[This weekend, I'm beginning a four-part series on Overcoming Worry. (There will be a break from this text next week, when I'll be preaching at another church.)
[Below, you'll find the text. My comments are numbered after the verses.]
The Bible Lesson: Luke 14:15-24
15One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
(1) The "on hearing this" refers to comments Jesus makes in the preceding verses of chapter 14. The setting for them and for what Jesus says here is "the house of a leader of the Pharisees" (v.1). The entire dinner party is something of a trap, designed to cause Jesus to say things that can be used against Him, either with the Jewish religious authorities or with the Roman governor.
(2) In Jesus' preceding comments (vv. 12-14), He's demonstrated that the command to love our neighbors as ourselves is a call to what homiletician George Buttrick calls, "fundamental neighborliness." He tells the host that when he holds a banquet, he shouldn't invite friends, relatives, or wealthy neighbors. If he does so, all of them will feel duty-bound to return the favor. Instead, he should invite, "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind," people incapable of paying him back. But, Jesus says, such righteous living will be noticed at the "resurrection of the righteous.” (This passage, by the way, sets prominently in the background of next week's Gospel lesson, Luke 16:19-31.)
(3) The comment made by "one of the dinner guests," to eating "bread in the kingdom of God," refers to the great feast which, since at least the time of the prophet Isaiah in the 7th.-century BC, it was believed that all made right with God (the righteous) through their faith in God would enjoy. (Christians still believe this.)
Isaiah 25:6-9 anticipated such a feast with the Messiah:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.16Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
(1) Jesus responds, as He so often does, with a story, a parable. Stories were good ways for Jesus to place the things He wanted to convey in His hearers' minds. They're still powerful!
17At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’
(1) According to the editors of the Archeological Study Bible:
It was the Jewish custom to send two invitations to a banquet: an advance invitation and a follow-up announcement when the feast was ready.18But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ 19Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ 20Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’
(1) Each of the original invitees were so consumed with the cares of life that they couldn't say, "Yes" to the invitation to the feast.
Of course, Jesus has in mind how we allow our own agendas get in the way of heeding God's invitations to worship, prayer, service in His Name, love of our neighbor, and ultimately, life in His Kingdom.
(2) In Luke's Gospel, Jesus often shows us that "heaven is a party." Jesus most famously draws this analogy in the parable of the Prodigal Son. There, the father, clearly representing God, throws a party when his once-rebellious and now-repentant son returns home. In that story, the father also begs the older, self-righteous son to join in, but he refuses to do so. Through Jesus Christ, God invites all of us to His eternal party. Whether we will or not is up to us.
21So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’
(1) There may be a hint of Jesus' frustration with His fellow Jews here. And of God's frustration with them as His people.
Familiar with "the Law and the Prophets," the Scriptures we Christians refer to as the Old Testament, the ancient Jews nonetheless regarded wealth and health as signs of God's favor. But the witness of the Law and the Prophets, as well as of Jesus, is that God doesn't look at people the way we often do. (See here and here.).
Those writings, as the resurrected Jesus would show the two disciples He met on the way to Emmaus, pointed to Him as the "host" who could take all with faith in Him into the heavenly banquet hall.
Those same writings also pointed to God's advocacy for the poor, the lame, and the marginalized. Yet, God's people, as is true of many Christians and others in the world today, ignored Jesus and ignored too, His call to compassion and "neighborliness," a call to hospitality and concern for those who can't pay us back. (I blame myself for this as much as I do anybody else, by the way!)
(2) Jesus' story also underscores the fact that often, wealth and the cares created by possessions can make us deaf to God's invitations. So can success and relational happiness. Even the best of blessings, if we allow them to, can lure us into a false sense of self-sufficiency. We can delude ourselves with the idea that we don't need God. It becomes easy to put God on the back burner. (See Matthew 13:22, but read all of Matthew 13 to understand the context. Also see here.)
Keep in mind, Jesus isn't condemning wealth, per se. Abraham was wealthy. Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy. Lydia was wealthy. All were followers of God.
Jesus is condemning those who regard their wealth as an entitlement. He's also condemning those who refuse to use their wealth, along with the rest of their lives, to glorify God by loving their neighbor.
22And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” 23Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
(1) In the topsy turvy Kingdom of God, the last will be first and the first will be last.
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