(Image courtesy of http://www.harpers.org/)My wife and I will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary in June. The church hall will accommodate a larger number than we think are likely to want to come, and we do not want to plan for a large number of guests if those who actually come will not come close to that figure.
In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus speaks on two occasions about festive dinners. The first is the setting for a lesson on humility. The second portrays the eternal celebration of God with the saved in the afterlife (what we often just call “Heaven”) under the figure of a glorious banquet with music and dancing and great joy.
This entire section concerns happenings at a large banquet that Jesus was invited to in the home of a wealthy Pharisee (v.1). As it happens, the banquet was held on the Sabbath day, so that invitees had to live close enough to the host’s home to be able to come there without violating the laws concerning the maximum distance one could travel on the Sabbath. And since it was not legal to cook on the Sabbath, all the food had to be prepared on the previous day. Unless the host took some liberties with the Sabbath laws, it is hard to imagine how he could host such a gathering. It is hard to see how his wife and servants were “resting”! Luke does not mention any of this, but it is all inherent in his notation that the banquet was on the Sabbath.
He also states right at the outset that host and guests were “watching” Jesus, probably meaning that they were looking for an excuse to criticize him. There is blatant hypocrisy at work here: on the one hand, Jesus is a guest; on the other, the host and friends are looking for a way to attack him!
Jesus noticed that a certain man present —either a guest, or someone who wandered in from the street (like the woman who wandered in to the house of Simon and anointed Jesus’ feet)—was afflicted with dropsy. So the first thing Jesus did is to pose a question to the religious scholars (“scribes and Pharisees”): “Is it lawful heal on the Sabbath?” You remember this issue came up earlier in our studies in Luke, and Jesus claimed that the Sabbath was the most appropriate time of all for sufferers to be healed and freed from their suffering.
On this occasion the scholars were silent: they had no answer to give. When Jesus saw this, he healed the man and let him leave the gathering. It was better that he leave, since he would want to celebrate with his family at home, and it is likely that Jesus’ silent critics would not have wanted him around to remind them of what Jesus had done and said!
Then Jesus gave them a lesson. It is more or less what he said to his critics on that earlier occasion we studied about healing on the Sabbath. Every law-abiding Jew realized that one was entitled to rescue an animal or a person who had fallen into a well on the Sabbath. And it was nit-picking hypocrisy not to see that the man with dropsy had a need as great as this, which God wanted them to fill.
But Jesus was not through with lessons for this gathering. He had noticed when he came in, that everyone was scrambling to find “seats of honor” to occupy at the banquet—perhps close to the head table or next to someone of note. There is certainly nothing wrong with trying to find a friend to chat with at a dinner. But this was a matter of pride. So the “unwelcome” prophet from Nazareth again spoke to the gathering, telling them that it would be the host in the final analysis who would determine where he wanted you to sit. In effect, it was the host who would “rank” his own guests. To attempt to place yourself higher than the host thought you belonged, would only result in the humiliation of having him ask you to “Please take a lower seat. This one is for Mr. and Mrs. X”! The spiritual lesson, Jesus said, was that those who exalt themselves are setting themselves up for being humbled by God, the Ultimate Host at the eternal banquet.
He also had a few words of advice for his host (v. 12-14, and I paraphrase here): “You seem to have invited only well-to-do or important people: those who can reciprocate with equal favors to you. This is not God’s way. Instead, invite people who cannot return the favors to you. That is how God operates in granting mercy to sinners such as you. And if you generously give to those who cannot repay you, God himself will repay you in the Afterlife.”
At the mention of the blessed Afterlife (literally, “The Resurrection of the Righteous”) one of the guests—not necessarily wishing to disagree with Jesus at all—spontaneously raised his voice and said “How wonderful it will be to eat in the Kingdom Banquet at the End of Time!”
Now, Jesus certainly did not disagree with that sentiment. But he was not sure yet that those in this gathering who were eagerly looking forward to that great event had truly turned to God in repentance and faith. So he told another story illustrating how few people are really interested in repentance, faith and the life of discipleship that leads to dining at the Kingdom Banquet.
The story was that a wealthy man gave a great banquet and invited lots of friends, one assumes they were people of respectability, and social rank. But on the day of the banquet, when everything was already prepared for them, they all came up with excuses why they could not come! All of the excuses were—technically speaking legitimate. They were precisely the situations that in the law of Moses were legitimate ones for not going to war against Israel’s and God’s enemy’s. But this was not an enlistment in the army, nor was it a long-term demand like going on a military campaign that might take a month or more. It was a one-day affair, a banquet given by a generous host.
In v. 21-24, therefore, the angry host told his servant to go out into the streets and invite anyone who would come, no matter how dirty or poor they were. And he canceled his invitation to the noble and wealthy whom he had at first invited.
Luke didn’t give an interpretation to this story of Jesus, nor does he tell us that Jesus did to his hearers. Sometimes he spoke this way, so that those with insight could see and those without insight would only wonder what was intended. But to us the meaning seems clear. All too often those who one would think were the wisest and most religious are actually they who understand the least about God and who show the least of God’s own character intheir lives: his kindness, mercy and honesty. And no one—no matter how much they think they are kind, merciful and honest—who is unwilling to seek God’s forgiveness in Jesus will enter his Kingdom. That is the meaning of the invitation to the banquet. It is an invitation to confess one’s need of forgiveness, and find it in Jesus’ death and resurrection. If you “take a pass” on this invitation, you are like the invitees who used every possible excuse to avoid accepting.
P.S.: I neglected to say that in the imagery of the New Testament, Jesus is the groom and we disciples the bride! So if you decide to accept the invitation, you will also be getting married to Jesus!
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