The Great Feast

by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 14:1-24

September 9, 2001

Excuses can be surprisingly creative. Take, for example various excuses on accident reports as published by the Toronto Sun.

"Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have." "I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident." "My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle." "An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished." "I put my car into gear, looked over at my mother-in-law and drove over the embankment."

Finally, my favorites --the woman who wrote: "The pedestrian had no idea of which way to go so I ran over him," and the man who wrote: "The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth."

This morning, Jesus talks about excuses -- excuses people gave as to why they failed to come to a banquet. Jesus gives this as a parable of how people excuse themselves from responding to God.

Jesus often taught in parables. In the coming Sundays we are going to look at some of these parables - - because Jesus used them to communicate truth. The parables are what Lloyd Ogilvie calls "The Autobiography of God." They teach us who God is, who we are, and what our response to God should look like. Jesus' parables do not just illustrate truth--they are truth.

The occasion for this parable of The Great Feast is very significant. Jesus is the Messiah. The Messianic age is symbolized as a joyous banquet in the Old Testament. Only the day before Jesus talked about this messianic feast: "They shall come from East and West and North and South, and will recline at table in the kingdom of God." And among the first to have the opportunity to sit with Jesus at table is a group of Pharisees--the spiritual leaders of the nation.

The praise of Jesus has reached a high pitch among the masses. At this meal, the Pharisees take on the "duty" of putting Jesus to the test. But they also have other things on their minds: Who will be given the seats of honor at this banquet? Everyone maneuvers for seats close to the host. Some push past Jesus in a frantic effort to be recognized and honored. Jesus hears their conversations: "I expected to be the guest of honor! I gave the host a place of honor when he came to my house and look where I'm seated! I just can't help but be upset by the shabby treatment I've received."

For this moment, they forget their agenda with Jesus. But when the scramble is over and everyone has reclined at table, a shocking thing happens. A man suffering from dropsy comes in to where the party is being held -- probably in an open courtyard. He makes his way past the tables and stands in front of Jesus. Every head swivels in Jesus' direction.

Jesus sees the wheels turning in the Pharisee's minds. Will Jesus break their law and heal on the Sabbath? He penetrates their thoughts and asks them their own question: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" He knows that He is facing their test. We should not discount the possibility that the Pharisees arranged for this sick man to enter the place of feasting so they could put Jesus on the spot.

Jesus turns away from His inquisitors to focus His full attention on the man who is ill. Power surges through His divine hands as He holds the man firmly, tenderly. We see the release and joy on the man's face as he realizes that Jesus has healed him.

This gracious power to heal should have been enough to show the Pharisees the truth of Jesus' claims. But Jesus turns back and finds only judgement. Yes, He has healed. But He has not done it according to their rules. So He is obviously a sinner.

But at least Jesus finally has their undivided attention. And He uses the opportunity for some penetrating teaching. He tells them first that people are much more important than their Sabbath rules. Then He comments on their competitive squabble about who is going to sit where--that they are more concerned with their dignity than with the fact that a man has been healed as a demonstration that the long-awaited messianic age is at hand and the Messiah Himself is seated in their midst. This meal is much more than one more power lunch. But they can't see it.

Jesus gets personal. He makes them squirm. So one of the Pharisees, hearing Jesus speak of "The resurrection of the righteous" blurts out a Pharisee slogan: "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God."

The Jewish people had a standard picture of what will happen when God breaks into history and the golden age arrives. Part of this picture is the Messianic banquet--a great feast God will give for His people where Leviathan, the sea monster, is served as the main course.

Of course the Pharisees expect only Jews to be at this table -- and not all the Jews either. They expect only the "perfect righteous" to eat with the Messiah. The "perfect righteous" of course, are the Pharisees and those who agree with them.

Now, in response to this Pharisee slogan, Jesus gives them a shock. He tells them what it's really going to be like. He speaks of a man who "is making a banquet and who invites many."

To understand this parable, we need to note a difference between European and Semitic culture. In our European based culture, the longer the time gap between the acceptance of an invitation and the event, the greater the obligation to participate. If I agree to speak at a program a year from now, nothing should intervene. It's been on my calendar and other plans must adapt to these long-made plans. Now if I tell you that I'll drop in tomorrow night, that's different. Something may come up or I haven't had time to check my schedule.

But in the Middle East, this is exactly reversed. An obligation accepted months ago is not really an obligation because "who knows what might happen in the meantime." It is only the recent obligation that is binding.

So Jesus tells us that this host "is making" a banquet. The verb tense is there on purpose. Remember, there is no way to preserve food. Refrigeration is years away. So banquet preparations do not begin until the guest-list is assured.

When we were in Kenya last July we worked at the church and orphanage site at Makobe for several days and then returned for Sunday worship. Worship started late and ran long and was followed by the fund raising and auction to raise money for the completion of the church. We then faced a one and a half hour drive down a rutted dirt road to our hotel. All of this threatened to seriously cut into our planned tour of old Mombasa before we caught the train at 7 p.m. There was a real temptation to skip the lunch that had been planned following the auction and get underway. But we couldn't do that. If we didn't eat the food, it would spoil. That food represented real sacrifice on the part of our hosts. Some of the women had been cooking since two A.M . We just couldn't leave and never saw old Mombasa.

It works the same way in the world of the parable, if I invite you home for Sunday dinner, I wouldn't take the chicken out back and kill it until you arrived because if you didn't show up, the food will spoil. It's getting that way in California with the threat of blackouts. You don't want to load up your freezer. Jesus stresses that this host "is making" a banquet. The invitations have been accepted. Now it is an enormous personal insult to fail to show up.

Once the meat is ready the host sends the servant to call the guests. I believe that we should see this servant as a reference to Jesus' own ministry. Just as Jesus has come to Israel, the servant in the parable goes to those who have accepted the invitation and says: "The meal is ready. It is time to come."

Now come the excuses. Each of these excuses is revealed as extremely flimsy. The first man says: "I have bought a piece of land and I must go out to look at it. Please consider me excused."

A Middle-Eastern audience would know that excuse to be ridiculous. The selling and buying of land was an extremely long process. There isn't that much good land to sell. There is a lot of tradition attached to who owns it. A purchase takes months of negotiation. The prospective buyer knows that field like the back of his own hand. He knows the trees, the water--everything. He knows who has owned the land for the past six generations and the success each owner has had farming it.

This excuse would be like me saying, "I bought a car. Now I have to find out if it's a Ford or a Chevy or a Honda and whether it's a van, an SUV, or a sedan." That kind of learning after purchase isn't done here with cars and it wasn't done there with land.

The next excuse is no better. The guest tells the servant: "I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to try them out. Please consider me excused."

When a farmer in the Middle East purchased oxen it would be with a lot of testing. There was a piece of land by the market set aside for this. It was a half-day process to select and buy one yoke. Do they walk straight? How do they respond? Are they well-matched or is one stronger?

Now, perhaps, the new owner doesn't need to try out his oxen at all. Maybe he just wants the thrill of driving them and glorying in his purchase and his skill at matching a good team--like a family that says "we used to come to church but since we got the motor home or the boat, we don't have the time." It is perilously easy for a new game, a new hobby, youth sports, even a new friendship, to take up time that should be kept for God.

The third excuse is the worst of all. This man says, "I have married a wife and for that reason I cannot come. Now remember, this man accepted the invitation only the day before at the most and people just didn't get married that fast. They do now, but they didn't then.

The bottom line is that the guests don't want to come and any excuse will do. They can't even be bothered to make up believable excuses. But they do use the excuses used by many today to keep God away: "I am too busy, I have new possessions, I have a more important relationship. God calls but I can't obey right now."

The host reacts. He tells his servant: "Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame." The lame in an oriental community don't get married--no one will marry them. The poor don't go look at fields. The blind don't try out oxen. These ones can come to the feast.

The servant does as he is told and then tells his master: "There is still room at the table." The outcasts of Israel are brought in to the great feast and there is still room. The host says: "Go out to the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." The early church interpreted this sending to the highways and the hedges as a prophecy of the gospel being carried to the Gentiles.

What is Jesus saying in this parable first of all, to the Pharisees? He is saying that their excuses won't do. They are so hung-up on laws of work that they forbid acts of mercy on the Sabbath. They are so tied down with minutiae that they are missing the point--and will miss the banquet unless they get the point! Pride and religious self-delusion have blinded their eyes when the Messiah Himself is in their midst. The thing they claim to want most of all--the kingdom of God--is not the true desire of their hearts. Jesus says: "You think the kingdom of God is a future prospect to be contemplated with pious phrases. You are wrong. It is a present and pressing reality. It's here. I'm here and I am calling for your immediate response.

A Chicago bank asked for a letter of recommendation on a young Bostonian being considered for employment. The Boston investment house couldn't say enough about this young man. His father, they wrote, was a Cabot; his mother was a Lowell. Further back there was a happy blend of Saltonstalls, Peabodys and others of Boston's first families. His recommendation was given without hesitation.

Several days later the Chicago bank sent a note saying that the information supplied was inadequate. "We are not contemplating using the young man for breeding purposes. Just for work."

Like the Boston bank, some Jews thought their bloodline was enough. Just as some people today think they can have their faith in someone else's name. Jesus says, "It doesn't work that way. They won't even taste of my banquet."

God is not a respecter of persons or of bloodlines. As Peter says in Acts 10, "God accepts those from every family, nation, land, race who fear Him and work for His kingdom.

That is the immediate lesson. What are some other lessons for us?

Well, first, there is an important side note on the phrase in verse twenty three where the master tells the servant to go to the highways and the hedges and "compel them to come in." Some people have read this to mean that if people won't come to Christ voluntarily, that the church has the right to force conversion. The Spanish Inquisition was built on this exact verse-- Compelle Intrarae--"Compel them to come in."

That's not what the master is saying. He is telling the servant to be persistent with the invitation, because those on the highways and hedges won't believe that he really means it. They're not use to this gracious treatment. They don't feel that they are worthy to sit and eat with the great master because that means that the master has accepted them as social equals.

The servant is to say: "Your objection of being unworthy is a compliment to the greatness of my master. But he means it. You are to come to his house and sit at his table.

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes himself at his own Christian conversion as "The most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England." He was not initially a willing believer. Lewis writes: "I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore the love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words "compel them to come in" have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy." Then think about this line. "The hardness of God" Lewis wrote, "is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."

"Come!" is one of the great words of the Gospel. Religion says do. Jesus says, it is done. Religion tells the sinner to "Do" or "Go"-- perhaps on a pilgrimage--or "Pay" or "Hope." But Jesus says to us, "Come!" This is the invitation to which we are to make the total response of our lives.

And this draws us into the parable. Are we responding or are we making excuses? People are capable of rejecting God's gift and Jesus warns that the rejection can be decisive. The people in the parable did not reject the invitation because they were involved in bad activities. There is nothing essentially wrong with real estate, work, or enjoying your family. These people simply rejected the best for the second best.

Most people who reject God's invitation today aren't involved in gross sin. They are simply "getting on with life". They are too busy to think seriously about what they are doing. Perhaps they expect to get a second chance. Only the newly-wed in the parable said: "I cannot come". The others said "Please have me excused." That really means "I'm not coming now, but I might show up later.

But in the parable, they never had that second opportunity. For God is determined that His house be full. He is fashioning a people for Himself and it's going to be a party. To look at too many believers you would think that the Christian life is a fast, a funeral, or a famine. But a gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms. Jesus has come and Jesus calls us to share the celebration. That is an invitation for you. Whaddaya say?