Some of us will remember sermons on this gospel story in which we were charged with the terrible behaviour of these unworthy invitees, and threatened with punishments like they got. Even when I read it today I have feelings of anxiety and fear. I am still intimidated by that brainwashing.

I prefer the story as Luke has it (14, 16-24), where the host was angry, but he simply gathered in the outcasts of society to fill his banquet hall. The allegorical interpretations in Matthew's gospel are from an early community of christians who were having a go at the Jews after the destruction of the city.

The question then arises, am I to be forever frightened by this teaching because they say this is the "Word of the Lord"? Or is it time I threw off this battered-wife-syndrome, took my destiny in my own hands, and made my own intelligent choice of what this scripture means for me?

If this story comes from a community who wanted to portray the Roman vengeance wreaked upon Jerusalem as God's revenge on his chosen people, well that's their business and of no real interest to me. It seems unfortunate that it has been passed down for 2000 years as if Jesus had said all this, while we can see in Luke that his teaching was gentle, subtle and courteous, and spoken conversationally while he enjoyed the hospitality of a meal with those same pharisees he chose to criticise. He couldn't have been too offensive!

Having cleared the ground we can ask what, then, is the key, the essential point of the parable of invited guests who were too busy to attend? It is surely not some teaching about good manners, not even about bad behaviour. We don't need divine revelation to recognise bad manners. A parable is a puzzle. "What's he getting at?"

For me, at the moment, the key is only found after I've been forced back from one question to another until I come to the biggest question of all: WHY? Why did those invited guests try to get out of their invitation? Didn't they realise that the invitation, once accepted, carried an obligation to turn up? Of course they did. They knew what they should do. They were equals of the man who put on a "great dinner".

It's the same question I've learned, after many years, to ask myself when I can't be bothered saying Yes when my wife asks me would I like to have a break for a cup of tea. Or when I make up some weak excuse if the neighbours ask us to drop in for a drink at their pre-Christmas bbq. Am I mean? Or am I so selfish that I don't want to accept a gift freely offered, freely to be enjoyed? In fact do I prefer to be locked into something - anything - rather than to be free?

Selfishness hides in subtle places in our make-up. It can be real corruption if we happen to be invested with an office of leadership or authority and it hides in our cloak of self-importance. The pharisees of every age are those who put their energy into studying how to serve their god perfectly, and lock themselves in to their own self interest.

In Jesus is calling us out to a banquet of freedom. Many in the churches today are working hard to move out, and putting a great deal of effort into planning how to change things without damaging the traditions. We are like people standing at the open gates of the concentration camp, not game to walk through, anxiously turning back to make sure we haven't left anything of value behind.

There was one man in the banquet who had not put on his wedding garment, the one provided at the door as they came in! He had the same problem as the invitees who had refused to come. He would not forget himself enough to accept the gift of freedom, to clothe himself with the dignity of a citizen of the kingdom, the freedom that is of the essence of being human. He did not want to give up his self-image of working man or beggar.

What if the wedding garment is simply FREEDOM?

Our deepest obligation is to accept to be free.