"A Wedding Feast" (a lost parable of Jesus)

 

 

             A Great Man decided to give a great feast to celebrate not one but two weddings. Invitations were hand made by scribes and delivered by servants to relatives and friends far and wide.

 

            There was much joy in Galilee, for it was not often that two marriages, not merely one, were celebrated in one ceremony.

 

            People put on their finest clothes and loaded their donkeys and their man-servants with luggage and provisions for the journey to the Great Man's house, for it was as far as three days' journey for some. "There will be wine and song and much dancing,” everyone agreed, eager to go.

 

            The two couples to be married were relatives of the Great Man. One was his own father, who was to marry a widow from the Dead Sea area. The Great Man's mother had died some years earlier, and his father had been forlorn and keeping to himself. “It is not good for man to be alone,” the Great Man said. “My father, especially now that he is elderly, needs a helpmeet. The widow is a handsome woman possessed of a fine fortune as well, and she will help ease my father's last years, as I am sure that he will ease hers.”

 

            The other couple to be wed consisted of the younger sister of the Great Man. She was the last child of the Great Man's father, who had sired numerous children with his wife, alas now quite dead. The sister was almost thirty years younger than her brother, the Great Man. Her groom was about the same age as the bride, both in their late teens.

 

            The young bride and young groom were matched in temper-ament and agreeable looks and could barely keep their eyes off each other. It was whispered by some that the two had actually had “relations” before wedlock.

            And the rumors were true. Indeed, the bride had been pregnant,  but because it was severely frowned upon for a child to be born before its parents were legally signed up to reproduce, the
young bride and groom had had the pregnancy terminated.

           Unfortunately, the procedure used was by an outcast rabbi,
and the bride's reproductive organs were scarred. A physician who examined her before the marriage said that she would now never be  able to bear children. The physician told the bride this, and the bride told the groom.

           They both wept and embraced and were most heartily sorry that they had not allowed their child to be born, even if out of   wedlock, since now they could never have children, at least not
the groom with this bride.

 

“It is best that you marry someone else,” the bride told the groom. “That way you can have offspring, something I will never be able to give you. Of course we could also adopt someone else's offspring, I suppose. What do you think?”

 

The young groom thought about this, then said, “I do not actually care for babies that much, to tell the truth. They are noisy and exude foul-smelling exudates from their orifices. Not only that, I would never want to raise somebody else's child. The chances of its being even more repellant in some way are enormous. It is only my own child that I would even be able to tolerate.”

 

“So are you two going to break off the marriage?” the Great Man had enquired.

 

The young groom had looked at the young bride, and she looked at him. “Oh, what are we to do!” they cried out as one.

 

“I love you so much!” the groom said. “I wish to marry you just as you are, scarred tubes or not. You are the one I wish to make happy, and I know that you will make me happy as well. I do not need children, and actually think they might hurt our loving relationship. But I do need you, my darling!”

 

“Oh, Ephraim!” the bride, Hannah, swooned. “I feel the same way about you. And to tell the truth, I have never especially liked children. They are a terrible drain on the nerves. I know because I have seen so many harried mothers at their wits'  end in the marketplace.”

 

Some grumbled at these words, but the Great Man said, “Rarely have I seen such genuine devotion. I believe in my heart that you two will be contented with just yourself and the other. So let us proceed with this marriage!”

 

               And that is how the double marriages were decided upon and the word went out to all and sundry that two old people and two young people who did not desire children would be united in Holy Matrimony. And as it turned out, these two marriages were as successful as any other, in fact more bountiful because these particular couples were less anxious and irritable and financially distressed than those that produced many offspring.

 

             And when they finally did break up down the road, as was to be expected by any realist, far, far fewer people were hurt.

 

             Go forth and tell this story to any assholes out there who simply can't understand gay marriage.