In the Dutch city of Haarlem in the 1943, there was a watchmaker and his family who risked their lives by working in opposition to the Nazi regime.  They did so by providing a hiding place for Jews as well as Christians hunted down by the Gestapo.   It was in this watchmaker’s shop and home that a young Jewish cantor took refuge.  In one of the many conversations he had with members of this household, the young cantor was told that when one of the watchmaker’s daughters was asked what she would do if asked by the Gestapo whether or not she was harboring Jews in her home, she said she would have to tell the truth.  After all, it is clearly stated in God’s law that we should not lie.  The cantor, however, was outraged and challenged such blind faithfulness to the law.   He responded vociferously by saying, “The Almighty gave those decrees to my people, telling them how to live as a nation in a land where God’s righteousness would reign.  God wants us to be worshipful and to live justly with our neighbors.  But do we live under a just rule?  [NO!]   We are ruled by terror and by fear.  You want to live by the book, by what you call the Bible.  But . . . you just live by words.”  

    If I asked you which version of this parable you preferred, Matthew’s version or Luke’s, I think it would be a safe wager that Luke would win the popularity contest.   It probably won’t surprise you that, so far, I have successfully dodged preaching on Matthew’s version of this parable for what are, I think, obvious reasons.   I simply have never known what to do with the jarring words and disturbing events which seem like intrusions in what is otherwise a wonderful parable about hospitality.  There are events in the parable which seem hateful and belligerent, and there is something dark and foreboding casting its shadow over the king’s gracious invitation.   These unfortunate events fly in the face of words that have appeared earlier in Matthew’s gospel - words about forgiveness, about loving your enemies, about doing unto others, about not judging,  AND they fly in the face of words that appear later in this same chapter, just a few paragraphs away, where Jesus says that love of God and love of neighbor are the highest goals to which one can aspire and that love is the overarching ethic by which everything in the law or the prophets is to be understood.   Yet here in Matthew’s telling of this parable anger and cruelty seem to undercut the higher message of a gracious invitation to a banquet of joy.