What about that last line, “Many are invited, but few are chosen!” What was this wedding garment, the lack of which got the fellow pitched from the party? Galatians may hold the key when it says, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” But what does it mean to be clothed in Christ? A run down of the guest list to the heavenly banquet described in today’s parable is revealing.

First, there is the original list. We see in them those chief priests and elders, the religious elite who should have welcomed God’s invitation in Jesus, but in fear, jealously, legalism and hypocrisy, refused. Such attitudes are not kingdom attitudes and to the degree that we participate in them, we are not clothed for the heavenly banquet.

More are invited. Some ignore the invitation and go about their work. Intent on the task at hand, they turn down a freely given invitation of God to join the feast. To the degree that we put other things first or think we are earning our own way, we have not “put on Christ.”

Other invitees resort to violence. The prophets and Christ experienced this outright angry response to the invitation to be God’s people, and such responses are still alive and well today. But violence takes frightfully subtle forms as well, such as gossip, exclusion, objectification of the human person and more. To the degree that these things prevail in our lives, we are not “clothed in Christ.”

Finally, God invites a checkered bunch– beggars, tax collectors, unskilled laborers seeking a day’s work, perhaps a few reputable citizens making their way through the riff-raff. This group responds and the whole hall fills. Unlike the “A-list,” it isn’t important who they are, what they have done in the past, or what accomplishments they can claim.

But among this group is one, who though he shows up, is unprepared. He simply doesn’t know how to behave where common values such as elitism, jealousy, earning one’s way, violence and exclusion have been turned upside down and abundance, invitation and belonging are the order of the day. St. Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.” The practice of “clothing ourselves in Christ” each day, by the way we live and love, prepares us to participate in the heavenly feast.