Sermon: Who Gets Invited?

 Luke 14:15-24
Who Gets Invited?
James Sledge                                                                            March 17, 2023 

Imagine for a moment that you have planned a big swanky event, perhaps a big wedding with an elaborate reception at a gorgeous venue. (Some of you likely don’t need to imagine because you’ve had the experience.) You’ve sent out save the date cards well in advance, and then you’ve sent out lovely invitations which included pre-stamped RSVP cards where guests could make their dinner selections.

The RSVPs have come in and it looks like it will be a good turnout. Most all the people you hoped would be there have said they’re coming. It’s going to be a splendid occasion.

Once you get a good handle on the numbers, you let the venue and caterer know how many to prepare for. Everything is coming together splendidly. Sure, it’s going to be a little expensive, but it will be worth it. You can’t wait to gather with everyone to celebrate and have a great time.

But just a few days before the wedding, you start to get phone calls. “We’re so sorry,” the voice says, “but our son’s team has advanced to the next round and we have to go.”

“My mother is in the hospital, and I have to be there,” says another voice. Yet another says something about relatives arriving unexpectedly from out of town.

Some of the excuses seem reasonable. Others are pretty lame, but regardless, the number of guests who will attend dwindles rapidly. Pretty soon less than half of the people you were expecting plan to attend, but it’s way too late to change the catering order. You’re on the hook for all that food and for a venue far bigger than is now needed.

Hopefully nothing like this has ever happened or will ever happen to you. Oh sure, there’s always someone who cancels last minute, but not so many that the reception hall is now going to look empty.

But if this did happen to you, what would you do? What could you do?

Jesus tells a story of something similar in our scripture reading today. Jesus has just advised his host not to invite friends, family, or wealthy neighbors when he holds a dinner but to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” saying that the host will be rewarded at the resurrection.

This is hardly the sort of friendly banter one might expect at a dinner party which perhaps explains why one of the guests tries to change the subject by saying, "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Whatever the reason for the guest’s remark, it prompts Jesus to tell his story about a great banquet.

The story starts out not so differently from the planning for that big wedding we imagined a moment ago. We’re not told what the occasion is, but Jesus says, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.” Most of us aren’t familiar with first century, Middle Eastern party etiquette, so we may not realize exactly what Jesus is describing here. Standard practice would be to invite the guests ahead of time and get their RSVP. Then, when the banquet was ready, a servant would go to everyone and tell them the feast was prepared.

That is what is going on in the story Jesus tells. This well-to-do host sends for the guests, guests who have already said they will attend, only to have people cancel. According to Jesus, all of them made excuses.

I read various commentaries on this passage, and they disagreed about whether the excuses were valid ones. A majority said they were not, and considering that these guests had already said they would attend, their poor planning certainly suggests that this party was not all that high on their priority list.

This would have been a major embarrassment for the host, having everyone cancel on him, leaving him with all that food and drink and no one to enjoy it with him. Under such circumstances, the best way to save face would be to quickly come up with a new guest list, presumably more people from the upper crust of society like the host. But the host does something much more surprising and dramatic.

Instead of the sort of people we might expect, he ushers in “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame,” the very same list Jesus had recommended inviting to dinner parties just moments earlier. He even goes so far as to go outside the town itself and compel the people there to attend so that his grand party can be filled.

Jesus often tell stories that are thought provoking, that invite people to think differently about things. Here it’s hard to avoid concluding that Jesus is metaphorically speaking about aspects of God’s coming day, the Kingdom of God as Jesus referred to it. Jesus, like prophets before him, often used a great banquet as an image for the Kingdom, so presumably he wants to provoke his listeners into thinking differently about it.

But by the time the gospel writers retell Jesus’ stories and parables, they are addressing a particular audience, not at all the one Jesus originally spoke to. The author of Luke is writing to a Christian congregation, a community that is largely Gentile. They are outsiders who have been welcomed in late in the game, well after the Jewish people who originally founded the Christian movement, and I wonder how Luke expects them to hear this parable. Perhaps he even expects different members of the congregation to hear it differently.

Given that Luke’s congregation has come into the Church after the original invitations to the people of Israel, perhaps they see themselves as those brought in from the “roads and the lanes,” from outside the boundaries of the original guest list. Perhaps this makes them realize how fortunate they are, how they are the recipients of the host’s surprising grace. Perhaps for them the parable evokes a profound sense of gratitude.

However, there are no doubt some members of Luke’s congregation who are many years removed from their conversion experience. Their original excitement about following Jesus has begun to wane, and their faith has become just one more element of their often-busy lives. Perhaps faith has even dropped low on their priority list, and they hear the parable and wonder if they might give an excuse should Jesus call them. Might they be more like the original guests in the parable, and hearing it feels more like a warning?

Or perhaps some of those who hear this parable are quite wealthy, and they hear the parable as an invitation to use their wealth differently.

One thing that is clear in the parable, this is yet one more place in Luke’s gospel where Jesus’ ministry speaks of a momentous reversal. Over and over in Luke we hear of the lowly lifted up and the powerful brought low. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Perhaps some of the wealthy members of Luke’s congregation hear the parable and wonder if they are on the right side of things.

And what about us? We’re a very different audience that than those the gospel was originally written for, but surely this parable can speak to us, too. So where do we see ourselves in this story?

Do we think of ourselves as those fortunate enough to receive unexpected invitations? Perhaps there are things about us that we’re not proud of, that we’d just as soon not share, that we expect would make God think less of us. Perhaps we’ve spent much of our lives far away from God and God’s ways and imagine that we are not A-listers for the big party. Yet we’ve been invited anyway.

Perhaps we’re very cozy in our religiousness. We’ve attended church all our lives and kept our noses clean, walked the straight and narrow. Perhaps we’re those who have always assumed we’ll be on the guest list, but then comes this story where the expected guests end up missing the party.

Or perhaps we’re those who have a lot invested in the status quo, people for whom Jesus’ words of reversal don’t necessarily sound like good news. Perhaps this story makes us wonder if we’re on the right side of things.

Maybe Jesus’ parable strikes you in some other way, but however it hits you, there are some things that seem clear to me. The great banquet is filled with people I might not have invited to my party, and the only people who miss out are those who choose not to come. I wonder. Would I have been there?