Luke 14:(1-14) 15-24
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
So, there was that time when
Jesus spoiled a sabbath meal, offended his host, and insulted the other guests.
I doubt the leader of the Pharisees ever
invited him back for dinner after that, certainly not on the sabbath. The scene, recounted in Luke 14, was fraught
with tension. Luke tells us that the
other guests “were watching him closely” (Lk. 14:1). Jesus knew what to expect. As if on cue, a
man appeared in front of Jesus suffering from dropsy or swelling, what we call
an edema today, often associated with congestive heart failure. We don’t know
for sure. But what we do know is that Jesus used that occasion to make a point
and being a little cheeky, to use a good British word, asked the religious
leaders, “Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?” (Lk. 14:3).
Crickets. Nothing.
Silence. They didn’t say a thing.
Jesus was asking for
trouble, and he knew it. He knew the answer
to his question. He really didn’t care
what they thought. He was concerned for
the man who was suffering. Jesus knew
what the sabbath was for. So Jesus took him
aside, healed him, and sent him away.
Then Jesus said, “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen
into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on the sabbath?” (Lk. 14:5).
Crickets. Nothing.
Silence. They didn’t say a thing.
Jesus wasn’t finished. This was obviously a gathering of extremely
wealthy and influential people. He saw
how the guests chose the place of honor. They wanted the adoration, the
accolades, the praise, all that comes with the designation of being special.
Several walked in and took the place of honor, assuming the place was reserved
for them, assuming themselves to be the most honorable among the guests. Jesus told a parable. Show some humility, he said. Stop being so arrogant. Instead of seeking the place of honor, “Go
and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to
you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all
who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk. 14:10b-11). Jesus was quite the dinner guest. Would you want
to sit at table with him?
Jesus wasn’t finished. He next
turned to his host, the one who invited him.
Jesus had problems with the guest list.
Here it gets really tense, even painful to hear. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner,” Jesus
said, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich
neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be
repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Lk. 14:12-14). In other words, Jesus said to his host: You only invited these people for what you
hope to get from them, for what they can do for you. You give them a fancy meal and the best wine
and they get to socialize in the leaders’ house only because you want to use
them, to make your life better, gain more wealth and influence. Your hospitality is hollow. If you were truly
hospitable and generous and kind you would invite people who could not possibly
ever repay you, people who own nothing, people who are powerless, people who
can give you nothing in return.
Overhearing this, one of the
dinner guests shouted to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the
kingdom of God!” (Lk. 14:15). Now, it sounds
like he’s agreeing with Jesus, but he isn’t.
He’s taking Jesus to task. Within
Judaism at that time there was the belief that at the great banquet with God at
the end of time, the eschatological feast, only certain people would be in
attendance. In the Dead Sea Scrolls,
written by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that lived at the time of Jesus in
wilderness east of Jerusalem along the Dead Sea (discovered near Qumran between
1946 and 1956), we read that the lame, the blind, the poor, and crippled will
be excluded from participation in God’s holy banquet.[1] So if you’re breaking bread in the kingdom of
God that means you’re special, you’ve arrived. It means that you’re not poor,
lame, or crippled.
The comment from the guest
about eating in the kingdom was too much for Jesus, so he unleashes the devastating
Parable of the Great Dinner. A host
invites his extremely wealthy friends to a banquet. At the last minute, his
guests come up with all kinds of lame excuses why they can't attend—and they
are lame excuses. Because they are
obsessed with their possessions—property, purchases, and even marriages, which
was an economic arrangement in Jesus’ time, the wife was “property” (there’s
even sexual innuendo and a joke embedded in the parable)—their choices close
themselves off from the banquet.[2] Because they’re only worrying about
themselves, they cannot see the needs of others. Determined to throw a party, the host tells
his servants, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring
in the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame” (Lk. 14:21). The new guests
soon arrive, but there's room for still more to attend. So the host says, “Go
out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house
may be filled. For I tell you, none of
those who were invited will tasted my dinner” (Lk. 14:23)—and that’s when Jesus drops the mic. BOOM. And throws some holy shade.
“Blessed is the one who will
eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
Blessed, indeed. But according to Jesus, who will be at the table? Who
will be given the place of honor? Who
will be lifted up?
The poor.
The crippled.
The blind.
The lame.
The kingdom,
the banquet is for them.
It’s all part of the divine
grand reversal found throughout Jesus’ teaching, especially in Luke’s
Gospel. You see, in the kingdom of God
all the rules are different. Everything
is flipped. Those who are often
uninvited—left out, cast aside, forgotten, invisible to most, sleeping under
the hedgerows or under an overpass—will in the kingdom experience the generous
feast of God, and because they are not too proud or distracted by too many
things, like the wealthy, will accept the invitation. This is how the kingdom
works.
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel,
John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to enquire if he was the promised
one or should they wait for another. Jesus
said, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their
sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And happy is anyone who takes
no offense at me” (Lk. 7:22). Happy is anyone who takes no offense at me. Offense.
Skandalizon in Greek. A scandal. This is telling, because Jesus
assumes that the kingdom of God will, in fact, be a shock to our senses and to
our sense of decorum, he knows that the ways of the kingdom are offensive, even
scandalous, especially to those with wealth and privilege. And instead of discriminating who is or is not
eligible to sit at table in the kingdom, the welcome of God is
indiscriminate. The invitation is
extended to everyone, anyone. As we say
when we break bread and share the cup of communion, “The people will come from
east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (Lk.
13:29). And the next verse in Luke reads, “Indeed, some are last who will be
first, and some are first who will be last” (Lk. 13:30).
Jesus shows us through this
parable what God's kingdom is like. There's room for everyone. God's welcome is
generous, broad, and expansive. When this happens, when barriers are removed, when
we set aside our power and privilege and make space for those without power and
privilege, then we are practicing humility.
Did you know that in the Greco-Roman society humility or lowmindedness
was considered a vice, not a virtue?[3] Humility became a virtue for the Christians. We choose humility because it’s the way of
Jesus. In fact, this way of being is a
sign or proof that the kingdom of God is at work in us and among us in the
world, “not in some heaven, light years away,” as sang this morning, “here in
this place new light is shining; now
is the kingdom, and now is the day.”[4]
The good news is that God is
gathering us into the kingdom and there's always room for more! The Lord sends
us out to invite people to the feast.
The welcome is there. There’s
plenty of room. But are we inviting
people? I’m not talking about inviting to
join the church. The church and the kingdom
of God are not synonymous, but related.
Jesus rarely mentions the church, but he certainly has a lot to say
about the kingdom of God. In fact, the
church exists to serve the ends of the kingdom, not to serve itself. We serve
the Lord of the kingdom, who extends a broad, indiscriminate welcome to all
people to share in the abundance of God’s love and justice. The kingdom welcomes all the people society leaves behind,
overlooked, forgotten. The kingdom
receives and gives a honored place at the table to those society has discarded
and disregarded. That’s because the
heart of God radiates radical hospitality.
When the church is really serving
the ends of the kingdom, the church is holy, and beautiful, and awesome. When the church fails to serve the kingdom,
the church becomes hollow and ugly and mean-spirited; it has sold its soul. The
church can actually stand in the way of the kingdom. Sometimes the church
withholds the invitation, or prefers only certain people in its
fellowship. This means that we need to
be clear about our mission. Who we are?
What we’re being called to do? The
Mission Committee will be meeting this morning after worship and will be
wrestling with these questions.
We need to continually ask
ourselves as a church:
Are we serving the kingdom or serving ourselves?
Are we broadly extending the invitation to experience God’s
love or are we intentionally or unintentionally welcoming people who look like
us, dress like us, think like us, believe like us to share God’s love, to be
part of this community?
What do people experience when they cross the threshold of
the sanctuary?
Does the church feel like a club or a closed religious society?
Are we
putting up barriers? Do
people know it’s safe to worship here without judgment and shame?
Jesus said to invited the poor, the blind, the
crippled, the lame—those on the margins, with no authority or power, those
wounded by society and the church, economically disenfranchised, because they
need to know they have a place in God’s kingdom. Are we doing this in concrete ways?
What about the most vulnerable in our
communities, especially children? What
about refugee children? Do they know
they’re invited to the party?
What about the religious seeker, someone who
likes Jesus, but not sure about the people who claim to love Jesus? Do they
know they’re welcomed to the party?
What about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered,
queer folk, do they know it’s safe to worship here, that’s it’s safe to
encounter God’s love and acceptance here in this sanctuary. Do they know they’re welcome to the party,
that the kingdom is for them? How will
they know unless we say so?
And are we extending radical
hospitality to each other? Are we nurturing the faith of our children? Are we nurturing their souls and preparing
them to be “offensive” in their living out of the gospel, offering love,
extending hospitality? Are we making space for one another? How are we doing
caring for one another, supporting one another, reaching out to stranger in our
midst, the child of God who shares your pew?
This, too, is kingdom work. For
how can we care for our neighbor if we’re not properly caring for one another
and caring for ourselves?
“Compel people to come in,” Jesus
said, “so that my house may be filled.”
He sends us out to extend that
invitation to everyone.
There’s plenty
of room.
Come, taste and see, that God
is good.
For, “Blessed is the one who
will eat bread in the kingdom of God.”
May our opening hymn remain our
prayer:
Gather us in and hold us forever;
gather us in and make us your own;
gather us in, all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.
May
it be so.
[1] These
disqualifications are found in the Qumran Scrolls at 1QSa 2:5-6a, cited in Luke
Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke
(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 225. In Leviticus 21:17-21, we find that the lame,
the blind, and crippled are excluded from the priesthood.
[2] See The Jewish Annotated New Testament,
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2017), 147.
[3] See, for
example, the work of Stoic philosopher Epictetus (55-135), in his Discourses, cited in Johnson, 224.
[4] “Gather Us In,” written
by Marty Haugen, Glory to God: The
Presbyterian Hymnal (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2013).
No comments:
Post a Comment