Understanding Jesus is no slam dunk

I've been reading the Bible several times a week for a few decades.  There are not too many times I'm surprised by someting I read at this point, because I've read it before, and many parts of the Bible I've studied in depth.

But I have to admit that when I read the Bible, even though I'm very familiar with the words, the actual meaning and what I'm supposed to do with those words here in 2019 on North America can be difficult to discern.

This hit me recently when I read "The Parable of the Wedding Banquet" in Matthew 22.  This parable starts out with Jesus giving this introduction, "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son."  So, as I get ready to read this familiar parable, I figure I'm going to receive some helpful information about how the Kingdom of Heaven - God's rule and reign, God's realm including God's interactions with God's creatures - works.  Here's the parable:

22 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

There.  Got it?  That's pretty clear isn't it?

I finished reading that and I literally started laughing out loud, because I realized I had NO IDEA what Jesus was talking about.  After 4 years in the school of religion at SPU, and after 2 more years at Western Evangelical Seminary, and 25 years of church leadership, I have no clue what Jesus is saying here.

What about this parable tells me how the Kingdom of Heaven operates?

- God invites the good, deserving people to come in and celebrate, but not everyone.  

- God violently destroys the terrible people who mistreat and murder his servants.

- God opens up the invitation to everyone that can be found - those who are good and those who are bad (whatever that means).

- God gets offended when people enter the kingdom party unprepared, and kicks people out to a horrible place.

So, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a party that you better respond to the invitation or you'll get destroyed, and if you do respond to the invitation you better make sure you don't show up unprepared or you'll find yourself cast out to a horrible place?

It is clear that reading this parable 2000 years later there are significant cultural aspects to this story that are completely lost to us.  Trying to figure out what Jesus means is really difficult.  

It's this type of teaching that reminds me the Bible is not a rule book with clear guidelines for every situation in our lives.  The Bible is ancient, diverse, and ambiguous, and requires humility and wisdom in determining it's meaning across the millennia to us.