Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast (Matthew 22:1-14) is normally taken as a parable about Jesus’ ministry. The invitees who refuse to come are the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day, and the people from the streets are the tax gatherers and sinners or the Gentiles. The man cast out is a warning about apostasy from the church.

This interpretation has a major difficulty. Jesus is addressing the chief priests, elders and Pharisees (21:23, 45). It’s hard to see what relevance a warning to the church has to that audience. When Jesus says “many are called but few are chosen,” he must be talking to the Jewish leaders.

A couple of other details reinforce this suggestion.

First, Jesus warns that the man without the wedding garment is cast out into “outer darkness” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (22:13). Earlier, Jesus said that the “sons of the kingdom” will not enter the feast of the kingdom but will be in “outer darkness” (8:12). Gnashing of teeth comes up in 13:42, 50 as well, in parables that I believe are talking about the sifting of tares and wheat in the climax of the first-century age. Interestingly, “good” and “bad” fish are separated (13:48) just as the good and bad guests are inspected and distinguished in the parable of the wedding.

Second, the man without the wedding garment is “silent” in response to the king’s question (22:12). Matthew uses that word only one other time, to describe the silence of the Sadducees after Jesus’ response to their question (22:34). By the end of chapter 22, everyone has been silenced (22:46), except Jesus, who talks on and on for three more chapters.

Thus, I suggest that the initial invitation to the wedding feast is not the ministry of John or Jesus but reaches back earlier in Israel’s history. Temple worship is, perhaps, the reality behind the image of the wedding feast; Yahweh invites Israel to share in the festivity of His son, but they instead reject the invitation and abuse and kill the messengers. The king’s destruction of their city is not, as usually supposed, a prediction of AD 70, but a description of Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus’ ministry and that of the disciples thus begins in v. 8, and others are being called from the streets and highways. The king coming to inspect is the same event that Jesus describes in Matthew 13 and again in chapter 25; it’s the “end of the age” when the king is going to separate tares and wheat, good and bad fish, sheep and goats.