Maybe some of us can sympathize with
the excuse makers in the parable of the great banquet – perhaps especially in
this season of office parties to which we may not always want to go (Luke
14:16-24). Though most of us can't believably say to our boss, "I just
bought five yoke of oxen and I have to go examine them. Please excuse me,"
but we might come up with other excuses (Luke 14:19). The classic is to feign
illness. Or, you can tell one group that you already made plans with another
group and then tell that group that you can’t make it because you’ve got plans
with the first group. This is called lying your way out of it. But Paul tells
us to stop lying to each other (Col 3:9). It can be a relief to get out of
social obligations. The comedian John Mulaney says, "It is so much easier
not to do things than to do them, that you would do anything is totally
remarkable. Percentage wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them
– and so much fun not to do them,
especially when you were supposed to
do them.”
At one time or another, we’ve probably
all experienced the relief of getting out of some odious social obligation, so
we all tend to be rather sympathetic toward those excuses for not coming.
Even Scripture – the Old Testament,
that is – appears to have some sympathy for these excuses. Deuteronomy lists
three acceptable excuses: having built a house but not yet dedicated it (20:5);
having planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit (20:6); and having
betrothed a wife but not yet married her (20:7). Now, interestingly, these are
considered good excuses for not going into battle against the enemies of
Israel, but they parallel surprisingly well with those excuses offered in
today’s parable by the invited guests who do not want to come to the great
banquet.
One has bought a field but not yet seen
it; another has bought oxen but not yet examined them; and a third is newly
married and so cannot come (Luke 14:18-20). Moses would have accepted these as
excuses for not going into battle, let alone the simple matter of not going to
a banquet.
But the man in the parable, who
represents our Lord, was angry. He does not accept their excuses.
This is not the only time that Jesus
takes a harder line than Moses. He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill the
law (Matt 5:17). I'm reminded of what Jesus said when asked about divorce.
"For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but
from the beginning it was not so" (Matt 19:8). Moses introduces a leniency
toward human weaknesses that Jesus does not seem interested in preserving. Rather, he goes to the root – to how it was
in the beginning. He is radical. He would not have us too comfortable or
self-assured of our place at his table.
The guests invited to the great banquet
took too lightly their host's invitation. They were too comfortable. They
thought it too small a thing. They failed to appreciate to what a great extent
their host was going to please them out of love for them. They failed to notice
that this was no ordinary dinner, but communion with their Lord. Their
ingratitude barred them from giving proper thanks, that is, from Eucharist.
Their ingratitude is clear because it
was at the second invitation that
they refused to come. The engagement did not catch them unawares. If they were
not going to come because of importuning circumstances, they really ought to
have made that known when they were first invited. It’s as if they RSVP’d that
they’d be coming, but then all changed their minds at the last minute after
everything was prepared. They were too casual with their host’s hospitality.
They were complacent and self-assured. They were ungrateful.
We may be like these invited guests.
In one sense, of course, those Jews who
rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ are like the invited guests. They had been
invited as God’s chosen people, but rejected Jesus when the Father sent him to
them. And the Gentiles who accepted the gospel are like the poor and the maimed
and the lame and the blind from the streets and the lanes of the city and the
people from the highways and the hedges brought in to fill the house with
guests.
But in another sense – more applicable
to us personally – we are the invited
guests. We are invited to the great banquet by this gospel we have heard and
accepted. We received and accepted this first invitation in our baptism. The
banquet, of course, is our salvation in Christ, the kingdom of heaven, the
Divine Liturgy, the Eucharist.
We have received our first invitation
and we're waiting for everything to be made ready for us to go into the great
banquet. We have been baptized into Christ and we await his second coming. By
our baptism and our faith, we have accepted the Lord's first invitation.
When he comes for us again to make us come into the feast, let us not refuse him. He doesn't want to hear our excuses. We are to be ready at a moment's notice for the announcement that all is ready and for the invitation to come into the feast. We are to receive this good news with joy, not excuses.
Who among us is always ready to meet
the Lord?
It is meaningful that the invited
guests are replaced by the poor. This tells us, I think, something about the
kind of person able to be ready at a moment's notice to enter into the great banquet.
Such a person is poor. The poor do not have land or oxen or vineyards or
houses. They also have no excuses. They are free of these distractions. They
know it would be good to go into the banquet and eat and they have no reason
not to. “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke
6:20). Really none of us have any reason not to. Some of us just think we do. "Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:3).
What reasons do we have to resist the
call of the Lord? What excuses do we make for avoiding the Divine Liturgy,
which really is the great and heavenly banquet to which we are invited? Even if
we have land and houses to attend to, we have no excuse. And if indeed
maintaining our material properties keeps us from communion with the Lord, we
should shed them. Or if anything keeps us from the Lord, we should cut it off.
“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away” (Matt
5:30).
Let us all examine our lives for
whatever distractions exist between us and God and let us seek to remove these
distractions. This time of fasting in preparation for the coming of the Lord at
his holy nativity is a time of reducing these unnecessary distractions that
cloud and distort our vision of God. “When the Lord comes, let me see him clear.”[1]
God isn’t some odious boss that we should want to avoid. He’s our loving father
calling us to a great feast and to communion with himself. Let us stop making
excuses. Let us answer his invitation with joy and go into the feast.
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