Matthew 22:1-14
22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:
22:2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
The disciples of Jesus complained that why do you teach the people in parables. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, he answered them,“ To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them. "
After a couple of parables he also added that "He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” It means practically that who are not able to get, to understand, to receive higher spiritual teaching, those should start with the rookie courses, with the preliminary introduction of the studies, aka the parables.
The knowledge of goodness and how to be good must be learned, but after all it is a choice. How can you choose if you have not learned it that there is a huge difference between good and bad. God tells us explicitly, that obeying God is good, disobeying God is bad. Salvation is choosing the good, as Moses said it to the whole nation that "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD thy God may bless you in the land whither you go in to possess it."
According to the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 30, at the end of his speech Moses warned them that " I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed: to love the LORD thy God, to obey his voice, and to cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days (...)"
There are a couple of quantum physics level mysteries, like the incarnation of the spirit, the possibility of the transmigration of the souls, the animate nature of the material world, the infinity of God, the son-ship in God, the resurrection of the dead, the healing of incurable diseases of the sick, the duties, responsibilities and interventions of the angels, the existence of Heaven and Hell, the forgiveness of the sins of the past, the correction of the karma, breaking the chains of the of fate and the pagan gods, the phenomenon of exorcism and the battle with demons, the divine revelation and prophecy itself, ascension or the journey to Heaven, the Afterlife, spiritual forces in Heaven and on Earth, the dual polarity of the Creation and the symmetry of the Creation, the mathematical language of Heaven, the language of dreams and visions, and so on.
Jesus told the disciples that some of these knowledge have a shocking nature, not everyone can carry it, thus the uneducated multitude should be taught by parables, though in the ending times it will be different, because then, close to everyone will know these things being taught by the Holy Spirit.
But until that, until the final era, teaching in parables has an important role of calling people to repent and to turn to God in a revival of Faith and Trust.
Teaching in parables was not unusual, his contemporaries, the Jewish rabbis did the same. The Hebrew Bible itself is full with them, the latter Jewish writings, collected in the Midrash, the Aggadah, the Mishnah, the Gemara, even in the Kabbalah, all use the easy and great tool of the parable to teach wisdom to the ordinary men and women by the help of the similes taken from the contemporary everyday life and by understandable metaphors.
There are a lot of parables of Jesus became written in the Gospels, like the parable of the Leaven, of the Mustard Seed of the Hidden Treasure, of the Pearl, of the Lost Sheep, of the Lost Coin, of the Prodigal Son, of the Faithful Servant, of the Ten Virgins, of the Tares, of the Rich Fool, of the Budding Fig Tree, of the Barren Fig Tree, of the Good Samaritan, of the Rich man and Lazarus, of the Friend at Night and other parables. Most of them can be categorized and clustered into groups according to their theme and subject. On of these groups are the parables about the Kingdom of God.
It is very typical that Jesus often asked of the disciples that "What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? ”
Usually he answered his own question, saying that “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Or he said that “ It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and put in his own garden. It grew, and became a large tree, and the birds of the sky lodged in its branches.
" Or he said that “It is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened." These parables together with the Sower, belong to the illustration of the growth of the Kingdom of Heaven from small beginnings to the great expanse.
An other type of the parables regarding the kingdom of God is the invitation to it.
This Sunday we have the parable when the king gives a banquet to his son, and the usual thing happened that the invited people were not coming and moreover misbehaved. Finally the king was forced to fill the ranks with random people collected from the streets.
Till this it is a usual invitation, but there is an astonishing part, when the “slaves went out into the streets and gathered 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?' (…) 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."
According to the story in the parable finally the King was forced to sent the servants to collect people from the streets to fill the ranks of the wedding banquet. The King then ordered the slaves to cast the guest without a wedding garment out to the outer darkness. Random people should not be really prepared for a wedding especially with a festive garment. Although our personal moment to meet the King face to face is usually our last minute, and we do not know when it comes, that is why we have to be always prepared.
According to the so called book of Zohar from the Kabbalah tradition, the explanation given to the text written in the book of Prophet Zechariah, in chapter three, is, that filthy clothes of a man means the burden of his sins. As it is written that I was shown that “ Joshua, (the High Priest) was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the angel. The angel answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, "Take the filthy garments off of him." To Joshua he said, "Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich clothing."
As Christians, we must be certain, that we are invited. However, we can not attend the Royal Banquet in filthy clothes, but we have to fully repent, amend our ways, multiply our good deeds based on true faith and ask God to give us new clothes by the merit of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
