Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes? the king asked him. But the man said nothing. (Matthew 22:12 GNB) This story of the wedding feast has always been curious to me. In the Gospel of Luke, this part of the story is missing entirely. In fact, in Luke, the story ends with the king essentially saying, “if you don’t want to come to my party, that’s fine, there are plenty of others who you deem less deserving that will be invited and you’re now disinvited!” However, in this passage here written by Matthew, the king goes and inspects his guests– that’s where it gets curious. The people who came to this party are from “the streets and alleys of the town,” they are “poor, crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21 GNB). It should be expected that these types of people wouldn’t have “wedding wear.” They never get invited to weddings and they don’t have the economic ability to afford such luxuries. Yet, the king thinks otherwise. The king finds a man who is essentially dressed like somebody who doesn’t belong at a wedding. I’m surprised to see that only one man was dressed so poorly as to not belong at a wedding for a king, but that’s another story entirely. The king, when hearing that the man had nothing to say, throws this man out of the wedding banquet. It sounds unfair to do, considering that the king found this man randomly in the street and invited him last minute, but that was what happened. We could extrapolate or imagine how much more poorly this one man looked compared to the other societally unacceptable people, but it makes us think. This QT isn’t a commentary about how you dress yourself to a party– I know it’s popular to buy new clothes that look like they have been passed down four or five generations (just FYI, you shouldn’t pay full price for them). Rather, we should be compelled to ask ourselves if we take our invitations for granted and not even try to dress up for a wedding party. This man that eventually gets kicked out had nothing to say because he essentially showed up to a king’s wedding party thinking nothing much of it. He didn’t consider it an honor, nor a blessing, nor even worth thinking about. (Mind you, this man was picked up off the street). See, how many of us accept Christ into our lives and not try to live like a Christ follower? Moreover, how many of us come to church every week and not make an effort to apply what we learn and discuss to our daily lives? How often do we see that people identify themselves as Christians just so that they can have an eternal “safety net” and refuse to believe anything Christ teaches? Maybe you don’t even fall into that category because you’re not a Christian and you’re reading this because you’re bored. Well then, how many times have you shown up to a job, to a relationship, to an event without any consideration for it whatsoever? We may not be going to a wedding, but we should all be considering what we’re wearing on our hearts.
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