Keep Those Wedding Garments On
Mar 26, 2026 | By Colin Levine SY ‘28
On Tuesday nights, my friend and I go evangelizing in the heart of Yale’s Campus. We approach students and ask about their faith backgrounds before sharing about our own. You’d be surprised how kind and interested everyone is. A few months ago, at the end of one of these conversations, an Orthodox-raised student told us that while he thinks there’s probably something out there he’s not seeing, he just doesn’t have time to think about it right now. He said he would probably revisit the question when he was “50 or something.”
This response is one that Our Lord anticipated in the Parable of the Wedding Feast or Banquet, a parable significant enough for Him to tell it on two occasions. As the parable goes, a king holds a great banquet and invites a choice few. But when his servants go out to share the invitation, each invitee declines, explaining that he has something more important to attend to. Some even seize the servants and kill them. So, the king replaces the original invitees with “the poor and crippled and blind and lame” and those living in the hedges, who flock into his hall.
Matthew makes clear that those first invited represent the Pharisees and their followers. But, as my story shows, we know that many of the second wave, all those to whom we preach the faith today, decline as well. They have greater priorities, as those in the parable: “But I have bought a field”, “But I have married a wife”. May we continue to extend the invitation, nonetheless. While Our King’s servant messengers were originally His prophets, today the baton has passed to us, who bear the blessed burden of making disciples of all nations.
But the parable tells us there is a second pitfall imperilling those who accept the invitation at first. When the king arrives at his banquet, he finds “a man who had no wedding garment.” Offended, the king casts him into what can only be considered Hell. You see, it was an ancient tradition for the host of a royal feast to hand out his preferred wedding garments at the door for guests to put on. Thus, the guest in question has intentionally scorned the will of the king, who had been so gracious as to invite him for no merits of his own.
As Paul repeatedly teaches, God has prepared a wedding garment for us: His Son. We are exhorted to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”, to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God.” When we arrive before the judgment seat, we must still be wearing our new garments, lest we be cast out ourselves. As the parable finishes, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
The Parable of the Banquet gives us reason to rejoice in hope of the glory of God and reason to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and retain that hope in this Lenten season. May we rejoice in the fact that God came to us in the Person of His Son and through the Apostles He called, to invite us in. And that He did so, though we presented no merit for our invitation, though we were spiritually “poor and crippled and blind and lame.” For “God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And there is yet greater joy to be found in the fact that, as He extended His invitation of free grace, He opened our hearts and minds to accept it, working in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
And we must will and work for His good pleasure. In this Lenten season, may we discern where God is calling us to grow and where to cut back, putting off the old self and putting on the new self in the image of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that, on the final wedding day, we may don our white robes and hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.” May every prayer, fast, and alms be like a thread sewn in the new garments of our hearts. May we press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord. Amen.
[1] As Augustine suggests in his Harmony of the Gospels (II.71), Matthew and Luke place this parable in different scenes at different points in Our Lord’s earthly ministry and in different language. So the best way of avoiding a contradiction is to conclude that Our Lord told the parable twice (Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:16-24).
[2] Matthew 28:19.
[3] Romans 13:14; Ephesians 4:24, cf. Colossians 3:10.
[4] Romans 5:2; Philippians 2:12.
[5] Romans 5:8.
[6] Philippians 2:13; Acts 16:14; Luke 24:45.
[7] 1 John 4:19.
[8] Revelation 7:9; Matthew 25:21.
[9] Philippians 3:14.
[10] Charles Spurgeon has an inimitable sermon on this parable, to which I am indebted. Link attached here.