Parables
“The Great Banquet”
I guess it was one of those embarrassing moments. You know, when you blurt out something but it turns out to be a clanger.
Everyone else sits there smugly rejoicing in the fact that it was you that said it and not them. Oh sure, they thought exactly the same thought. They agreed with you. In fact, but for a nano-second it might have been them saying it.
It’s that kind of moment that prompted Jesus to tell the story before us today.
Someone speaks loudly, confidently and supposedly knowingly.
One of His table companions declares “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” (v 15).
No argument there. That wasn’t simply the hope of dinner guests that day; in their view, that was literally their God-given right.
Their destiny.
It reached back to some of the purple passages of the Old Testament where the great banquet at the end of the age was described. Passages such as Isaiah 25:6-10 and one that you’ve probably heard so many times its impact is lost…
Psalm 23:5
"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."
Such passages heightened and reinforced the certainty of expectation that Israel would be there by virtue of their link with Abraham.
As for the Gentiles and those who were maimed, blind and poor – they would be excluded. This belief had increasingly taken hold in the period leading up to the time of Christ.
But Jesus was an awkward dinner guest. He had the habit of bringing new angles to such ideas and lifestyles.
A habit He has retained to this day.
So on this particular day, at this particular meal, with these particular guests Jesus had taken particular note of their behaviour.
He was in the house of a leading Pharisee and the guests had been falling over themselves to get the best seat at the table.
The places of honour.
In Jesus’ day and age, these kinds of dinner dates were strong statements about who was “in” and who was “out.”
These social engagements conveyed friendship and honour. And it also was a dance of reciprocity.
You invited someone and it was expected that they would return the compliment.
And your guest list said a lot about you. The more upmarket your guests, the more your social standing was advanced.
Such was the scene that day.
As far as this dinner was concerned, things seemed to be pretty normal.
The social game was underway. People clamouring for prestige and honour. Wanting to been seen with the right people and sitting as close to the host as possible.
In response to this, Jesus tells two parables before the one we are looking at.
One parable talks about the practice of relinquishing the places of honour at feasts and one talks about inviting people who can’t dance the social dance and invite you back. They’re too poor or incapacitated to do that.
These two parables end with the promise from Jesus of the reward at “the resurrection of the righteous” (v 14).
Upon hearing that our friend blurts out his affirming “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” comment.
Put simply, he was saying “I’ll see you there! And I’ll be the one at either the right or left hand side of God. Either will do. Far be it from me to be picky or presumptuous.”
His comment was a platitude. Jesus has just exposed their hearts and so he tries to break the awkward silence and quieten Jesus down.
It doesn’t work.
Put simply, up until Jesus tells the parable we’re engaging with, this guy just doesn’t get it. None of it.
Put simply, neither did anyone else that day.
Put simply, we might be well-served to hold our peace because chances are we don’t get it either.
Maybe we’re in the same space as the person who declared his certainty about his place in the resurrection.
Maybe we also hold in our heart the certainty of our destiny in Christ.
Don’t get me wrong. So we should!
Yet, the edge to this moment in scripture is the way it challenges presumption. The way it takes hold of all who hear this story and causes them to answer the question:
“What makes you so sure that you will be at the banquet?”
The issue is not whether you’re invited; the issue is whether you will actually attend.
The way we live our lives provides the answer.
Let’s consider this story.
And as we do – remember – the declaration of the dinner guest hangs in the air. Jesus has neither affirmed it nor rejected it.
He just goes into story mode. And so they listen.
Unsuspecting.
A man plans a banquet. It’s a grand occasion.
Jesus makes the point that it is a “great dinner” and “many” are invited.
The grandeur of the occasion is in keeping with the status of the host who is later referred to as “Lord” or “Master.”
The initial part of organising such a banquet is much like it is today. Invitations were sent out and an R.S.V.P received.
The host would then set about arranging appropriate amounts of food.
Given the prestige of the host and the banquet, we can safely assume that the amount of food was at the high end of the scale. He’d be using several fattened calves.
Meanwhile, the guests would prepare themselves and work at discovering who else was invited to determine the significance of the event.
Remember – such events are all about social status and being seen in the right place with the right people.
This is their chance to be on the cover of Woman’s Day.
So far in the story - all is going to plan.
Then in verse 17, we read of the servant going out and announcing to the guests that the time has come.
All is prepared. Dinner is served!
It is this part that is foreign to our way of doing things today. There was no set time as such.
“Come, for everything is ready now.” (v 17)
There is a sense of come-as-you-are but it also assumes that they are ready. At the very least they have indicated they will be attending.
And in upper-class circles, to be summoned by a servant adds to the prestige.
“Come, for everything is ready now.”
There is something timeless about that declaration.
Yes, it is contained in a 2000 year old story – but it encapsulates the promise of centuries of prophets’ messages.
Is what they dreamed about and wrote about in the Old Testament now dawning?
Think about it.
You have Immanuel telling a story and that declaration seems to say so much. Even in that moment, in a fictitious story, truth pulsates.
That invitation – while uttered by an imaginary servant for an imaginary banquet – takes on a life of its own in that Christ utters it and summons all to His banquet hosted by His Father.
It is crucial to the story and it transcends the story and time.
“Come, for everything is ready now.”
The Kingdom has come!
Christ is here!
Redemption is here!
But the story now turns.
In verse 18 we read “But they all alike began to make excuses”.
Unanimously.
What follows is a sample of three of the many guests standing the host up.
For what reason, we don’t know, but the community closes ranks on the host and shuts him out.
As one commentator succinctly puts it – they defame him.
There is an organised campaign to shame him. This is especially significant given the highly developed code and practice of honour and shame in that culture.
While anyone of any age knows the pain of embarrassment and humiliation – it might be difficult for us to fully appreciate the full weight of what such a campaign would have meant in that time.
Here in New Zealand today – we see aspects of it in the way Maori and Pacific Island cultures handle honour and shame.
There is the Maori concept of whakama. In Cook Island culture it is akama.
In Maori it literally means “to make white” and is a deep sense of shame and embarrassment. In some ways, it is difficult to capture its full force in English.
Whakama and akama can even be experienced in the presence of praise. At one end of the spectrum, it can be conveyed as “shyness” yet at its heart are issues of shame.
Whakama strikes at the very heart of a person’s identity and mana.
For the host in Jesus’ story – such unexpected and premeditated rudeness and insults from his guests would be the cause of much whakama.
The first guest declines because he has bought some land and “must” go out and see it.
The force of the word “must” conveys the sense of priority and even a custom. Which is all very strange because if it was that important, how is it that he didn’t know about this at the time of the initial invitation to the banquet?
In fact, his “I must go” makes it clear that his real estate deal is more important than his relationship with the host.
Now, that’s insulting!
And what we do know about the Middle East is that no-one buys land without knowing everything about it before the purchase.
The location of springs, wells, expected rainfall, stone walls, paths, trees – all are known about in advance.
And another thing about this culture in that time – even with legal transactions – tomorrow is always as good as any other day.
Besides, given the banquet would be held in the late afternoon, this is not the time when legal transactions are untaken.
This excuse is shot through with inconsistencies and untruths.
And so to the second guest.
This person has just bought five yoke of oxen.
Let me put that in perspective.
For someone to need that many oxen means that he is very wealthy and probably has at least five times more land than the average farmer.
Easily over 100 hectares. So this guest is a man of significant means..
But again, this excuse is beyond belief.
To have bought the oxen and then suggest that he is now off to try them out is outrageous.
When oxen were being sold, the seller would work them on a small plot of land outside the village so that potential buyers could see if they pulled together.
Or, the seller would announce that he was going to be ploughing with them at a particular time and place so that buyers could come and see them in action.
No-one would buy oxen without first being sure they pulled and worked together.
And there is a subtle movement in this second excuse. Whereas the first guest said he had to go and see his purchase, here the guest is already on his way.
The servant was lucky to even find him home. Such is the disregard towards to the host.
Another intensifying of the insult from the first to the second excuse is that whereas land is holy, animals are unclean.
Things are going from bad to worse.
We come now to the last of the excuses offered.
The rudeness reaches it zenith here. No apology or regrets are offered.
At least the previous two had offered that, albeit somewhat lamely and insincerely.
But here the guest bluntly announces that he has just married and cannot come.
For those among us for whom New Testament Greek is their native language, they would also be able to note that his excuse conveys that the marriage is a recent event.
This further emphasises the outrage of his excuse.
Such an event in a village would be well known and the host of the banquet would not have scheduled his banquet to clash with the wedding.
Yet even more so, discretion was shown in speaking about one’s woman. But his excuse is crude and carries with it sexual overtones.
One commentator interprets his excuse as “Yesterday I said I would come, but this afternoon I am busy with a woman, who is more important to me than your banquet.”
Such behaviour was unprecedented.
Remember, “many” had been invited. These three excuses are just a sample of the many that were given.
I guess in reading these excuses today there is an entertainment value about them. And as a result we can easily switch off to their impact.
While we can understand to an extent, the silliness of looking at property after buying it and initially accepting a dinner date when you were planning (supposedly) to be on your honeymoon – we can nevertheless excuse ourselves from ever being so rude and insulting.
We might find it a stretch to imagine how we might be in such a situation.
Especially as it relates to the purpose of this story – involvement in the Kingdom of God.
Could we ever be so calculating as to lie to God?
I believe so.
It’s easier than we think.
Stepping back from the three excuses mentioned, we can identify their common denominators as:
• At best the guests had a change of heart
That is, they truly planned to attend the banquet, but they subsequently changed their minds.
• At worst the guests were deceptive
That is, they never planned to attend the banquet and the only sincerity shown was when they eventually said no.
The question remains.
In response to God’s invitation through Christ, is our behaviour represented in this story?
Can we one minute be accepting God’s invitation and then in the next offering lame excuses?
And what shape might these excuses take?
In the next chapter of Luke’s Gospel is one of the best known parables – The Prodigal Son.
When the banquet in that story is under way, the elder brother refuses the invitation to join in; such is his bitterness and anger towards his father and brother.
Many make their excuses to God from a heart of bitterness and resentment towards others. Including bitterness and resentment towards God Himself.
Conflict and tension; jealousy and anger; disappointment and coldness all conspire against us from joyfully taking God up on His invitation to experience His life and love.
And so we excuse ourselves. We dress up our issues and lie about why we regretfully will not be able to attend.
Consider too the Parable of the Sower which appears in Mark 4 and Matthew 13. There Jesus describes the effect of anxiety about wealth and the like.
Forces which hinder spiritual growth and distract the heart from responding to the love of God.
Forces which distract from the immediacy and urgency of the invitation of God.
Again – forces which inspire us to conspire against our host. Forces which cause us to re-evaluate our priorities and decline (“at least for the moment”) the opportunity to sit with our Creator and dine with Him.
The lies we tell can be as much about convincing ourselves as proffering an excuse to God.
We change our understanding of God and what it means to be a follower of Jesus to fit with our change of priorities in life.
I find the reality and poison of the economic excuses given in the parable before us, and echoed in many other parables such as the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21), can be summed up poignantly by this quote:
“The problem is not that we’ve tried faith and found it wanting, but that we’ve tried mammon and found it addictive, and as a result following Christ inconvenient.”
(Arthur Simon - founder of “Bread for the World” organisation).
So, we read and listen to the excuses in Luke 14 and smile.
And then we measure our response to the Gospel – at best experiencing a change in heart in contrast to our sincere initial response…
…at worse severely limiting our response thus exposing that out heart was never really in it from the start.
These are tough issues to consider. It takes courage to confront them. It takes deep honesty to entertain the thought that I am making excuses.
As I said earlier - Jesus is an awkward dinner guest.
Compassionate, loving and awkward. Yet, this story can liberate us.
So let’s continue to journey with it.
The slave returns to his master – literally “Lord.” The title highlights even further the degree of insult the original guests have paid him.
We see his greatness is not just measured in terms of wealth and social standing. His greatness is seen in the largeness of heart and generosity.
He doesn’t cancel the banquet – he simply makes it bigger still!
The guest list grows!
Now that’s grace.
If the excuses he has fielded are unprecedented, then so is his response. He’s not playing games.
He breaks the rules about shame, honour and reciprocity and instead gives what people do not deserve.
In his anger, the master does not exact revenge or carry out reprisals. Although that’s what they deserved.
Instead the slave is instructed to go into the town and invite the “poor, crippled, blind and lame.” To those who were considered “undeserving.”
As someone has noted – the poor don’t get invited to banquets, the maimed don’t get married, the blind don’t go and see fields and the lame don’t try out oxen.
Such an invitation to such people begins to clear the vision of God’s intention in the first place.
This invitation to those who would never expect to be ushered into such an occasion is Luke 4:16-20 declared again by way of a parable.
[Read Luke 4:16-20]
That declaration summed up the majestic promises in Isaiah and expressed the heart of God.
Problem was, the longer Jesus ministered and the more He said and did, the more it became clear that this was more than just flowing poetry.
He actually meant it.
They tried to kill Him when He had quoted Isaiah in the synagogue.
That shadow is cast in this parable. A host would not invite such guests without repercussions in the community.
He would suffer. His original guests would be infuriated at being outflanked.
The Cross is the background music to this story.
And so the first invitation to the B-List is issued.
But there is still room. Such is the generosity of this host.
Of God.
The comment that there is “still room” ( v 22) comes at an interesting place in the story. It doesn’t come after the original guests are invited; or after they refuse. It comes after the poor of the town arrive.
The mission of God seems never to be complete. “Grace, like nature, abhors a vacuum.”
And so in verse 23, the slave is instructed to go beyond the town and to the countryside and roads.
He is to “compel” them. They will need to be convinced because the host will be unknown to them.
This text has a history of tragic misinterpretation. It was a proof text for the atrocities committed during the Spanish Inquisition when people suffered greatly as they were “compelled” with violence to subscribe to the beliefs of the day.
A practice and time in history that sullied the name of Christ.
Yet we too would be mistaken to apply this instruction and engage in aggressive, in-your-face evangelism.
Such an approach is at odds with the spirit of this story and the Spirit of Christ.
“Compelling” is about encouraging people to attend. The B-List guests were “led in” and “brought in”; these guests – the C-List – are to be “compelled” through being urged and cajoled.
This invitation will seem too good to be true. In any case, they would never be in a position to reciprocate such a prestigious host.
These last guests are destitute. They are not the peasants and poor of the town. These people sleep where they can beyond the town.
They are the wanderers. They are those excluded from the community.
The need to compel people to come also has a social reason. It was polite to refuse for the first 15 minutes of the discussion.
And especially if you were of a lower social class then you definitely had to refuse initially.
And don’t say that as Kiwi’s we don’t do something similar! We’re chronic about this kind of thing. “Oh no I couldn’t stay!” “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. I’m not good enough.”
While all the time meaning, “Just keep repeating the invitation and “compelling” me and I’ll accept soon.”
There is some debate as to whether the first invitation to the poor, maimed, blind and lame in the town relates to Jesus’ message to the Jews; and the invitation to those beyond the town relates to the Gospel going to the Gentiles. The non-Jews. You and me.
It is probably a bit artificial to make that distinction. In the rest of Luke’s Gospel such a separation signified by town/countryside is not found.
And the passages in Isaiah talking about the great banquet at the end of the age include the nations of the world in any case.
So it’s best to think of the invitations as meaning that anyone and everyone is invited.
That being said, there is one insight that I believe is worthy of reflection.
A scholar by the name of Kenneth Bailey, a man who worked in the Middle East as a missionary for over 40 years, offers this insight.
The parable does fit with the actual life and times of Jesus.
The command in the parable to go into the town and invite others is carried out by the servant. The second command to go further afield is given but not carried out.
Therefore, it fits with Jesus’ ministry and what the disciples were yet to achieve.
Overall, this description of such a meal would be understood as the beginning of the reign of God.
As a church this morning, we could be excused for thinking that the point for us today is to give thanks that we have received the invitation as those on the “B” and “C” list.
That we enjoy the promise of the banquet of God at the end of the age.
There’s a place for that and for thanksgiving to God for the invitation. We may also appeal to this parable as inspiration for mission.
Obviously and legitimately so! Absolutely!
…but all in good time.
But let me say something here.
The minute we do that – we are essentially crying out “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15)
The final statement in the parable addresses that comment.
It addresses anyone who says “Thank You God for inviting me” and who immediately forgets that we too have the potential of making excuses.
Here’s how the parable finishes. After issuing the command to go beyond the town and invite even more people, the host says "For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.” (Luke 14:24)
Here’s the thing. When the master says “For I tell you”, the “you” is plural.
In other words – it doesn’t read “For I tell ‘you slave’”; but “For I tell ‘you all’”!
He steps out of the story and leans towards every person hearing and reading this.
And he says with urgency “For I tell you all! None of those invited will taste my dinner!”
This parable conveys a sobering message.
“We can’t save ourselves but we can damn ourselves.”
No-one can enter the Kingdom without an invitation. And no-one can remain outside but for their own choice.
What’s your excuse? Truly.
If you know in your heart that you are “excusing” yourself from the Kingdom, do not despair.
If as a church we are “excusing” ourselves from the Kingdom by wrong priorities by despising those we perceive to be B-List and C-List guests today. Let’s not despair.
Immanuel!
“Come, for everything is ready now.”
"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with Me." (Revelation 3:20)
Immanuel!
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