Sermons

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God's Hospitality
June 26, 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Associate Pastor Steve Lympus
Luke 14:15-24

A word on Dan’s sabbatical: Pastor Dan is on sabbatical, and I’m trying not to be intimidated by this note down here that says:

Steve –
See you in October, don’t blow it.

- Dan

Just kidding, Dan didn’t write that. But Dan did begin his 3-month sabbatical yesterday, and if at the end of today’s sermon you are worried about getting through until October, there’s still time to join him.

I love good stories, and I love how stories take on different color and meaning depending on the setting they were told in. The best place to tell stories, I think, is around the dinner table.

I’ve eaten more than once with a Bethany family who asks each other at dinner: “do you have any stories from your day?” Dinner really is the best time for story-telling. Leisurely, people are generally ready to relax and listen, stressful agendas are less important than people.

Well our passage today is a dinner story – it’s a parable about a dinner, and Jesus tells is at a dinner…but it’s not a very leisurely or relaxing atmosphere. Jesus tells this parable at a formal dinner party, a Sabbath meal, when he was a guest of one the Pharisees’ leaders. Many prominent lawyers had gathered for the dinner, and they were watching Jesus suspiciously like hawks.

Even before Jesus gets to the parable, this meal had not gone smoothly. In fact, from the standpoint of social etiquette, it had been a disaster:

• First, Jesus heals a diseased man. Big faux pas, “working” on the Sabbath like this. Jesus not only heals him, but takes the opportunity as a “teaching moment,” challenging the Pharisees on how they’ve distorted God’s gift of the Sabbath.

• Then Jesus notices how the dinner guests were competing for the most honorable places at the meal…trying to sit in the important places next to the important people. Jesus – again seeing opportunity for a “teaching moment” – gives the guests a mini-lecture on banquet manners…he advises them to take the least honorable places, until the host moves you.

“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

• Then (as if this wasn’t already enough) Jesus turns to the host – possibly in the hearing of all the other guests – and gives the host a lecture on dinner invitations:

When you have a feast, don’t invite friends/family/
important people who will repay you. For a real party, invite those who can never repay you: poor/crippled/
lame/blind. Repayment will come at the “resurrection of the righteous” (14.14).

Awkward Moment ! Tensions were running high…Jesus had challenged social etiquette and code three times already in one dinner (and all that before dessert). Awkward silence around the dinner table.

Then this dorky Pharisee (I imagine he’s a little dorky, the text doesn’t actually say that), sensing the awkward moment and probably not a little disgusted with Jesus’ lacking dinner manners, breaks the silence with sort of a gushy toast about the resurrection…and that’s where today’s passage begins: Luke 14:15-24.

So this Pharisee says his toast, sort of: “Here’s to the resurrection!” …confident of his place in the resurrection and his own place in God’s kingdom, way off in the distant future. Jesus, in response to his “toast,” tells this parable:

vs. 16-17. A man was giving a great feast – many people invited.

The custom of the day was that the party host would send out an invitation, and if you accepted, someone would come on the day of the feast when all was ready and bring you to the party.

No “maybe” option then, like there is on Evite.com…once the invitation was accepted, guests are bound to come (food planning was even more crucial then, without any refrigeration; once animals were slaughtered, there’s no turning back).

So the servant goes to collect the guests who, remember, had already accepted the invitation to dinner.

Then comes the big surprise: all those who RSVP’d to come now make excuses as to why they cannot come. Jesus gives a sampling of just three excuses, but remember, many people were invited and the slave was going to gather all those who RSVP’d:

Now these three excuses are not bad excuses, as in bad, evil things the people were doing. And at first glance, these three excuses don’t even seem to be frivolous. But if we look closer, all three excuses are lame excuses:

v. 18, 1st excuse: real estate
“I just bought a field, and I need to go look at it…please excuse me.”

Looking over property you are buying – not a bad thing to do. But this is a lame excuse for skipping the banquet. Buying property then was as big of a deal as it is now; surely this guest had looked over the property before deciding to buy it. Lame.

v. 19, 2nd excuse: livestock
“I just bought 5 yoke of oxen, and I need to try them out…please excuse me.”

Testing out equipment you are buying – not a bad thing to do. But this is also a lame excuse. Buying oxen then was like buying a car now; testing oxen teams to make sure they pulled together was done before the making sale. Lame.

v. 20, 3rd excuse: marriage
“I just married a wife, I cannot come.”

No apology, no request for excusal. Setting boundaries to protect time alone with a new spouse – not a bad thing to do. But this is the lamest excuse of the three. It’s not his wedding day, it’s at least a few days after…so why did he accept the invitation to the feast if he was still celebrating his wedding? Lame.

The excuses are all lame ones – none of them hold up, especially since they had all accepted the invitation when it first came, and only now when they are called to the party do they decline!

So there is a great amount of offense here to the host. The guests dishonor the host, because the message is so very clear: my new field is more important, my new oxen are more important, my private life is more important than coming to your dinner.

I think we pull these “lame excuses” with God sometimes. We’ve said yes to God’s invitation – we accept Christ, we become church members, all that. But now God comes, and invites us in further – “come now! Spend time with me, sit with me at my banquet, let’s hang out together.”

But we’re preoccupied. Something happened between our saying “yes” to God’s invitation, and God calling us to his dinner table. Something gets us preoccupied, and we start making excuses to God.

Often the excuses we make to God have to do with good things we’re doing, not bad evil things, just too many things. We’re too busy. But our message is clear: the stuff we do is more important than God.

I remember this season during seminary, when I was so busy with studies, and groups, and my church internship – all great things. Then I realized that it had been a long time since I had taken regular time each day to pray, to sit in God’s presence, to listen. It’d been a long time since Sabbath…

I’ve noticed that often the conversations at the Wednesday Night Dinner have a certain degree of leisure about them – folks aren’t always in a hurry to rush off somewhere, there isn’t someone more important to talk with, or someplace more important to be, or do. No busy-ness to keep them away from coming, or make them go off in a rush.

That’s a picture of what I want my time with God to be: unrushed, unhurried, like I’d rather be there spending time with him than doing anything else.

Now back to the parable: there might even be something more sinister/spiteful here, since all the guests who’d RSVP’d refuse to come. Perhaps there is a plan afoot here to discredit the host by ruining his dinner party; if no one comes, there’s no party, the host is humiliated. It’s not unlike the situation Jesus himself was in at the time he told this parable – the Pharisees were watching him closely, trying to discredit him and stop this movement gathering around him.

God’s great banquet was at hand, the Kingdom being announced in Christ, but excuses were not hard to find: Jesus eats with sinners, Jesus is poor, Jesus doesn’t keep the Sabbath rules, he’s rude and boorish at meals. Excuses, to stay away from Jesus, and ruin the party.

The arrogance here is overwhelming: the guests in the parable, as well as the Pharisees listening to the parable, seem to say down their noses,

“There will be no party if I’m not there – the feast will not proceed without us.”

The Pharisees think that their place in God’s Kingdom is so very secure. They are the religious establishment, so they’re guaranteed, they think. But God’s Kingdom is based on grace and hospitality, never on entitlement:

verse 21, The slave reports all these excuses to the host: he is of course angry, and deeply offended, and so the party he’s planning takes a new turn: he charges the servant: go out quickly to the city streets/lanes, bring the poor/crippled/blind/lame.

Instead of inviting people from the same social pool as before, the busy people who think they have all they need, he will change his strategy. The lame won’t be busy testing oxen, the blind people won’t be examining fields, the poor people won’t be busy and (in that day) the crippled will not be getting married.

There will be a feast tonight, and the banquet hall will be full. The dinner is already prepared and getting cold, so the slave must go quickly.

Only God would throw a party where the poor/crippled/blind/lame get invited as guests of honor. This is the same group Jesus earlier told the dinner guests they should invite to their feasts. These were the folks in the city – you see them every day – they’re close by, and easy to find and so the slave can invite them before the food gets cold. Inviting in the people others see as riff-raff. That’s God’s hospitality.

“God loves to work with the losers” (Robert Farrar Capon) – the untouchables, the socially awkward. God loves to work with the “winners,” too, but the people who think they’re winners (like the Pharisees) just don’t see the places in life where they’re losing! Grace, after all, is about raising the dead – not about congratulating the winners.

verse 22-23, The slave tells the host there is still room at the feast. The host says to go to the roads/lanes, fill my house with the strangers you find. These were the highways between towns, traveled by strangers/transients. The Biblical idea of hospitality is: loving strangers, not loving friends or loving family members. Loving outsiders.

Only God would throw a party where the strangers get invited at the last minute. These travelers might be a little hesitant to come – after all, they don’t even know this host, they will never be able to repay him, they will likely decline the invitation out of disbelief! This gracious offer is unbelievable, so the host tells the slave to “compel people to come in.”

There is just nothing the host will not do to fill his banqueting hall – the most unlikely strangers will be drawn into the banquet table. That’s God’s hospitality.

What does your banquet table look like? This parable becomes quite literal. We can’t hear it and just think that we’re symbolically the late-comers off the highways, invited into God’s banquet…in the God’s Kingdom, once you’re a guest at the party, you’re a host at the party! You’ll be calling in unexpected guests yourself to sit at your table.

What does your banquet table look like? Is it only full of people like you – friends you consider contemporary with your interests, and your place in life…people you like to be with? People who aren’t socially blind or financially crippled? God’s banquet table is not yet full…

verse 24, And then before Jesus is finished, there’s this last line of judgment: none of the originally invited guests will taste the food. Maybe if they had good excuses not to come, the host would have sent to-go portions out to the guests who could not come (common practice then). But not this time. No enjoying this banquet from a distance.

The parable holds together a great theological tension: we must be invited if we’re going to attend God’s party – we also must accept the invitation. No one stays away from the party unless they choose to stay away (by choice), like the original guests in the parable.

The man hosting the dinner knows that if the poor/crippled/blind/lame off the city streets are at the banquet, and if the strangers/outsiders off the highway come, then the proud, upstanding, social-climbing guests who were originally invited will not be seen feasting with the riff-raff.

The host can get along fine without the people who snubbed him and disregarded his invitation, but oh how those people will miss out on the party.

And Jesus knows that the outcasts of Israel and the Gentiles would soon be invited into God’s Kingdom party, and most Pharisees wouldn’t be caught dead at that party.

Only God would throw a party where the only people left out are the ones who snubbed him when he called them to the table. Only God would throw a party where the only people left out are the people who can’t bring themselves to party with the poor/crippled/blind/lame, and the outsiders. That’s God’s hospitality.

Back to the dinner party Jesus is attending: the Pharisee who had just made the toast, he doesn’t find himself or his friends at the party in the parable. He thought that God’s banquet was just way off in the future – but now it’s also right here in front of him, in Jesus, eating with sinners and healing the sick, “everything is ready now.”

Now is the time to come to God’s Table. The great human tragedy is not as much about what we’ve done, or failed to do, but more how we have rejected God’s invitation.

The Kingdom of God is something that we’re invited to, not something that comes delivered to our doorstep like take-out food, at your convenience. Not something you can enjoy at a safe distance. And accepting God’s invitation to his great Sabbath feast will cost you…

• maybe it will cost you your reputation (you might party with a new crowd)
• maybe it will cost you your time
• maybe it will cost you your busy-ness…but it’s worth it.

This has been a busy week for me. Still catching up from a busy vacation, Dan leaving on sabbatical, Laura and I are moving to a new place tomorrow – lots to do. It’s one of those weeks where half-way through it I realized I say “busy” every time someone asks how I am doing.

There’s usually other things to say about how I’m feeling – but sometimes I can’t feel through my own busy-ness to know what those other things really are. I just answer and say out of reflex, “I’m busy.”

We’re a busy congregation. We do a lot! And I think Jesus’ words about stopping what we’re doing, and answering God’s invitation to his banquet, I think his words are for us…

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