October 11, 2026
Dear Friends,
Amy-Jill Levine is a New Testament scholar and an Orthodox Jew. She has published several books on Jesus from a Jewish perspective, including her book Stories Told by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (hereafter, STJ), and was recently selected as the president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America. In STJ, Levine reflects on many of the most famous parables of Jesus recounted by the evangelists, including The Good Samaritan, The Pearl of Great Price, and The Laborers in the Vineyard. Her aim in the book is to try to help contemporary readers gain a better appreciation for how Jesus’ original hearers would have understood his parables.
While Levine does not deal extensively with the parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matt. 22:2-14) that we hear in this Sunday’s Gospel, she does make mention of it in the conclusion of the book, in a section entitled “Foretastes of the Messianic Banquet”. After commenting on the parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matt. 21:33-46) that we heard last week, Levine says the following:
The parable of the Wedding Banquet or Great Dinner (Matt. 22.2–14; Luke 14.16–24) is similarly disturbing in its violence. It ends with dead slaves, a burned city, dinner guests who are compelled to attend the party, and an expelled guest doomed to torture because he lacked the right outfit. That any of this speaks to what the “kingdom of heaven” is like should come as a surprise. If the parable is about salvation, then it is about a type of salvation in which free will is obviated. If the parable is about the grace of the divine, then it is a grace that burns an entire city because of the sins of a few of its citizens. If the parable is about the messianic banquet, then it is a banquet that nobody eats. If the lord or king in the parable is God, then we should wonder if this is the type of God we want to worship.
The parable should disturb. If we hear it and are not disturbed, there is something seriously amiss with our moral compass. It would be better if we perhaps started by seeing the parable not as about heaven or hell or final judgment, but about kings, politics, violence, and the absence of justice. If we do, we might be getting closer to Jesus. (STJ, pp. 281-282)
Levine goes on to conclude the book with this personal reflection:
I do not worship Jesus as Lord and Savior, but I continue to return to these stories [i.e., the parables], because they are at the heart of my own Judaism. They challenge, they provoke, they convict, and at the same time they amuse. At each reading, when I think I’ve got all the details explained, something remains left over, and I have to start again. The parables have provided me countless hours of inspiration, and conversation. They are pearls of Jewish wisdom. If we hear them in their original contexts, and if we avoid the anti-Jewish interpretation that frequently deforms them, they gleam with a shine that cannot be hidden. (STJ, p. 282)
As people who do worship Jesus as Lord and Savior, I think that Levine’s words should both inspire and challenge us. She clearly has taken the time and the trouble to engage and wrestle with the parables of Jesus, not settling for easy interpretations or platitudes. As she says at one point in the conclusion to her book, “The parables, if we take them seriously not as answers but as invitations, can continue to inform our lives, even as our lives continue to open up the parables to new readings.” (STJ, 275)
It could be very easy for us to avoid or ignore parables like the one of the Wedding Feast, which “disturb” our personal and cultural sensibilities. But to do so would be to refuse an invitation to enter into conversations, both with God and each other, that can open our hearts and minds to possibilities and realities that we would otherwise not recognize.
Part of the blessing that we, as Catholics, experience when the Lord Jesus gathers us to celebrate the Holy Eucharist on Sunday is that we don’t get to choose the readings that are proclaimed. Catholics all over the world hear the same readings, including readings that are meant to shake us out of the illusion that we can make God conform to our preferences, standards, and whims. And for that, we should give thanks.
Peace,
Father Leo