
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