Easter Sunday sermon
11 April 2004

"The Invitations are out!"
Second in a series on the parables in Luke

Yesterday someone told me about some fascinating news footage they saw this week – some of you may have seen it too. George Bush was making an important and serious speech on terrorism and such issues but the cameras were focussed on a 13 year old boy standing just behind the President – a boy who was yawning and fidgeting and twisting in his place and generally acting in a very distracting manner. Apparently he had been extremely excited at being chosen to stand behind the president at a television broadcast, but had hardly slept the night before so couldn’t control his yawns and discomfort on the day.

We could probably all think of a time where a guest at an important function seemed out of place – not dressed properly, not acting decorously, not seated in the right place. I’ve been to plenty of weddings – I probably did it at my own – where children were deliberately not invited in the fear that they would spoil the special occasion with inappropriate noise or behaviour. Such restrictions at important occasions are understandable.

But when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God being like a great banquet with invited guests the picture we end up with is exactly like what we would try to avoid – full of the riff-raff of society: those who are normally well on the edges. No doubt full of people who really have no idea of how to behave at an important occasion. I think it is pretty safe to assume that the dinner guest of Luke 14 whose beatitude introduced the story would have been as surprised by its conclusion as anyone. He starts of "blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God" (v 15) but we know from the beginning of the chapter that the house on that occasion was full of Pharisees and lawyers – so the ‘anyone’ in his mind was probably in reality "anyone like me."

We need to understand something of the background to the Great Feast described in this parable to know what would have been in the minds of the guests at that Pharisee’s house.

The passage that was read to us from Isaiah 25 is a well loved and repeated description of the messianic banquet – a prophecy of a time when victory over enemies could be celebrated extravagantly. It may have had a grounding in the social tradition of most cultures of having a celebratory festive meal after a battle has been won or as a new king comes to the throne, but for Isaiah in the midst of conflict and the crumbling of the Israelite monarchy it was looking forward to a time when Yahweh would be king, when all pain and warfare had ceased, when even death itself as the primordial enemy would be overcome. In this eternal joyous celebration an abundance of food and a feast of well-aged wines would be provided – no one has to bring anything – and the feast was for all peoples – a significant emphasis in those times when Gentiles were not often included in the celebrations of Yahweh’s people. All this would take place in the presence of the Messiah – "the Lord for whom we have waited".

But it’s possible to trace this vision through later interpretations. A few hundred years later in the book of Enoch the gentile Kings and rulers are driven out of the presence of the Son of Man and only the elect are gathered at the banquet, and in the writings of the Qumran community shortly before New Testament times not only are Gentiles excluded from the messianic banquet but also the paralysed, the lame, the blind, deaf or dumb. Isaiah’s original open and inclusive vision had been well diminished by the time of the Pharisees.

So the guest with his pious words may have imagined a banquet where the invitation list was restricted to people like himself – people who knew how to behave in order to be invited. It was this that prompted Jesus to tell a story. Remember the disturbing nature of Jesus’ parables? The story started off simply enough: "a certain man gave a great dinner and invited many." I’ve mentioned before how much of Jesus’ teaching and ministry centred around the table – so much so that a New Testament scholar I knew made the assessment that Jesus could be described as "a party animal". I’m not sure that we emphasise this enough in our Christian tradition. Words like "duty" and "discipline" and "commitment" come to mind more readily than "party" when we describe the path of discipleship, but here it is again in the gospels. "A certain man gave a great dinner." In the parallel story in Matthew it’s even more extravagant: "the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a great wedding banquet…"

Once again it is helpful to have some background knowledge to better understand this story. In the Middle East banquets were carefully planned affairs. With no means to preserve food the number of guests had to be determined before the meat could be killed and cooked – so a double invitation went out as we’ve seen in this story. First the guests were invited, then depending on their availability the appropriate amount of food was prepared. When it was ready the servant was sent out again to call the guests in.

The invitations were out – and must have been accepted because the banquet was ready and the guests expected. Now comes the twist in the parable. Against all protocol all who had been invited began to make excuses. On the face of it these excuses may sound reasonable to us, but knowing something of the background we become aware just how rude and insulting they are. Kenneth Bailey is a New Testament lecturer in Beirut. His knowledge of Middle Eastern peasant culture gives him important insights into the background of the parables. He analyses the three excuses in this story and concludes that each one of them is weak, in fact he calls them "bold faced lies". No-one would buy a field without knowing its geological features and agricultural potential especially in such an arid land. Even in our day one wouldn’t buy property sight unseen. Equally it would be foolish to purchase teams of oxen without knowing their capabilities first – the equivalent perhaps of buying a second hand car without a test drive. And much as we would like to think a man might put his wife before an important dinner invitation it just doesn’t ring true to Middle Eastern culture: for one thing weddings were important social occasions for the whole community and wouldn’t be held at the same time as another feast; and for another even discussing one’s relationship with one’s wife in a formal setting was unheard of. This third would-be guest didn’t even send an apology. While it’s tempting for a preacher to say that people’s busyness, their preoccupation with property and possessions and relationships can keep them from God, the story with its transparently false excuses points to a much deeper problem. If the host in the story is God, then the invited guests are not just too busy, they are deliberately rejecting the presence of God in their lives.

But back to the parable. The insulted host was understandably angry. People just did not treat others so rudely. So the invitations were sent out again – and this time they went to people whom no-one would have expected to be invited to an important dinner. In fact, it was the very people who previously would have been deliberately excluded: the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. And when that wasn’t enough the servant was sent out again – to the real fringes of society, outside of the town, perhaps even the Gentiles. Again the Middle Eastern context is important – it was polite and expected to refuse an invitation if you weren’t at the same social level as the host – but the master in this story says "compel people to come in." This phrase has been badly misused by zealous proselytisers but its original intention was to highlight the fact that the invitation was totally unexpected for the second lot of guests – an unbelievable event. People who weren’t dressed right, people who didn’t know what cutlery to use, people used to living off scraps were to be guests at the great banquet. Where would the Pharisees and lawyers listening to this story have placed themselves? The invitations were out, and though they were sitting at table with Jesus had they really caught onto his way of doing things? Had they realised they would be sharing the table with those they didn’t expect, or maybe even being replaced by outsiders? Had they realised yet that to be a follower of Jesus was to be prepared to have the world turned upside down?

For the Pharisees, then, the parable was a warning. But for the followers of Jesus in Luke’s day it was great news. After all, so often they were the ones on the margins of society. There would be a great dinner – no, a party – and everyone was invited. The kingdom of God isn’t about power and domination like the kingdoms and societies of our world, but it’s about gifting and honouring people from all walks of life. The house would be filled with anyone who would accept the invitation and go. No special social standing was needed. It was God’s free gift.

For a few years I’ve been donating a small amount to Rotary to buy a ticket for an underprivileged Canberran child to attend an entertainment evening. Last year I was offered some tickets for me and my family to watch a performance of Circus Quirkus, but it wasn’t till I was there that I realised this was the Rotary charity event. It felt quite strange being on the receiving end – I wouldn’t have thought we were underprivileged enough to qualify. But that’s what it will be like, I suspect, at the messianic banquet – a cosmic sized party where lots of people will be surprised to see who has accepted the invitation. In reality none of us are good enough to qualify, but we are all invited.

Chapters 14 and 15 in Luke are a series of parables of grace– beginning with this great banquet with its unlimited invitation and ending with the extravagant, wasteful love of the father offered to the prodigal son. Each of the stories stress that it doesn’t matter what our background is, and it doesn’t matter what we’ve done, God’s grace is freely available. The invitation has come to us, and long before the feast we can enjoy the sense of being valued and wanted in the Kingdom of God.

But if it’s a party we are looking forward to, why do so many make excuses? Why aren’t the churches filled, why don’t people feel welcome?

Luke tells us that it does matter what we do now – in the middle of this section are verses which in my bible are entitled "the cost of discipleship". The banquet is free but accepting the invitation carries responsibilities. If we are to be guests of this host, our lives will be different. We too will be expected to show grace, to include the outsider, to sit down with the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. Each one of us will have an idea of what that means for us. On Friday a line in the meditation reminded me of something I have intended to do for some months. The narration said "Soon, very soon, the forgotten prisoner will receive a letter and know that someone knows his name". I was reminded of some letters I have at home – correspondence between David and an inmate at Goulburn prison who was learning biblical Greek and discussing New Testament concepts with him – I have intended to write to him myself to tell him of David’s death and offer to continue the correspondence, but I haven’t done it yet. Accepting the invitation to God’s party for me must mean something as practical as that.

Being part of the Kingdom means accepting the invitation and acting on it. If you want to "eat bread in the kingdom of God" you’ll have to sit with Jesus and everyone else who has been invited, because you can’t participate in a banquet at a distance. Some time ago I discovered Barbara Kingsolver’s novels. One of the characters in The Bean Tree tells a wonderful and challenging story – an Indian story about Heaven and Hell. This is how it goes:

If you go to visit hell, you will see a room just like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering but they cannot get a bite of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Why is this? They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. With these ridiculous terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they cannot put their food in their mouths. Oh, how hungry they are! Oh, how they swear and curse each other! But if you go and visit heaven you see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as mops. But these people are all happy and fat. Why do you think? It is because they use their spoons to feed each other.

The parable of the Great Feast is an invitation to us to join in the party – not to participate from a distance but to sit down and share with others as a way of living out the love and grace God offers to us. In the light of Jesus’ resurrection all stories of feasting and table-fellowship in the New Testament take on the hue of the Communion table, the place where God invites us to share in the body and life of the crucified Christ.

But the communion table is only a symbol of what can be real at each of our tables, every day of the week. The disciples on the road to Emmaus learnt that. The stranger who had walked and talked with them had to be pressed to stay and sit at the table with them too, and what a wonderful gift that turned out to be. We have been invited to be part of the Kingdom of God. But will we in turn invite the Risen Christ bring joy to our feasts – will we compel the Risen Christ to be present at our tables?

Jeanette Mathews