Luke 14:1-24 "The Troubling Guest" Scott Hoezee

In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey asserts something that I am certain must have been true. Yancey noted that in too many of the movies that have been made about Jesus, the actor who portrays the carpenter's son from Nazareth often comes across very flat. Most of his words are delivered in a kind of monotone and his demeanor is placid to the point of being dull. But based on the gospels, Yancey says that Jesus must have been a whole lot happier-looking and more outwardly joyful than that. People really liked being around Jesus. He was such a popular dinner guest that when his enemies wanted to say something bad about him, they accused him of being a glutton and a wine-bibber.

People were attracted to Jesus because he exuded joy. However, as our passage tonight reveals, Jesus was not above being the kind of dinner guest you hope you never get! Have you ever been at a dinner party where something happens that makes you want to crawl under the table (if not simply flee into the night)? Maybe there was a political discussion around the dinner table that got just a little too heated. Maybe one of the guests inadvertently prattled on and on in highly critical tones about what a wretched person Mary Jones is, only to find out too late that Mary Jones is the host's sister-in-law. Whatever the cause, sometimes it happens that a good meal is spoiled when some of the guests get angry, blush in deep purple embarrassment, or well up with tears at some hurtful remark.

Too often we treat the parables of Jesus as though they float free of any original context. We collect the parables and treat them like chapters in a book--a parabolic anthology rather like a collection of nursery rhymes or fairy tales. The parables don't need an original setting but can be seen in isolation without losing any of their punch. And there is something to that: most of what we learn in the Parable of the Prodigal Son can be gleaned by looking at the story in isolation. But most of the time reviewing the occasion that gave rise to Jesus' parables will deepen their poignance. Certainly that is true of Luke 14.

Luke 14:1 tells us that Jesus had been invited for a dinner party at the house of a "prominent Pharisee." The Greek adjective there means a lead Pharisee, someone who was very high up in the Pharisee leadership structure. So it is likely that this man did not live in a modest row house there in Jerusalem but probably occupied a ritzy and large home to which, on this particular Sabbath, a lot of people had been invited. In fact, it may well have been the case that a Sabbath noon invitation to this man's house was the hottest ticket in town. Today if Governor Granholm invites you to a dinner party, you go gladly and feel honored to have been invited at all. Maybe that's what it was like to get this invite, too.

But why was Jesus invited? He was not a real popular person among the Pharisees, after all. Based on the text I suspect he was not invited out of love. But I cannot tell just what the motive really was, either. There are several possibilities. Perhaps it was borne out of social necessity--the host didn't really want to invite him but given his current popularity, etiquette demanded that they not snub this new rabbi. Or perhaps there was an element of vanity in the invitation--precisely because Jesus' star seemed to be rising just then, having him for dinner would be yet another feather in this Pharisee's social cap.

More darkly, however, it may also have been the case that they were setting Jesus up. Personally I tilt this direction based on the fact that in verse 1 we are told that Jesus was being "very carefully watched." There is an old saying that says "Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer." Sometimes the best strategy to bring down your enemy is to get cozy with him, make him relax and let his guard down. Because then he might slip up, divulge a piece of information he shouldn't reveal, do something before your very eyes that you would otherwise never see but can now use as evidence against the person.

I suspect that this dynamic was partly behind this Pharisee's having Jesus for dinner. As such, it is neither accidental nor coincidental that Jesus immediately encounters a man with dropsy. Dropsy was what today we would call edema, which likely meant his breathing was labored, his face, legs, feet, and hands were swollen because of a cardio-pulmonary problem that caused fluid to build up throughout his body. Likely he looked pathetic and whereas today a doctor would prescribe Lasix or some other such diuretic to make his renal system go full bore, back then there were probably few effective treatments.

In any event, lo and behold this is the first person Jesus meets up with at the pre-dinner punch bowl. And the Pharisees watched him carefully. Could this Jesus, reputed to be a healer, resist the urge (considering it was the Sabbath) to help this fellow? Initially Jesus seems to be the epitome of a polite guest, asking his host and the others, "Would it be all right by you if I healed this man? Is that a lawful thing to do on the Sabbath?" Silence. Did they all think this was such an obvious question it did not require an answer? Or did the way they all fixed Jesus in their collective glare as much as tell Jesus that of course they considered it unlawful. But their silence dared Jesus to do it anyway. So he does. He then quotes some laws from Leviticus and Deuteronomy that allow exceptions to the Sabbath injunctions against not working in the cases of sick children or suffering animals. It was an "in your face" kind of thing for Jesus to say, shaming them for their disapproval of this poor man's healing and, as the text makes clear, leaving them with nothing to say.

The dinner party is off to a really rocky start! But soon the butler rings his little bell, letting people know it is time to be seated for the meal. And with a wry grin on his face, Jesus takes note of the polite, yet indisputable, jostling that begins as this guest and that guest angles his way toward the seats closest to the host's chair. Once again it is Jesus who takes the lead. "You know I was just thinking: when someone invites you to a wedding, don't try to sit at the head table on your own initiative. Next thing you know the host has to ask you to move since that seat had been reserved for someone else and then you will be so dreadfully embarrassed! Just sit in the back of the room. It's the humble way to go at life and anyway if then the host requests you to sit closer to the front of the room, you will have nothing to feel shame-faced about but will actually be honored."

I don't know about you all, but if someone calls me on something at the very moment when I am smack in the middle of the activity in question, I will blush deeply. If I have gone back to the buffet table for a second helping of food only to have another guest begin loudly to say something like, "It's a shame how many people in this country struggle with their weight, isn't it?", well, I'll not be real eager to return to my seat with more food on my plate! So also on that day, I imagine once Jesus said this none-too-subtle rebuke of all those snooty dinner guests that a lot of them stopped in their tracks and, with downcast eyes, just plopped into the seat closest to them at that very moment.

Jesus is on a roll now. It's not Emily Post by a long shot, but still he plunges forward. Now he addresses his host directly but what Jesus does is essentially critique the guest list for that very dinner party on that very day! Jesus says, "When you throw a party, don't invite friends, brothers, and rich people." He was describing every last person around the table! "Instead," Jesus goes on, "invite the poor, the blind, and the crippled." And by this point, if I am seated at that table, I am ready to skulk away. The party is over. All anybody wanted to do was leave, and quickly!

In the awkward silence that now hangs over the table like a pall, one of the guests blurts out a pious and pithy greeting card-like aphorism, "Blessed is the man who eats at the feast in the kingdom of God!" Although it was related to what Jesus had been saying, this man said this to try to smooth things over, maybe even shift the topic a bit. Today it would be like dealing with an awkward situation by blurting out, "Hey, how 'bout those Cubs, huh?" or "Interesting weather we've been having lately." The current dinner party was spiraling into chaos, so this well-meaning guest points forward to what everyone could only hope would be a far happier banquet one day by and by in the kingdom of God.

But this didn't work, either. Jesus pipes back up and as much as says, "Speaking of the kingdom of God . . ." and then goes on to tell this parable. He tells a story about a situation like the party they were all attending just then. A rich man issues a grand invitation. But every last person who had been invited ends up refusing to come. They all have different excuses, but the implication in this parable is obvious: these guests had conspired with one another to avoid this banquet like the plague. Some commentators think that the fatal flaw of these would-be guests is greed. They are too preoccupied with their possessions and with their pleasures in life. If you read this story that way, then it becomes a judgment against avarice not unlike the Parable of the Rich Fool we looked at last week.

But that clearly is not Jesus' intention. Following on Jesus' words in verses 12-14 about his own preference for dinner parties made up of the blind, lame, poor, crippled, and other such social outcasts, the implication is that the people in the parable who turned down the invitation did so out of fear that they would have to break bread with a blind man or with some poor person with bad breath. Whether the host in Jesus' parable represents Jesus himself or his heavenly Father, either way we know up front (based on the course of Jesus' ministry thus far) that it would not be at all unusual if his guest list proved to be much more varied and diverse than the guest list of that Pharisee in whose house Jesus told this story.

Remember that so far in Luke Jesus has already been consorting with the demon-possessed, the lepers, and had even made a tax collector one of his twelve disciples. He has healed the servant of a despised Roman centurion, has had his feet anointed by a prostitute, and told a story with a Samaritan hero. It was not difficult to figure out what kind of people were Jesus' favorites. So if Jesus invited you to dinner, there could be no telling who might occupy the chair next to yours. Here in Grand Rapids there are some banquets to which you might get invited and you will know in advance that when you get there, your dinner companions will have last names like DeVos, Secchia, Meijer, VanAndel, and Prince. You might be curious ahead of time as to who will be at your table but you will be pretty sure that it will be one of the movers and shakers in this community. But if Jesus throws the party, the odds are that you might sit next to Marjorie Rickman from Division Avenue or Julio Rodriguez from the southwest side.

But if you are a certain kind of person (like, let's say, Jesus dinner companions the day he told this parable), you don't want to rub elbows with such people. In Jesus' day to break bread with someone was to admit your solidarity with that person, your union with him or her as kindred spirits. Everyone likes to break bread with a rich man because it elevates your status by association. But why would anyone want to be demoted at a dinner party? Lots of people don't want that and so, in the context of Jesus' story, they decide it's safer not to come at all. Let the poor and the undesirable have that party. There will surely be other parties in the future, other, better, more prestigious invitations down the line.

Except that, of course, if the party Jesus is talking about really is the feast of the kingdom of God, then there will not be any other parties. The last line of this parable has the host saying, "Those invited will not get a taste of my banquet." It seems an odd thing to say. After all, neither did they want a taste of it. Yet just that may be the problem. C.S. Lewis once mused that perhaps in the end the people who end up in hell will get there not because God sent them there but rather by their own choosing. If someone lives his whole life without ever once being willing to say to God, "Your will be done," perhaps the day will come when by virtue of that choice God will say to that person, "Very well then, your will be done. You've wanted no part of me and so that is the way it will stay, too."

Luke doesn't tell us how that Sabbath-day dinner party ended. But you have the feeling that when Jesus left, his host did not smile and say, "Come again!" In fact, in the balance of Luke's gospel you will never again read that Jesus was the guest of a Pharisee or any other religious authority. The next dinner party Jesus attends is at the beginning of Luke 15 but this time he is the guest of tax collectors and "sinners." The Pharisees watch Jesus go into that party and condemn him loudly for doing it. Small wonder that immediately following tonight's parable, Luke shows Jesus talking about the cost of discipleship and how much a person must be willing to give up if he or she truly wants to follow after Jesus.

When I was a child, our junior choir used to sing an anthem based on this parable. It was a very lively, downright bouncy tune filled with exuberance and joy. I guess that's how you sing about this so long as you see yourself as one of those "highways and byways" folks who got the last-minute invitation. So what that those other fools turned the host down, that only leaves more goodies for us!

But if I were able to set this story to music, I think I might just select a minor key. Not only is there an element of tragedy here, I'm also not certain that I do count as one of those poor folks compelled to come in. What if I have to confess that there are things in my heart, clutchings of ego that tug on my spirit, that might just make me more similar to the folks who turned down the invitation? What if, in other words, this parable starts to look more like a warning? What if we see in this less something that automatically includes us and more something that properly causes us to reexamine our attitudes?

We know who Jesus' kind of people were. Are they our kind of people? What attitudes do we take toward the poor, the outcast, the marginalized even yet today? Do we get caught up in the sloganeering and easy-to-apply labels of politicians? Surveys in this country over the last ten to twenty years reveal a trend: more and more the poor are being hated, despised, and ignored. People are quicker to blame the poor for their plight than try to help them out of it. Those on welfare are not given seats of honor at any banquets, and probably it is seldom that any of us sit at table with the homeless, the unemployed, the drug addicted, the gang bangers.

As we said also last Sunday, we need to fight valiantly against our society's habit of elevating the glamorous at the expense of everyone else. Because if we are truly Christ's disciples, then we need to know that when by God's grace we arrive one day at that great wedding feast of the Lamb, the people we will see seated at the table will likely surprise us. The question that the Parable of the Great Banquet forces upon us is whether, and how eagerly, we will be willing to take the seat our Host has assigned to us.

If already tonight we sense that we would prefer to choose our own seat, or if we have the gnawing sense in the back of our minds that there are certain people we frankly don't even want to see at that banquet in the first place, then we have some soul-searching to do. As we said in the first sermon of this series, parables are narrative time bombs. Speaking for myself, but maybe for also lots of us, I know that I need to let this parable land in my heart with a quite shattering BOOM. Amen.