A Banquet of seven Speeches
Luke 14:15-24 |
Introduction: Eating together is important in our family. If we look at our family album, we’ll see most of our family pictures are taken around different dinner tables. To the Chinese, an invitation to a meal is an important event. If the host is an important person, we’ll make sure to be there. It is an honor to be invited. If we invite someone and it is a no show, we feel offended. In the west, one invitation is adequate. But not so in the east. When my father invites someone to a meal, he wants to remind that person on the day before the diner, making sure it will not be forgotten. Inviting and responding to the invitation reflects the importance of the relationship between the host and the guests. And then usually at dinner, someone will be asked to give a speech. This morning we will take a look at a story about a certain banquet. The story we just read actually occurred during a banquet. It’s a meal within a meal. During the first meal, a guest made this remark to Jesus, “blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” This eating with God is a major theme in the scriptures. In Psalm 23:5, “He prepares a table in front of my enemies”; and Is 25:6-5 is about a meal with the Messiah. This meal with God, refers to the end time in human history when God and his people will dine and have fellowship together. Responding to this guest, Jesus tells a parable to those present. In this parable we notice that there are all together 7 speeches. We want to learn what is heard by the 1st century listeners and what it means to us today.
I. An invitation to a banquet. vs 16 tells us that an invitation had already gone out to the guests. They have accepted and it is a commitment. Now the dinner is ready, so the host tells his servant to ask the guests to come. “Come, for everything is now ready.” This is the first recorded speech. The response is quite surprising. Unexpectedly, the guests turn it down. They all follow a similar pattern in their speeches. I did something, I must do something now, therefore excuse me. 1. The Real Estate Expert. The first person’s response, “I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.” This is the 2nd speech in the story. In the Middle East, before one buys a piece of land, he would first study it thoroughly. Finding out about the owner, the land’s history and its recent profit. But this person is saying, “I bought the land and I need to go take a look, please excuse me.” Its like saying, “I just bought a house over the phone, now I need to go and take a look at it. So I can’t come to the dinner.” What an excuse. No one in the Middle East would believe this. This individual is in essence saying, “my land is more important than you.” He is not only refusing, but deliberately insulting the host. 2. Animal Expert. The response from the next person, “ I bought 5 oxen and I am on my way to test them, please excuse me.” This is the third speech. The same pattern here: I bought 5 oxen, I must go test them, therefore excuse me. In the Middle East, at the place of animal trading, there is a small field for testing. The potential buyer would watch to see how the oxen performs there. Therefore to purchase a team of oxen without testing is unheard of. Its like saying, “yesterday I signed a check for 5 used cars, and now I have to go and test drive them.” Would you believe me? In those days, land was considered as holy and animals unclean. Here the man was saying, my animals are more important than my relationship with you. Again, this is an insult to the host. 3. The Passionate bridegroom. Now we come to the third person. “I just got married, so I can’t come.” The 4th speech. He just got married and there is no mention of what he is going to do. The other two has to see the land and test the oxen, but this bridegroom? We don’t know and besides, he didn’t even ask for an excuse, but just that he cannot come. He could not have gotten married that day. For if there were a wedding banquet, this other banquet would not have taken place. For in one village, they could not have two banquets on the same day. Another point is this: banquets usually occur in the middle of the day. So what kind of excuse is this? A very unreasonable excuse. Again, it is a direct insult to the host. So what we see from these three individuals is a progression of excuses. They not only rejected the invitation, they also show that there are other things more important than their relationship with this banquet host.
II. An extended Invitation. The host is obviously angry. He is angry not just because the guests refused to show up, but that they have placed other things more important than their relationships with him. So here is the fifth speech of the story: “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” The host is extending the invitation to those outside the village, those in the city. Who are they? They are the dirty dozen, the unworthy ones. You see, in the middle east tradition, the poor never gets invited to a banquet (its still true today, right?), the crippled do not get married, the blind do not go out to examine the land, the lame do not test their oxen. Can you imagine their responses when they learned that they have been invited to the banquet? What me? Are you kidding? I hardly know him. They are the unworthy ones, and they come. Then in v22 we have the servant giving the 6th speech, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.” Now, the 7th and the final speech. The host says, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.” Earlier it is from the village to the city, now it is beyond the city. To the 1st century listeners, this certainly is a reference to the non-Jews, the gentiles. So what do we see here? It is clear to the 1st century listeners, God is the host. He first invites the Jewish religious leaders to come to the banquet, to have a loving relationship with Him. They turned him down with many silly excuses. Then he extended the invitation to the rest of the society, especially those considered unworthy of the banquet, the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. And furthermore, the invitation is extended to those out side the Jewish community. To them, this is a feast of grace. It costs them nothing. As he, being rejected by the leaders, extends the invitation to the unworthy ones, he is also experiencing humiliation. For the host to embrace and welcome those despised by the society is a humiliating experience. Here is a visible demonstration of his love in humiliation. This theme later surface again in the story of the Prodigal son in chapter 15. III. Modern day application. What does this story mean to us today? 1. God invites us to his banquet. You notice that this invitation to the banquet has never stopped. The invitation is still open. He invites us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mat 11:28); “Then Jesus declared, ?I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”(John 6:35); “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”(Revelation 3:20). Even to this day, God is inviting us to have a loving relationship with him. He is telling us that its all ready, come. How so? You see, he is the infinite true and holy God. How can we, sinful creatures come into his presence? We are the poor, crippled, blind and lame. We don’t deserve anything and we are not worthy of coming into his presence. In order for this to happen, God sent his son, Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus Christ, God's son is holy, righteous and perfect. God laid our sins on him. So for our sins he was punished and died on the cross. His righteousness was placed on us. So when God sees us, he sees Jesus’ righteousness over us and considers us as holy and righteous. Therefore we can come into his presence, establishing that loving relationship with this holy and perfect God. This invitation to us has nothing to do with our merit, for we have none. It is all his grace. However, when we accept this invitation, he wants us to have that primary loyalty to him. To prefer him above everything and everyone else. This is the invitation extended to us today. 2. Our excuses. Isn’t it true that we too have our excuses? And if we are honest with ourselves, our excuses are not that much different from those in the 1st century. We are too busy to consider or think of a loving relationship with God. Later, when I have more time, I’ll think about it. Really? If you find out that you have won a lottery, will you be too busy to claim it? Probably not. Its really a matter of importance and priority. Behind our busyness, we are saying that there are other things more important than a relationship with God. If the God of the bible exists, if what he says in the bible is Truth, then our relationship with him becomes a matter of eternal life and death. Can anyone really be too busy on issues that will affect him eternally? And besides, how can we know when we’ll stop being busy? Is it also possible that when we are not too busy, it maybe too late already? Our other excuse is that we want to understand more about God. This is certainly important. But how much more? Can we truly understand everything about God? If we do, then God is not God anymore, right? We don’t wait till we understand all the diseases then we become a doctor. Nor do we understand everything about computers to become a specialist. What is important is that we have some basic understanding about God and to act on that knowledge. Knowing that He exists, he loves and dies for me on the cross, he has completely forgiven my sins is adequate for me to put my trust in him, and enter into this loving relationship with him. Have you noticed how the story ends? All we know is that the invitation is being sent out to those outside the city. Yet there is no mention of them coming. We would like to know, did they come and how many? From the story telling perspective, the listeners are left hanging in mid air. This story is not finished. Yes, it is not finished, because it is waiting for you to respond to the invitation.
Conclusion: Some of us have read the story or saw the movie: Babette’s Feast. Its about a group of Christians in a small Norwegian town. They wore black clothes and had a very simple diet. They denounced any form of worldly pleasures. They fixed their focus on the future and tolerated the life on earth. The leader Dean had two daughters: Martine and Philippa. Philippa had a beautiful voice. One day she met a Frenchman named Achille Papin, the most famous opera singer of the day. Achille encouraged her to go to Paris with him and to develop her singing career. However, because of her religion, she felt such pleasures must be renounced. Achille returned to France with great discouragement. Later, Dean died and the 2 daughters carried on his work. There were great problems in this group. Two brothers had deep resentments towards each other. Two ladies stopped talking to each other for over 10 years. There were also rumors of affairs involving a 36-year old man. In spite of the problems, they continued to meet regularly. 15 years later, a lady showed up at Martine and Philippa’s door. She carried a note from Achille saying that her name is Babette, who lost her husband and son in France’s civil war and that her life was in danger. Achille hoped that this village would show mercy to her. Then he added, “Babette can cook”. Babette started living with the two sister, helping them with chores and cooking. She never talked about her past. 12 years passed and one day Babette received her first letter from France. Babette told the sisters that a wonderful thing had happened. She had won a lottery amounting to 10K Franc. The sisters congratulated her but they were afraid that she might now leave. Babette’s winning ticket coincided with the sisters’ plan to celebrate their father’s 100th anniversary of birth. Babette came to them with a request: for 12 years she had not asked them of anything, now she would like to prepare a meal for the anniversary service. She wanted to cook them a real French dinner. Even though they had reservations about French food, they agreed. When the money from France came, Babette left for a few days to make arrangements for the dinner. During the next few weeks after her return, the villages saw boats coming to their town bringing all kinds of vegetable, small birds, head of a cow ham, a huge tortoise and other strange sea creatures. When the villagers came to the dinner that evening, they all agreed that they would not criticize the food. As they started to eat, they all began to enjoy what was before them. Gradually the banquet had a magical effect on this group of people. They began to talk to each other. Wrong doings were confessed. An elderly general remarked that the last time he has such good food was in a famous French restaurant. Then he gave a speech. After the dinner, they felt as if they had their sins washed white as wool… The final scene in this story takes place in the messy kitchen. Martine says, “it was a great dinner, and we’ll all miss you when you leave for Paris”. Babette responds, “I was once the cook in that famous French restaurant,” then she added, “ I will not be returning to Paris. My relatives and friends have either been killed or imprisoned. And besides it’s too expensive to go back.” “What about your 10K Franc?” Martine asked. Then Babette told them that she had spent every penny of her prize on the dinner they had just finished. Earlier I mentioned that an elder man gave a speech during the meal. What did he say? “………grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall wait for it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.” Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient. 12 years earlier, Babette had come to these graceless ones. Every Sunday they heard sermons on grace and the rest of the week tried to earn God's favor with their pieties and renunciations. Grace came to them in the form of a feast, Babette’s feast, a meal of a lifetime lavished on those who had in no way earned it, who barely possessed the faculties to receive it. Grace came to this village free of charge, no strings attached, on the house. So too it is with God's banquet, which is a feast of grace. It is an invitation to grace. It had cost him his only son’s life, but is totally free to us. All we need is to come and receive it.
Rev. William Hsueh Jul.29, 2001 Houston Chinese Church, Houston, Texas |
