No Wedding Clothes

Jesus' parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22:1-14) has a curious character who isn't wearing wedding garments and is bound hand and foot, thrown out, and designated to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Apparently the feast has a dress code.

I've been one to buck the system when it came to dress codes, and to some extent I still am. I'm not much into uniforms. Today, students can get expelled from school for wearing gang-related garb or offensive t-shirts.

Could you imagine being thrown out of an event because of something you were not wearing? If someone told me I have to wear a certain piece of clothing, I would wear it begrudgingly, especially if I didn't think the piece of clothing was very fashionable.

Obviously, wedding garments were significant in 1st century Palestine. So, it seems to me that the man in the parable, sans garment, had no intention of celebrating the wedding. He might have been an interloper, riff raff, or just a plain old party pooper. He's obviously someone who didn't belong.

I'm going to assume that this parable is directed at the Pharisees, who wore flowing garments, huge phylactaries on their foreheads, and tassels reaching to the ground-- all just to get attention. They sat at places of honor at banquets and were placed on pedastals for their obvious superiority. But they aren't dressed for a wedding.

It's been said that church is where people come together to compare clothing. But what if the reality is that we're all wearing the same thing? What if we've been endowed with a wedding garment? What if it doesn't matter what we are wearing out of our own closets, but what really matters is what we've been given by God?

There's this sentiment in proper society that people should wear their Sunday best when they "go to church" (I hate that phrase)-- suit and tie, polished shoes, flowing dresses, jewelry-- to honor the King of kings. Honestly, I think we should wear our Sunday worst-- sweats, tennis shoes, ripped t-shirts-- to get rid of all pretense. It seems to me that the partygoers at the banquet in the parable were people who couldn't afford to be all spiffed up, the outsiders. They probably wore rags.

But they had the wedding garment, probably provided by the king. The interloper most likely refused to wear the garment, thinking that his own garments would do. They didn't.

How often have we offered to God our nice clothes as our ticket to get in? If you want to think of these nice clothes as our own merits and good works, that would be a great image to hold in your mind. Our supposed superiority over others doesn't work at this banquet. Even these are as filthy rags.

The only clothing that matters is Christ and what he has done for us. He has dressed us for the great Banquet of living in the Kingdom of our God. Jesus became a dreg to society to bring in the dregs (that's us!) as he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.