Bible notes

• In today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah, despite the pain of the present, looks forward to the future as a heavenly banquet when God will triumph.
  
  

• In Matthew, Jesus’ parable is set at the wedding feast for the king’s son. The invitations are first given to a select few, but some guests find excuses not to attend and others reject the invitation more violently, so the angry king invites everyone his slaves can find to fill the hall with guests ‘both good and bad’ (v.10).
  
  
• The wedding may be a metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel, and the banquet a sign of the covenant between them. ‘Worthiness’ thus involves being able to recognise God’s invitation and respond to it as one’s top priority. The universal guest list could represent the replacement of the old covenant between God and Israel with the new covenant God offers to all who accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
  
  
• One of the replacement guests offends the king for not wearing a wedding robe. The garment may be a metaphor for righteousness, as Paul talks about ‘being clothed with Christ’ (Galatians 3.27). Or it could be that the man with no robe has made no effort to change, while all the other guests have done so. This suggests that the parable is about our willingness to be changed by our encounter with God. Meeting God can change us and the way we live, or, like the unworthy guests, we can reject God’s grace and remain unchanged.