marriage feast

• sit not in chief seat at

167:1.5Then went Je­sus over to where the sick man sat and, tak­ing him by the hand, said: “Arise and go your way. You have not asked to be healed, but I know the de­sire of your heart and the faith of your soul.” Be­fore the man left the room, Je­sus re­turned to his seat and, ad­dress­ing those at the ta­ble, said: “Such works my Fa­ther does, not to tempt you into the king­dom, but to re­veal him­self to those who are al­ready in the king­dom. You can per­ceive that it would be like the Fa­ther to do just such things be­cause which one of you, hav­ing a fa­vorite an­i­mal that fell in the well on the Sab­bath day, would not go right out and draw him up?” And since no one would an­swer him, and inas­much as his host ev­i­dently ap­proved of what was go­ing on, Je­sus stood up and spoke to all pres­ent: “My breth­ren, when you are bid­den to a mar­riage feast, sit not down in the chief seat, lest, per­chance, a more hon­ored man than you has been in­vited, and the host will have to come to you and re­quest that you give your place to this other and hon­ored guest. In this event, with shame you will be re­quired to take a lower place at the ta­ble. When you are bid­den to a feast, it would be the part of wis­dom, on ar­riv­ing at the fes­tive ta­ble, to seek for the low­est place and take your seat therein, so that, when the host looks over the guests, he may say to you: ‘My friend, why sit in the seat of the least? come up higher’; and thus will such a one have glory in the pres­ence of his fel­low guests. For­get not, ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, while he who truly hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted. There­fore, when you en­ter­tain at din­ner or give a sup­per, in­vite not al­ways your friends, your breth­ren, your kins­men, or your rich neigh­bors that they in re­turn may bid you to their feasts, and thus will you be rec­om­pensed. When you give a ban­quet, some­times bid the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In this way you shall be blessed in your heart, for you well know that the lame and the halt can­not re­pay you for your lov­ing min­istry.”

173:5.1Af­ter the scribes and rulers had with­drawn, Je­sus ad­dressed him­self again to the as­sem­bled crowd and spoke the para­ble of the wed­ding feast. He said:

173:5.2“The king­dom of heaven may be likened to a cer­tain king who made a mar­riage feast for his son and dis­patched mes­sen­gers to call those who had pre­vi­ously been in­vited to the feast to come, say­ing, ‘Ev­ery­thing is ready for the mar­riage sup­per at the king’s palace.’ Now, many of those who had once prom­ised to at­tend, at this time re­fused to come. When the king heard of these re­jec­tions of his in­vi­ta­tion, he sent other ser­vants and mes­sen­gers, say­ing: ‘Tell all those who were bid­den, to come, for, be­hold, my din­ner is ready. My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all is in readi­ness for the cel­e­bra­tion of the forth­com­ing mar­riage of my son.’ But again did the thought­less make light of this call of their king, and they went their ways, one to the farm, an­other to the pot­tery, and oth­ers to their mer­chan­dise. Still oth­ers were not con­tent thus to slight the king’s call, but in open re­bel­lion they laid hands on the king’s mes­sen­gers and shame­fully mis­treated them, even killing some of them. And when the king per­ceived that his cho­sen guests, even those who had ac­cepted his pre­lim­i­nary in­vi­ta­tion and had prom­ised to at­tend the wed­ding feast, had fi­nally re­jected his call and in re­bel­lion had as­saulted and slain his cho­sen mes­sen­gers, he was ex­ceed­ingly wroth. And then this in­sulted king or­dered out his armies and the armies of his al­lies and in­structed them to de­stroy these re­bel­lious mur­der­ers and to burn down their city.

173:5.3“And when he had pun­ished those who spurned his in­vi­ta­tion, he ap­pointed yet an­other day for the wed­ding feast and said to his mes­sen­gers: ‘They who were first bid­den to the wed­ding were not wor­thy; so go now into the part­ing of the ways and into the high­ways and even be­yond the bor­ders of the city, and as many as you shall find, bid even these strangers to come in and at­tend this wed­ding feast.’ And then these ser­vants went out into the high­ways and the out-of-the-way places, and they gath­ered to­gether as many as they found, good and bad, rich and poor, so that at last the wed­ding cham­ber was filled with will­ing guests. When all was ready, the king came in to view his guests, and much to his sur­prise he saw there a man with­out a wed­ding gar­ment. The king, since he had freely pro­vided wed­ding gar­ments for all his guests, ad­dress­ing this man, said: ‘Friend, how is it that you come into my guest cham­ber on this oc­ca­sion with­out a wed­ding gar­ment?’ And this un­pre­pared man was speech­less. Then said the king to his ser­vants: ‘Cast out this thought­less guest from my house to share the lot of all the oth­ers who have spurned my hos­pi­tal­ity and re­jected my call. I will have none here ex­cept those who de­light to ac­cept my in­vi­ta­tion, and who do me the honor to wear those guest gar­ments so freely pro­vided for all.’”

173:5.4Af­ter speak­ing this para­ble, Je­sus was about to dis­miss the mul­ti­tude when a sym­pa­thetic be­liever, mak­ing his way through the crowds to­ward him, asked: “But, Mas­ter, how shall we know about these things? how shall we be ready for the king’s in­vi­ta­tion? what sign will you give us whereby we shall know that you are the Son of God?” And when the Mas­ter heard this, he said, “Only one sign shall be given you.” And then, point­ing to his own body, he con­tin­ued, “De­stroy this tem­ple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But they did not un­der­stand him, and as they dis­persed, they talked among them­selves, say­ing, “Al­most fifty years has this tem­ple been in build­ing, and yet he says he will de­stroy it and raise it up in three days.” Even his own apos­tles did not com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of this ut­ter­ance, but sub­se­quently, af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion, they re­called what he had said.

173:5.5About four o’clock this af­ter­noon Je­sus beck­oned to his apos­tles and in­di­cated that he de­sired to leave the tem­ple and to go to Beth­any for their evening meal and a night of rest. On the way up Oli­vet Je­sus in­structed An­drew, Philip, and Thomas that, on the mor­row, they should es­tab­lish a camp nearer the city which they could oc­cupy dur­ing the re­main­der of the Pass­over week. In com­pli­ance with this in­struc­tion the fol­low­ing morn­ing they pitched their tents in the hill­side ravine over­look­ing the pub­lic camp­ing park of Geth­sem­ane, on a plot of ground be­long­ing to Si­mon of Beth­any.

173:5.6Again it was a silent group of Jews who made their way up the west­ern slope of Oli­vet on this Mon­day night. These twelve men, as never be­fore, were be­gin­ning to sense that some­thing tragic was about to hap­pen. While the dra­matic cleans­ing of the tem­ple dur­ing the early morn­ing had aroused their hopes of see­ing the Mas­ter as­sert him­self and man­i­fest his mighty pow­ers, the events of the en­tire af­ter­noon only op­er­ated as an an­ti­cli­max in that they all pointed to the cer­tain re­jec­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ing by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. The apos­tles were gripped by sus­pense and were held in the firm grasp of a ter­ri­ble un­cer­tainty. They re­al­ized that only a few short days could in­ter­vene be­tween the events of the day just passed and the crash of an im­pend­ing doom. They all felt that some­thing tremen­dous was about to hap­pen, but they knew not what to ex­pect. They went to their var­i­ous places for rest, but they slept very lit­tle. Even the Al­pheus twins were at last aroused to the re­al­iza­tion that the events of the Mas­ter’s life were mov­ing swiftly to­ward their fi­nal cul­mi­na­tion.

• sit not in chief seat at

179:1.3As they stood there, de­bat­ing in their hearts, they sur­veyed the seat­ing ar­range­ment of the ta­ble, tak­ing note of the higher di­van of the host with one couch on the right and eleven ar­ranged around the ta­ble on up to op­po­site this sec­ond seat of honor on the host’s right.

179:1.4They ex­pected the Mas­ter to ar­rive any mo­ment, but they were in a quandary as to whether they should seat them­selves or await his com­ing and de­pend on him to as­sign them their places. While they hes­i­tated, Ju­das stepped over to the seat of honor, at the left of the host, and sig­ni­fied that he in­tended there to re­cline as the pre­ferred guest. This act of Ju­das im­me­di­ately stirred up a heated dis­pute among the other apos­tles. Ju­das had no sooner seized the seat of honor than John Zeb­e­dee laid claim to the next pre­ferred seat, the one on the right of the host. Si­mon Pe­ter was so en­raged at this as­sump­tion of choice po­si­tions by Ju­das and John that, as the other an­gry apos­tles looked on, he marched clear around the ta­ble and took his place on the low­est couch, the end of the seat­ing or­der and just op­po­site to that cho­sen by John Zeb­e­dee. Since oth­ers had seized the high seats, Pe­ter thought to choose the low­est, and he did this, not merely in protest against the un­seemly pride of his breth­ren, but with the hope that Je­sus, when he should come and see him in the place of least honor, would call him up to a higher one, thus dis­plac­ing one who had pre­sumed to honor him­self.

179:1.5With the high­est and the low­est po­si­tions thus oc­cu­pied, the rest of the apos­tles chose places, some near Ju­das and some near Pe­ter, un­til all were lo­cated. They were seated about the U-shaped ta­ble on these re­clin­ing di­vans in the fol­low­ing or­der: on the right of the Mas­ter, John; on the left, Ju­das, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, Mat­thew, James Zeb­e­dee, An­drew, the Al­pheus twins, Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon Pe­ter.