Matthew 22:5 Meaning But They Made Light of It

An invitation to the feast of the mind is offered, and the ego turns away, not in open refusal but in indifference, drifting back to what it already knows. Each figure returns to his own preoccupation, and this quiet turning is how the world defends itself against love, not by fighting it but by finding it less real than the day's small business.

The farm and the merchandise are not evil; they are simply what the mind chooses instead. Guilt keeps the self busy so it need not stop and be called to something greater. Yet the call does not fail because it is ignored. The invitation waits, and the mind that once looked past it can turn back whenever it is willing to lay the small errands down.

Farm: the mind's absorption in its own labor and ground, the familiar work it returns to rather than answer a call to something greater. Merchandise: the mind's investment in gain and exchange, the busyness of buying and selling that keeps love at a comfortable distance.

Here is the ordinary human condition. An invitation is always being offered, a call into the aliveness of this moment, and most make light of it and hurry back to their doing. One to his farm, another to his merchandise, each so identified with activity that the open door of the present goes unseen.

It is not that the work itself is wrong. It is that they are lost inside it, mistaking the restless movement of the mind for life. So the invitation is missed, not because it was refused outright, but because their attention was somewhere else the whole time it stood open.