The Wedding Banquet Prepares Us for the World to Come; Maybe This World, Too

Introduction: Turn It and Turn it Again

In dialogue with someone recently I remarked that the best thing about the biblical literature is that we can draw many interpretations from a single passage, and also, the worst thing about the biblical literature is that we can draw many interpretations from a single passage!

Pirkei Avot, the ethics of the ancestors,1 contains a series of short sayings and maxims from rabbis who lived between the second and third centuries BCE. This includes one of my favorite remarks about the biblical literature, Pirkei Avot 5.22:

Turn it and turn it again, for all is within it.

I don’t think there is one, authoritative reading of the Bible, and I’d say that’s a good thing! Expressing this sentiment has gotten me in some trouble in some spaces, but it’s an idea I feel pretty well committed to: The Bible has no authority on its own. The authority of the Bible is granted by the interpretive community that is deploying the Bible toward some end. In today’s post I’ll argue that Matthew’s interpretive community preserved the Jewish core of the Jesus movement and deployed this text toward inner-Jewish discourse with the Pharisees on proper Jewish practice. Today’s post is a good one, and I hope you’ll think the same by the end!

Back to Pirkei Avot to put the wisdom in service of another helpful commitment from the ancient tradition, Pirkei Avot 1.2:

The world stands on three things: on Torah, on service to God, and on acts of loving kindness.

I’ll take my queue from these rabbis, the biblical literature has much to reveal, through multiple interpretations, and we are free to explore these interpretations, but ultimately, we are grounded in study, service, and loving-kindness. If we have agency in our reading of the text, why not exercise that agency toward these principles?

Today we read a parable that appears both in Matthew and Luke. The stories differ slightly, and one garment, yes, an article of clothing, points to the difference in how the stories are told and why that matters when reading the text, with and without Jesus, so to speak, channeling the title of a great book from AJ Levine and Marc Brettler. I mean, we can’t remove Jesus from the parable, by the gospel accounts, he’s the one telling it! But we can interpret the Matthean version more readily with its Jewish substrate, and see that Luke crafts a more universal narrative. We are interested in Matthew’s. Let’s go.

The Text: A Wedding Banquet

Today’s assigned lectionary text is Matthew 22.1-14, the so-called parable of the wedding banquet. Matthew’s author places this parable in the context of a dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees challenge Jesus after he performed a healing act during the Sabbath. Does this violate the Shabbat laws to refrain from work? Jesus responds to this challenge by telling a series of parables, including the parable we turn to today.

Click the link to read the entire selection, following is summary of the points that I hope to address in this post. The evangelist puts it in Jesus’ mouth, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son,” the parable begins. The king instructs his enslaved servants, “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.”

Plot twist! Some of the invited guests, “made light of it and went away,” meanwhile, “the rest seized his [enslaved servants], mistreated them and killed them.” Enraged, the king sends troops to “destroy” those “murderers” and “burned their city.”

The king instructs his enslaved servants, “those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” The servants:

[G]athered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.

Let’s take stock: The Pharisees challenge Jesus on an interpretation of Torah, Jesus responds with parables, and if you’ve been a reader here for a while, you know that parables are tools of instruction that were common during the rabbinic period, related to a mashal (sing.) or mashalim (pl.) Helpful for its accessibility, Wikipedia suggests that:

A mashal (Hebrew: משל) is a short parable with a moral lesson or religious allegory, called a nimshal. Mashal is used also to designate other forms in rhetoric, such as the fable and apothegm. Talmudist Daniel Boyarin has recently defined משל [mashal] as a process of “exemplification,” seeing it as the sine qua non of Talmudic hermeneutics (Boyarin 2003: 93).

In reply to the interpretive concerns of the Pharisees (the proto-rabbis and originators of the oral law, i.e., the Talmud), Jesus, or the gospel writers proclaiming Jesus, engages in a form of moral and religious allegory that would be common to the interpretive tradition deployed by the Pharisees. What we are observing in this dialogue is inner-Jewish discourse about the Law. Why do we think this is inner-Jewish discourse? By an analysis of Matthew’s gospel, especially contrasted with Luke’s.

• Matthew’s Gospel includes many references to the Scriptures of Israel as the interpretive key for proclamations about Jesus, for example, Matthew’s gospel begins by tracing Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people

• Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes Jesus’ fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecies. For example, Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah to proclaim Jesus’ messianic status, and Matthew’s author links to other prophecies, like connecting Jesus to a donkey and a colt for his entry into Jerusalem

• Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus engage in interpretive work with Torah. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount (starting Matthew 5:1), Jesus engages a Jewish audience and strengthens the demands of the Law, a rabbinic tradition known as “placing a fence around Torah”; meanwhile, in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (starting Luke 6:17), Jesus addresses a more diverse, gentile audience, and focuses less on the Law and more on issues of social justice and inclusion of all people.

So our interpretive tradition for this Matthean parable assumes that this gospel account is addressing a Jewish audience, Jesus is in dialogue with Pharisees about Torah observance, and Matthew’s author has Jesus appealing to the form of instruction and allegory called parable, or mashal. With these presuppositions in mind, how might we understand what Matthew’s author is communicating through this parable?

I suggest the keys to an interpretation that respects these presuppositions turns on the wedding banquet itself, the wedding robe, and the man thrown “into the outer darkness.” I will argue that the wedding garment represents repentance. The man who is thrown out of the banquet hall represents those who refuse to repent, or turn away from the concerns of the world and toward Gd. Repentance is required to enter the kin-dom of heaven. I think this is the argument that Matthew’s author is making by either (or both) preserving this parable from Jesus or by constructing a narrative around common symbolism that would mean something to the Jewish audience.

For evidence in support of this view, I want to bring in a passage from the rabbinic writings, namely, from the Talmud tractate Shabbat, 153a:

Suddenly, the king requested that his servants come to the feast. The wise among them entered before him adorned in their finest clothes, and the fools entered before him dirty. The king was happy to greet the wise ones and angry to greet the fools. The king said: These wise servants who adorned themselves for the feast shall sit and eat and drink, but these fools who did not adorn themselves for the feast shall stand and watch. There is a similar outcome for people who think that their day of death and judgment is far away and do not prepare themselves for it.

Ah-ha! This rabbinic parable sounds familiar, yes? Don’t you love that lightbulb moment?! This tractate was likely compiled near the end of 200 CE, suggesting that these ideas were under discussion during the time of the gospel compositions. To repeat a qualifier that I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my claim is not that Matthew’s author is drawing directly from the tractate as a source. Rather, my claim is more modest. I’m meaning to suggest only that the idea of a king presiding over a wedding banquet and the symbolism of proper preparation was a common mashal, allegory, for the first and second century audience.

The wise ones, adorned in their proper attire, are prepared, but the foolish ones, who are not adorned, they are like those who are not prepared for their day of death, and so, they are not allowed to participate in the feast. How might we be prepared? Consider a few paragraphs prior in this same tractate:

We learned there in a mishna that Rabbi Eliezer says: Repent one day before your death. Rabbi Eliezer’s students asked him: But does a person know the day on which he will die? He said to them: All the more so this is a good piece of advice, and one should repent today lest he die tomorrow; and by following this advice one will spend his entire life in a state of repentance. And King Solomon also said in his wisdom: “At all times your clothes should be white, and oil shall not be absent from upon your head” (Ecclesiastes 9:8), meaning that a person always needs to be prepared.

The Ecclesiastes reference is part of the tractate; the rabbinic view held that King Solomon, known for his wisdom, wrote Ecclesiastes. Scholars find little evidence in support of that view and point, instead, to an early period of authorship, during the Persian period, ~435 BCE, or a late date of authorship, during the Hellenistic period, but no later than 180 CE, given internal references and loan words from Greek. Either way, we see in this tractate quoted above that the text was featuring in rabbinic discourse about proper application of the law.

I want to go further, using this same tractate. Consider now the connection made between those prepared and righteousness, then see how punishment features in the rabbinic writings. We’ll connect this to our gospel account shortly:

Rabbi Meir’s son-in-law said in the name of Rabbi Meir: If the punishment for those who did not prepare themselves in advance was merely to stand and watch, it would not be severe enough because they also look like servants at the feast, which is not such a disgraceful punishment. Rather, these and these, both groups of people, sit at the feast. These wise and righteous people eat, and these wicked fools are hungry; these righteous people drink, and these wicked people are thirsty, as it is stated: “Therefore, thus said the Lord, Gd: Behold, My servants shall eat and you shall be hungry; behold, My servants shall drink and you shall be thirsty; behold, My servants shall rejoice and you shall be ashamed. Behold, My servants shall sing from a joyous heart and you shall scream from a pained heart” (Isaiah 65:13–14).

First, I want to lament for Rabbi Meir’s son-in-law. Poor fellow doesn’t even get a name! Only, “Rabbi Meir’s son-in-law”! Here’s a short anecdote: My spouse’s older brother, older by only 15 months, is a presence in a room. Tall, funny, the guy is easy to spot. I appreciate him deeply because we go to a lot of concerts together. I’m living with disability related to my brain tumor, and he always posts up right behind me to protect me from having my cane kicked out from beneath me or from wayward concert goers! Anyway, given his presence and popularity, for years my spouse was known simply as, “Chad’s sister.” Similarly here, we don’t get a name, only Rabbi Meir’s son-in-law!

OK, back to business. The rabbis argue not only that the wise ones, adorned for the banquet are prepared for the day of their death; they are, in fact, the righteous ones! Whereas, the fools, unprepared, unadorned, are wicked, and fit for punishment.

The punishment in the Matthean account is to be thrown into the “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The “outer darkness” is a favorite phrase of the Matthean author, each use in reference to the punishment of those who are excluded from the kin-dom of heaven:

• In Matthew 8:12, Jesus says that “the sons of the kin-dom will be thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

• In Matthew 25:30, Jesus tells the parable of the talents. In the parable, a wicked servant who buried his talent instead of investing it is thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The phrase “outer darkness” is not used anywhere else in the Greek Scriptures, but in the Scriptures of Israel, we do find the punishment of weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the phrase is also used to describe the punishment of the wicked. For example, in Psalm 112.10:

The wicked see it and are angry;
    they gnash their teeth and melt away;
    the desire of the wicked comes to nothing.

And as a sort of mash-up of both outer darkness and punishment, in Psalm 143.3:

For the enemy has pursued me,
    crushing my life to the ground,
    making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Conclusion: Repentance, Righteousness, Regard for Torah

So far I have argued that this parable immediately follows a Torah disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees. We see that Jesus often criticizes the Pharisees as failing to follow a commandment of Gd, in favor of their own traditions. What are those traditions?! The Oral Law, or Talmud! Here’s some evidence, also from the Matthean author, Matthew, 15.6-9:

So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word of Gd. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”

If this is Jesus’ chief complaint, that the Pharisees “nullify the word of Gd,” what must they do? Repent, of course! Or t’shuvah, rooted in turning toward Gd; turning toward Torah. We see Jesus telling a parable about those who are wise, repentant, and righteous, tapping into the same eschatological notions that the rabbis discuss in the tractates I’ve referenced herein. For failing to repent; failing to be wise; failing to be adorned in the wedding robe; failing to prepare for the day of judgment, they are thrown into the outer darkness, that is, kept out of the kin-dom of heaven. Did the rabbinic writings also have conditions on who would be excluded from the kin-dom of heaven? They would refer to this as the World to Come. The answer is yes!

See here tractate Sanhedrin 90a:

All of the Jewish people, even sinners and those who are liable to be executed with a court-imposed death penalty, have a share in the World-to-Come, as it is stated: “And your people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever; the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, for My name to be glorified” (Isaiah 60:21). And these are the exceptions, the people who have no share in the World-to-Come, even when they fulfilled many mitzvot: One who says: There is no resurrection of the dead derived from the Torah, and one who says: The Torah did not originate from Heaven, and an epikoros [english: heretic], who treats Torah scholars and the Torah that they teach with contempt.

Who does not have a share in the World to Come? Those who treat the Torah with contempt. What does Jesus claim the Pharisees do? Nullify the word of Gd, in favor of their own human precepts! Placing one’s own precepts over Torah sounds pretty contemptible, right? I would argue that in the evangelist’s eyes, yes! And what do the Moreover, what does Jesus accuse some of the invited guests doing? Making light of the invitation! Again, sounds like contempt to me!

What was one core to Jesus’ message, maybe the core, insofar as we know? Repentance! The Pharisees say, hey, why are you violating Shabbat? Jesus replies with mashalim, religious allegory: Why do you nullify Gd’s word with your own traditions?! Don’t you know that showing contempt to Torah is one of the only things that will exclude you from the kin-dom of heaven? See that you are like the invited guests who make light of the invitation; or worse, you are like the wedding guest who is foolish, unprepared, you’ll be thrown into the outer darkness, the punishment for the wicked!

What is repentance? T’shuvah, turning toward Torah. After all, what three things does the world stand on? Torah, service to Gd, and on acts of loving kindness. Following this, we may find ourselves prepared, adorned with the proper attire, ready to take our seats at the messianic banquet. How can we be sure we enjoy the banquet? Always be prepared; always be in a state of repentance.

We find again that what appears at first glance to be Jesus breaking from his tradition is rather Jesus engaging in debate with the Pharisees on the proper practice of Judaism. Jesus is not rejecting, he is doubling down! The Torah is binding on Jewish people only, this is the tradition, and so, the 2,000 year tradition of Christianity does not fall under the purview of the Law. Like Luke’s gospel that is diverse, inclusive, and often set within gentile cities, Christianity has made of the Jesus movement something distinct, but by this careful reading of Matthew, supplemented with rabbinic writings from the same period as the gospel composition, we are reminded that the Jewish core of the Jesus movement is preserved.

Postscript

Monday I’ll share the first post introducing our community reading of When Christians Were Jews, by Paula Fredriksen. In an earlier post I shared instructions for subscribing to the sub-section of this newsletter, called “jPK Reads Books” to receive the guided posts for reading together. I see that some have successfully subscribed, and I’ve heard from a couple of you that a little more guidance would be useful. If you intend to participate but need a hand for modifying your subscriber settings or simply want me to sign you up manually, reply to this post or drop a comment below, and I’ll be sure you’re on the list!