Luke 14:15-24 CEB When one of the dinner guests heard Jesus’ remarks, he said to Jesus, “Happy are those who will feast in God’s kingdom.” Jesus replied, “A certain man hosted a large dinner and invited many people. When it was time for the dinner to begin, he sent his servant to tell the invited guests, ‘Come! The dinner is now ready.’ One by one, they all began to make excuses. The first one told him, ‘I bought a farm and must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I bought five teams of oxen, and I’m going to check on them. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ When he returned, the servant reported these excuses to his master. The master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go quickly to the city’s streets, the busy ones and the side streets, and bring the poor, crippled, blind, and lame.’ The servant said, ‘Master, your instructions have been followed and there is still room.’ The master said to the servant, ‘Go to the highways and back alleys and urge people to come in so that my house will be filled. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’” In the church, we remember Jesus' words in John, “‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6 NRSV). The church is that way to Jesus, right? Except, when we look around, we notice empty pews. What will become of our churches with so many seats open? Our first impulse is to turn away and turn inward, to reduce the number of tables, slash names from the guest list, and think to ourselves, “This must be the extent of those who can be saved.” Perhaps, we hope people will wander into our midst, take a seat and at least one more will be rescued, or on the other hand, we could maybe make church attendance and Christianity mandatory and then we could force people to come and sit around our tables! Right? Except, today’s story teaches a different message, Jesus might be the way, but the church is not the only way to Jesus. Our story tells about a God who won’t sit by when there are empty seats, and it is God who goes out and pursues and brings people into the feast. For all of us already at the table, it becomes a matter of whether we will accept these new guests or not.
Well now, Jesus really makes a nuisance out of himself at this dinner with the Pharisees, as our scripture reading today picks up right where last week’s left off. He tells them two parables back to back, with the second no easier than the first. He tells of a host, someone of wealth and authority, who invites others of wealth and authority to his dinner table. We can tell this from how these other important people tell the host “no.” One says he just bought a farm, so he has the money to afford to buy property rather than being a tenant or inheriting the family homestead. The second tells the host, “I just bought five teams of oxen,” and I have to imagine that today this would be like someone saying, “I just bought a Ferrari, and I want to take it for a spin!” The last says that they just got married, so they probably just hosted a great banquet of their own and are in no shape to reciprocate the favor of attending the host’s get-together. Rather than simply canceling the party, the host takes an altogether more drastic approach. To this point, the Pharisees listening along were probably nodding their heads, sympathizing with the host. After all, who has not had people cancel on them, and in turn, who has not made an excuse to get out of a social obligation? The Pharisees get “the etiquette of party invites and RSVP’s; they get the presumed guest list, and who should be at the table at such a banquet.”[1] Jesus, however, takes things further, by having the host decide “to replace people of property and social standing with those at the bottom of the social pyramid.”[2] The host sends his servant out to the broad plazas and the more suspect side alleys to find the marginalized and bring them to the feast. This is shocking! It is surprising! It seems like a rather unorthodox response to the problem of empty seats at your banquet table, and yet, it is how God responds to these kinds of problems. In the face of frustrating rejection, most of us would change our plans, and we would probably downsize or turn inward. We get depressed and distraught when people don’t show up to our services, ministries, and meals. When excuses start pouring in, and people stop coming, the church often finds itself stuck, unsure of how to respond. After all, with “thousands of years of religious tradition and cultural establishment firmly under our feet, and with a couple billion adherents around the world,”[3] we can get slow in responding to new situations. We as Christians, “can easily forget that the Bible is the story of scoundrels and saints, of underdogs and scaredy-cats,”[4] in other words, we forget that God uses unusual people and improvises in surprising ways to powerfully deliver grace to meet changing circumstances. We could not cover all these surprising improvisations in one sermon, but to name a few: let’s not forget that God starts off by picking two ninety-year-olds to be the parents of a whole nation of chosen people. Later on, God picks a murderer to lead these same chosen people out of slavery. God talks to people through dreams. God has prophets get swallowed by fish and make friends with lions. Jesus hangs out with prostitutes, sinners, and outcasts rather than the religious people of his day. If we imagine God as the host of this particular table, we learn more about how God’s grace works in our world. God doesn’t get distressed or disappointed, and God certainly doesn’t cancel the feast or downsize the table to fit those who are already sitting around it. Instead, we have a God who goes out to bring people into the kingdom. God gets progressively bolder too. Notice in the parable that the host begins with people there in the city itself, but when that doesn’t fill things up, the host tells his servant “‘Go to the highways and back alleys and urge people to come in so that my house will be filled.’” In other words, the host sends the servant outside of the city, into the surrounding countryside to bring more people into the feast. The parable ends here too, with the tables never being filled and not all the seats ever being fully taken. In other words, God is never done seeking and searching for more people to bring into God’s kingdom, to God’s feast. What does this mean for us today? It might mean God is already moving out there, right now. God is moving through people and movements outside of the churches and denominations. We see it in the places where justice and good are being done. We see it in the organizations and groups that help bind up the broken places in our world. Does this mean churches and denominations are worthless now? Not in the slightest, because our invitation is to be like God, to be the servant of the kind of host that goes out to find, that kind that urges people to come into the kingdom rather than simply the church and have a seat at the table. Inviting and welcoming people, even the ones we do not normally expect to see becomes our mission. They don’t already have to be Christians or even believe in God. They don’t have to live the Christian lifestyle or be “decent” people, God has invited them and that is more than enough for us to play servant on behalf of the gracious host. As, it will be God’s grace, with all its transformative power, that will ultimately change them as it changes us. It is grace that turns Abraham and Sarah into parents. It turns Moses from a murderer to a prophet and leader. It leads prophets to endure hardship and trial in order to better teach God’s people about justice and compassion. It is also grace that leads Jesus to eat with and so welcome the people who need God’s kindness and compassion the most and then turns these people into the foundation of the church and the builders of the kingdom of God. Imagine what will happen to these social outcasts who join the host at this banquet table. Who will they become? What will this kingdom look like when these forgotten and sinful people become the principal guests of God’s table? What should our invitation look like, and how are we going about doing it? When John Wesley read this passage from scripture, he noted that we should join with God in inviting people, that we should “urge people to come in” and do so “with all the violence of love, and the force of God’s word.”[5] An odd phrasing to be sure, but a more modern way to put it might be to welcome people while loving them fiercely and with all the force of a compassionate and caring God! Fierce love tears down barriers! The force of compassion does more than shame or guilt or rejection to transform lives and change hearts! In fact, the very heart and life that might be changed at this kind of table might be our own! How do we do it? What does it look like? Well, where are the outcasts? Where are the ones hidden in the back alleys of our world? What kind of people are despised as vile and unwelcome? Perhaps it is in their midst that we can find God setting up tables and putting out chairs. Perhaps it looks like us following God out into the world to take a seat next to the people God has placed there at the table. We can eat with them, and listen to them. We can love them fiercely, and show the kind of compassion our God continues to show us. It will turn despair into hope, and turn our trend toward downsizing into an expansive welcome! It will free the church to reach outside of buildings and pews to embrace God’s people in all the corners of our world, there at the banquet table of the kingdom, a table that is never filled. Amen. [1] Cynthia M.Campell and Christine Coy Fohr, Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023), 66. [2] Robert C. Tannehill, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: Luke, ed. Victor Paul Furnish (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 231. [3] MaryAnn McKibben Dana, God, Improv, and The Art of Living (Grand Rapids: Michigan, 2018), 44. [4] Ibid. [5] John Wesley’s Notes on the Bible, 14:23.
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