In the Parable of the Tenants the landowner's son is killed and in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet the son of the king is dishonored as one to be scorned and insulted by the refusal of invited guests to attend the marriage ceremony and following festivities.

Each parable now stands as a manifestation of the impertinence and hostility of mankind towards God. Revolt, dismissive or violent, resides in the human heart. It can set God aside as one to be defied and ignored, or it can declare war and draw swords against him. Whether the mien of unbelievers appears to be mild or malicious in their disregard of the Lord Jesus their enmity is resolute and incurable without the influence of heart-mellowing grace. Mankind lacks reverence toward its Maker. We are all guilty of the cardinal offense - minimalistic notions of God.

Because of the over-fanciful and highly eccentric treatment of the parables at various times standards of interpretation have been suggested to prevent the unruly abuse of Jesus' public teaching method, misuse or explanation that employs notions that he never intended to convey. The allegorical method of past ages has been forbidden in favor of the view that each parable has one central point to be established and that accompanying detail is merely embellishment to create an absorbing tale concerning the kingdom of God, the absolute authority of the One who establishes the kingdom, and the various attitudes of mankind in relation to it.

Emerging now from all the discussion of a competent approach to the meaning of the parables is the idea that it is the person and program of Jesus that generally is at the heart of the parabolic technique. Ultimately Jesus is pointing to something about himself, the parables are self-descriptive, and this fact expands our interest and analysis to all the features of the stories he told. Nothing is artificial or extraneous to our understanding of him. Various clues and components are available to elucidate the gospel. The poetry and imagery are not merely in service to the desiccated detection of a bare religious principle. The parables are designed to be affective, engaging, involving, and to place before us the crisis of the calling and claims of Jesus - to render us captive to his character and cause, to quicken the conscience, and to alert us to our disposition towards him, for or against. In various contexts and ways the parables afford us a profile of the character and calling of Jesus, identifying those traits that persuade us to trust him as the embodiment and agent of the kingdom, and if the features of his person are not explicit then the stories he created happen to describe and elucidate the policy and prospects of the kingdom. We derive our impressions of Jesus from the tales that he told and relate to them as both didactic and affective. He is at the heart of the parables which emerge from his mighty heart.

There is room for the romance of searching out facets of the gospel as Jesus himself apprehended it and intended it to be grasped. The mind is permitted to receive and utilize the charm and sagacity of Jesus' mind divulged in his sayings and stories. Over-reaction to misuse of Holy Scripture should not result in a mind-numbing rigidity and stultified theology. Any human approach to the Bible has its possible hazards. The Protestant reservation about the use of allegory should not rule out the responsible use of analogy and "poetic license", discerning "what fits" in our depiction of Jesus through illuminated insight or accurate hindsight. The maxim for biblical interpretation is simply that the sense of Scripture is located in Christ as derived from its total witness to him. The pointers to Jesus throughout Holy Writ need to be freed from the constraints of scholars who repudiate the supernatural and lack the antennae to receive its supernatural meaning as Messianic promise and fulfillment. Bernard of Clairvaux, Henry Law of Gloucester, and C.H. Spurgeon are among the many exegetes who happen to set the text of Scripture to celestial music that entrances the soul.

Biblical criticism has sometimes caused us to clam up on the adventurous research and enquiry concerning our Saviour and the thrilling information to be mined from the fertile ground of Scripture. Biblical science has its legitimate place but many of its practitioners are blind to the Word's essential message. Presuppositions, prejudices, subjectivity, and skepticism reign in their minds and they may justifiably be included in that category of persons described in Psalm 95:10, "It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways" (Venite BCP). The strictures of unbelieving academia have imperiled our estimation of Jesus, the high esteem that is his, and the publication of the glorious gospel that is meant to display him to the world has been trimmed and muted.

Sadly, sometimes, even supposedly evangelical theologians find themselves intimidated by the liberal academy, become afraid to stand outside the circle of received opinion, and feel the need to ingratiate themselves to the big names and institutions of avant-garde thought and theory. They are wooed to compromise by the prospect of academic acceptance. Embarrassment and ego can play a part (competitiveness also) in impeding the thrust of the church's witness to the Son of God and our Saviour.

The Bible can be studied and debated exhaustively but primarily it is addressed to the common man who can take his cue from Jesus: "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24: 27&44, John 5: 39-40). The Scriptures contain the preparatory teaching of the prophets, the instruction of Christ, and the exposition of the apostles. They are sufficient for the formation of saving faith and loyal discipleship in any earnest reader and in them that reader encounters "the Me" of Luke's text. He (Jesus' 'Me') lives, as it were, in his word but stubborn minds that turn the pages do not find him. As Charles Spurgeon commented on the converted and rectory-trained stonecutter and prince of preachers William Jay, "We would gladly give some two or three dozen of the general run of doctors of divinity for one such master in Israel as William Jay of Bath".

The Lord Jesus is our principal instructor in Holy Writ and we enter his seminary through the portals of humility and prayer. He opens the Word and he opens the understanding: I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Matthew 11: 22-27). There is no graduation point from the school of Jesus, just gradual comprehension and perception and no student of the Lord ever needs to increase the dimensions of their headgear or augment the size of their mortarboard due to swell-headedness. Every session with Jesus deflates the sense of being knowledgeable before the Master.

Jesus possesses the prerogative of applying the Old Testament to himself. Believers have the privilege of entering into the divine secrets that he discloses (1 Peter 1: 10 -12). We lean upon him for the learning that counts - not to our credit, but to his. And his tutorial method marries mind and heart. The head does not grow over-big and the heart beats with wonder. A humble head is in step with heartfelt homage. We stoop before him keeping our ears to holy ground for the vibrations of his approach. We attune our attention to him at his arrival.

Jesus enables us to see him in his pre-incarnational activity and significance. Our previously cited example leaps out to us from Matthew 21: 2-46. Jesus advises his audience that they would know and understand him more clearly if only they had comprehend the message of their nation's Scriptures: "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes" (Matt 21:42 derived from Psalm 118:22,23). In the statements that follow Christ identifies himself with the capstone (vv43, 44) and warns his rejecters of the catastrophic consequences of their repudiation of him. The stone will crush them. The recalcitrant Pharisees got the point of Jesus' rebuke and sought to deal with him viciously.

Jesus as man gleaned his self-understanding from the Spirit's intimation of the meaning of the Old Testament as it applied to him. In so doing he opens the way of our investigation into the Messianic mysteries of the old covenant. He brings the Old Testament into its own in these latter times, as was his design. The Old Testament matters more than ever. Through it Jesus acquaints us with himself and invites us to match it with the apostolic portrait in the New. The Bible gives us double confirmation of the credentials and accomplishment of the Redeemer.

In the parables Jesus delineates aspects of his saving obedience to the Father and the faithful. The Parable of the Wedding Banquet registers Jesus' own knowledge of the insolence of mankind toward him. Men dismiss him due to feeble excuses and futile preoccupations. Trivial and temporal pursuits turn folk away from their eternal interests. However the generosity of God persists in an augmented distribution of the invitation to receive from his bounty. The appeal is indiscriminate and unearned by title or noble toil. In the terms of the tale "good or bad may come" - worth is no consideration and none need hesitate to enter the wedding hall.

The matter of scholarly dispute is the stipulation of the necessity to attend the feast in appropriate attire. If the circumstances of the parable are strictly observed this requirement would be an impossibility for the crowds that complied with the summons to the king's festive boards. The conclusion would have to be that the host provided the requisite robes and that one stubborn or disrespectful individual refused the king's kind provision, and hence was evicted from the happy celebratory company. The inner logic of the parable supports the traditional conjecture that the proper decorum for a special occasion and admission to the royal presence was supplied by the king himself. The king qualified his guests for the great event.

In the construction of this narrative the consciousness and self-awareness of Jesus was pointing to the fact that it is his righteousness and merit that qualify us for the heavenly banquet. We are vested before a righteous God with Jesus' virtues. Whatever we might conclude, think we know, or conjecture with regard to this parable, Jesus knew his assignment was to make us acceptable to God, and in the light of Calvary this illustration of gracious inclusion within the kingdom is redolent with the idea of justification by faith, (imputed righteousness) and the instinct of our evangelical forebears in recognizing this is trustworthy. Critical theory and modern Protestant scruples have in so many ways thwarted our enjoyment of the Christological richness of Scripture which we may appreciate through a backward glance at the teaching of our Lord. There is a faithfulness to Scripture that includes a right-thinking flexibility controlled by an adherence to its witness to Christ. This is apparent in the apostolic use of the Old Testament though we ourselves are cautious in the knowledge that unlike them we are not under the influence of divine inspiration.

["Historical evidence indicating that in the Near East even in post-biblical times a person who wished to enter the king's presence was required to wear a robe sent to him by the monarch is not completely lacking" (William Hendrickson, The Gospel of Matthew, Banner of truth Trust,1976 cu W.M. Taylor, The Parables of Our Savior, Expounded and Illustrated,1886).

"Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, 'Take off his filthy clothes.' Then he said to Joshua, See I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.'" (Zechariah 3:3,4,).

'Which had not on a wedding garment' i.e. Christ apprehended by faith, and expressed in his virtues by a holy life. Justification and sanctification are the righteousness of the saints, wherewith arrayed they are beautiful even to admiration (John Trapp): 'For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean was given her to wear.' (fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) Revelation 19:7,8.]

Jesus Christ is the summit of hallowed human thought and the sum and substance of Holy Scripture and the following quotes capture the sentiments of those who know him:

"Oh, behold him! Behold his Person, grace, work, heart! Oh, there is none like Christ! John "Rabbi" Duncan

Since he looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath run away to heaven with it. Samuel Rutherford

The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church