Luke 14:15-24

Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
9 June 2002

EATING PLACES
This church is set in a parish endowed with a wider range of eating establishments of all kinds than practically any other one in Edinburgh - whatever your taste is, whether Turkish Kebabs, Indian dishes,, Chinese Curries or the curse of the links because of their containers, the humble baked potato or Pizza - whatever your taste is, you'll find it practically within a stone's throw of the church!

Of course fashions and tastes in eating change just like everything else and baked potatoes, Mcdonald’s and Pizzas have all emerged as popular foods in the last 50 years.When an 18th Century recipe book, originally belonging to Mary Barclay whose money built this church, was found in its roof space it included recipes for such appetising dishes as Calves Foot Pie, dressed Pigs Head and for the gourmet palate, Boiled Udder!

Preparing meals and eating them probably occupies more time than practically anything else we do regularly apart from sleep. For that reason it isn't really surprising that eating and meals figure in the Bible too and figured in the passage Fiona read to us this morning.

EATING IN THE BIBLE
There are some fairly wild and drunken parties described in the Old Testament. In the New we find Jesus presiding at a vast open air picnic (when he fed the 5,000), leaving his disciples a meal to remember him by (at the Last Supper) and painting a picture of heaven as a feast.

There was a popular image, common among the Jews of Jesus' day, that when their Messiah came there would be a great banquet or feast for all God's people. And this picture was taken over by Jesus (he used it in his parables) and used by Christians. The Book of Revelation talks of the "marriage supper of the Lamb."

A DINNER PARTY
Jesus was once attending a dinner party in the house of a well known Pharisee. Why Jesus had been invited we don't know - perhaps it was part of a plot to catch him out .Or it could be that, though a Pharisee, his host was genuinely interested in Jesus and his teachings and wanted to find out more.

But the first it’s worth noticing is that Jesus was there - he attended this social occasion; he was at the party!! During his life Jesus’ enemies accused him of being "a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber" (Matthew 10:19).

This is revealing! Although Jesus Christ was clearly neither greedy nor drunken, the very fact that such an accusation could be made is a plain indication that Jesus was neither an opponent of social activities in their place, nor a killjoy when it came wine, food and partying! There's a wrong kind of Christianity that gives the impression that Christians are against everything and disapprove of people enjoying themselves, but we aren't! Or at least we shouldn't be!

Christianity - healthy Christianity, that is - is a positive affair. Let's not be known for what we are AGAINST so much as for what we are FOR - and that's a full and healthy and happy and fulfilled life with God.

AN UNHEALTHY ATTITUDE
When Jesus arrived at the dinner party other guests were arriving too, and he noticed a secret battle going on between a number of the guests to get the best seats.

He saw a silly kind of “one-up-man-ship” come into play in which the guests main thoughts weren't on the generosity of their host but on their “status” and “importance” and “position.”

If only they had known it Jesus was BY FAR the most important person at that meal - he deserved the highest place but was content to take the lowest place. And so the meal began. The meal began and perhaps at the invitation of his host - who either wanted to patronise and belittle Jesus or learn from him, depending on his motive in inviting him in the first place - Jesus began to speak.

What will he say? They’re all ears. Jesus begins (14:8) by telling them not to seek "the places of honour" - the highest positions, otherwise they might be asked to move down the table to let someone else, someone more important, in. "You'd be far better", Jesus told them, "to sit at the lowest place and then be invited to move up to a higher place."

Although, as v.8 indicates, he’s talking about an imaginary wedding banquet ("When someone invites you to a wedding Feast...” ) they probably shifted uncomfortably on their seats as He spoke, knowing that Jesus must have observed their earlier jockeying for position at the table.

THE HOSTS REACTION
Perhaps the host at the banquet had also noticed their secret manoeuvring for the best seats at the beginning of the meal. And perhaps he had “tut-tutted” their pettiness. But of course he could afford to - his "best seat" was secure!! And so perhaps he nodded as he listened to Jesus thinly-veiled rebuke of his other guests.

But Jesus turns on him next:
"When you give a party, don't invite the folk who'll invite you back. No. Don't invite the powerful and wealthy . Invite the poor and weak - they won't reward you but God will." And Jesus tells him two things:

To act in this way is to invite God’s favour and earn approval.. "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you'll be blessed," Jesus said (that's one thing) - but then Jesus explains there’s more - You'll be blessed in this life and also (this is the second thing) in the life to come. "You will be repaid"Jesus continued, at "the resurrection of the righteous."

"Although the poor cannot repay you " he tells his host, "you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous"

A DOCTRINE OF REWARD
Learn from this that there’s a doctrine of reward in the Bible. It is said in the Book of Revelation concerning the dead that "their deeds follow them" - there's an apocryphal story that suggests not that our deeds follow us but precede us!

It's a story about a woman who'd been used to the luxuries of the world and owned great wealth and enjoyed great respect. She died and arrived in heaven and an angel was sent to take her to show her the heavenly mansion prepared for her. It was, she was sure, going to be so much better and bigger and more luxurious than her earthly home. In heaven she passed many great mansions with the angel, thinking each one might be hers but the angel led her past them all out into the suburbs and outskirts where the houses were much smaller. At last on the very edge of the city they came to the smallest house little more than a hut.

"Here's your house" the angel said "That" she replied contemptuously "I can't live in that!" "But that" the angel replied "that's all we could build with the materials you sent up!"

When comes to our SALVATION (which is by grace and not gained by merit) faith in Jesus Christ is alone what counts - nothing else counts. But when it comes to our reward (as those who are saved by grace) everything else counts!!

There is a doctrine of reward in the Bible. If we make God's priorities ours then we'll be "repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

The question is what kind of material are sending on ahead!

FOR JEWS ONLY?
Now the Jewish religion of Jesus’ day was very nationalistic and salvation, so they thought, was for Jews and Jews alone. Gentiles and sinners would have no place in heaven at the Messiah's banquet. "We're the chosen ones" they thought. They saw themselves as the favoured few - the joy of heaven's banquet was reserved for them.

In a way they were right - God had chosen the Jews out of all the nations to be his in a special way... and the promises of the Gospel were entrusted to them...but instead of recognising this as due to God's grace instead of anything in themselves, they'd become proud , complacent and presumptuous.

When one of the guests at the dinner table heard Jesus talking about good deeds being repaid at the resurrection of the righteous - his mind turned again to thoughts of heaven: "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the Kingdom of God" he declared - and I imagine that his tone suggested that he was pretty sure that at least he'd be there! Him and all his fellow-Jews!!

A STORY
To make plain to him that is wasn't either as simple or certain as that, Jesus told the gathered company a parable:

A man once prepared a great banquet and sent out many INVITATIONS (Now in Jesus' day when a dinner party or a banquet was planned an initial invitation was sent out in advance and then, because you couldn't tell people to come at ten-to-three because nobody had watches or an accurate way of keeping the time, a second invitation was sent out by a messenger on the day itself when the meal was ready). When the first invitation had arrived everyone apparently said Yes, they'd come. But then, when the second invitation was delivered, it was a different story - one by one the guests made their excuses.

One of them said "I've just bought a field and I've got to go and see it."

Another said: "I've just bought five yoke of oxen and I'm just going to try them out. I'm sorry. I can't come." While a third explained that he'd just got married.

When the host in Jesus’ story finds out he is angry - after all, he's gone to lots of trouble and expense to prepare the meal. So he sends his servants first to the streets and alleys of the town to invite the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame. But there’s still room and so he sends beyond the town to the country roads and lanes telling his servants to make or "compel" whoever they find, however unworthy, to come in to fill the house.

"I tell you" Jesus ended, fixing the proud and self-righteous Jews with his eye "not one of those invited will get a taste of my banquet."

"You think you're OK?" he asked them - "Well it isn't as simple or as certain as you think!"

Now of course, when Jesus told this story it was to Jews - he was in the home of a prominent Pharisee - and it was aimed at them. The guests originally invited stand for the Jews - they were the ones who had looked forward to God breaking in to history in a new and exciting way. But when he did come they refused his invitation.

"He came to his own and his own received him not!!"

GOD'S INVITATION
But God's invitation is now extended to everyone through Jesus Christ..."whosoever will may come"

Its an invitation TO COME.... in Jesus Christ God has opened the door making it possible for sinful men and women to know him. Jesus once described himself as "the Door" A room set for a banquet without a door would be a useless place, because no-one cold ever get in to eat it and the feast would rot!! Jesus is the Door and he invites us, whoever we are, to COME and feast with him..

It's an invitation to BELIEVE...."God so loved the world that he gave his one and only so that whoever believes in Him may not die but live for ever....." It's an invitation to put our trust in Him for our salvation.

It's an invitation to SERVE..Jesus didn't say "If a man desires to be first let him seek the highest place, the place of honour"..no that wasn't what Jesus said, but the opposite.. "If a man desires to be first” Jesus said, “he must be the very last and the servant of all (Mk.9:35)

GOD'S INVITATION IS NO LONGER RESTRICTED TO THE JEWS OR EVEN THE "GOOD" - IT IS EXTENDED TO ALL!

We are to come... we are to believe... we are to serve!

EXCUSES EXCUSES!
But one by one those invited to the banquet in Jesus' story made their excuses - what stopped them coming?

The first man's problem was his WEALTH - he was too busy making money. He'd just made an investment - he'd bought a field - and he wanted to go to see it. He probably took his calculator along to work out what return he would get if he could sell it on to someone else for a profit and make a fast buck.
He was too busy making money to bother about God. Business success still usurps God in some peoples lives - the desire to get on, to be successful - the quest for material prosperity can too easily and too surreptitiously squeeze God out.

But it was really just an excuse wasn't it - the field after all would still have been there the next day!!
It's so easy to make excuses and so hard to be honest!
The first man's problem was his WEALTH.

The second man's problem was his WORK - He'd a field needing ploughed and a new team of oxen and he wanted to try them out......he had so much to do that he couldn't put it off till tomorrow. His diary for tomorrow and for the next day and the day after that was already full... He just didn't have a spare minute. There was just too much to do.... in our busy world there are many of us who can't find time for God because we're too busy and there's just too much to do..

The pressures of modern life - and even our work in the church - rob us of the time that should be kept for God. Has that been so in your life - and is it something you need to put right?

The first man's excuse was his wealth - he'd just bought a field and wanted to see it.
The second man's excuse was his work - his field needed ploughed and he wanted to try out his new team of oxen

The third man's excuse was his WIFE.

He'd just got married, he said, so he couldn't come. Either he'd married a dominant woman who said "I don't care what you've already arranged you're just not going!" or he was genuinely concerned for her welfare and happiness.

In a way his was by far the best excuse, not just because it wasn't entirely selfish, but because he could back it up from the Bible. Because there's a verse in Deuteronomy (24:5) that says " If a man has recently married he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married."

Now the very fact that this verse is in the Bible underlines the fact that it's important for husbands and wives to spend time together - and of course, family life, too, is important. With both partners working in so many homes time for the family is often at a premium, and unless we are careful more and more children will grow up deprived of the warmth and security of a happy home where mothers and father have time for their children.

But the third man's excuse also reminds us, as Willie Barclay in his commentary on the passage points out that: "It is one of the tragedies of life that good things, the best of things, can crowd the claims of God out of life..

THE GOOD THE ENEMY OF THE BEST
In this respect the good has often become the enemy of the best! For their sakes, of course, we must make time for our families - but for our sakes and theirs we must also make time for God.

We can regard the day when we became Christians or the day when we confessed our faith in Jesus Christ publicly as the day when the first invitation came to us.......but its too easy as time passes to say "Excuse me!"

The gift of salvation is not one we can ever take for granted.

But there's a final and very challenging thought which comes to us from the final verses of today's reading at the end of the Parable of the Excuses as its' sometimes called. When those to whom the first invitations were issued refused to come, the host sent out his servants out into the streets with instructions to "compel" others to come.

It's hard to imagine that any kind of physical force was meant. It was, rather, that those to whom the invitation was now extended would find it hard to believe that they were really meant to come. Hard to believe that it wasn't some kind of cruel trick. They were the outcasts. Contempt was their daily lot. They would need to be persuaded that the INVITATION really was for them.

In the same way it's the church's task to persuade the outcast and rejected, those who feel they're unworthy and protest that they're not good enough - that the invitation to this church and more importantly the invitation of the Gospel - the invitation to come to Christ and to join God's Family, is for them.

Its is for THEM as much as it is for US because it is for ALL - for the worst as much as the best - for the weakest as much as the strongest - for the outsider as much as the insider - for:

“..WHOSOEVER WILL MAY COME...”
Yes - even you!

Amen