A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 3

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched...
 * When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable: 'When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, "Give this man your seat." Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, "Friend, move up to a better place.” Then you will be honoured in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.'
 * Then Jesus said to his host, 'When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.'
 * When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, 'Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.'
 * Jesus replied: 'A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, "Come, for everything is now ready."
 * 'But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said,
 * "I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me."
 * 'Another said, "I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me."
 * ‘Still another said, "I have just got married, so I can’t come."
 * 'The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”
 * '‘Sir," the servant said, "what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.”
 * 'Then the master told his servant, "Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet."'
 * Luke 14:1, 7-24

Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. In my experience that's certainly true where religion is concerned. The hardest people to talk to about Christian faith are invariably the people who've grown up surrounded by it.

G. K. Chesterton, in this connection, tells a story of a young man who lived centuries ago in the rolling downland of Wessex. He'd heard of a huge white horse which had been mysteriously carved into an unknown hillside by ancient hands. He was so captivated by this rumour that he set off in search of the fabled horse, travelling the length and breadth of the West Country. But, alas, he couldn't find it. At length, weary and disappointed, he returned home, reluctantly concluding that the white horse of his dreams didn't exist, after all. Then, as he surveyed his own village from a distant vantage point, after his long absence, he was astonished to see the object of his quest. The white horse had been there all the time. His village lay at the very centre of it, but he'd never been able to recognize it before, concealed as it was in the familiarity of his environment.

Chesterton, of course, intends that story as an allegory. His point is that there are people (particularly perhaps young people), who set off on an intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage. They have deep questions that they want answered. They visit exotic places looking for answers. They read foreign books; they sample weird experiences. Some travellers may even enrol for outlandish university courses. Deep down this is because they're conscious of some mystery that's summoning them, a holy grail they need to discover. Sadly, in spite of all their efforts, and as time goes by, they become increasingly disillusioned, cynical, agnostic. They don't find the 'white horse' they're seeking.

Perhaps, suggests Chesterton, they need to return home. His logic is that if they did, maybe they would be amazed to find that the answers they're looking for are there already, as close as the Bible on the bookshelf or the church on the street comer. They simply haven't recognized the unique value of these things because they are too commonplace, too familiar. Familiarity breeds contempt.

To try to break down such a wall of indifference, or even contempt, and to help people to discover the novelty and the relevance of the Christian message, is not an easy task. This is especially so when people think they know that message already. It's a bit like the measles vaccination given to babies. All too often a dose of religion, especially if administered in childhood, simply increases your resistance to the real thing when you encounter it later in life. Sunday School classes, unhelpful RE teachers at school, boring morning assemblies in chapel, and, of course, tea parties on the vicarage lawn—they all come back into your mind like a flood, immediately an evangelist stands up to speak. It's like antibodies descending upon some invading virus in your bloodstream. Those memories all conspire to ensure your spiritual immunity to everything that preacher might want to say. Even the best sermons fail to penetrate such defences!

Jesus himself, as a teacher of the good news, experienced just the same problem. Frequently the people he had the hardest trouble with were those with strong religious backgrounds.

Take this incident, for instance. It is the Sabbath day. Jesus has been invited to have a meal at the home of what Luke calls 'a prominent Pharisee'. The scene is a little like those sherry parties that Cambridge college chaplains like to throw after evensong. Everybody is wary of each other, and trying hard to make a good impression. It looks as though Jesus, observing the pretentiousness of this particular gathering, had decided that he would liven things up a little. He offers some controversial advice on how to organize a really good dimer party. Don't invite wealthy friends and neighbours, he suggests. That's really naff and boring. After all, if you do that, they'll simply feel obliged to invite you back again, won't they? Instead, invite the homeless youngsters you see begging on the High Street. Invite the alcoholics and the drug addicts you see propped against the wall in the shopping mall. Invite the outcasts and the destitute to your party, because they haven't got a penny. The only reward you can expect if you invite them will be in heaven, won't it?

These words of Jesus must have fallen like a lead balloon on this particular gathering. It doesn't take much imagination to realize what a conversation-stopper it must have been. Outcasts and destitute people, one suspects, were conspicuous by their absence from this prominent Pharisee's respectable table. No doubt there was an embarrassed silence. It was a bit like being reminded of the starving millions when you're just about to dive into your third helping of Black Forest gateau. Of course, there is always someone around at awkward moments like that who considers it his bounden duty to ease the atmosphere by making some inane comment or other. There was just such a fellow at Jesus' table. Determined to keep the conversation within everybody's comfort zone, he nods sanctimoniously at Jesus' allusion to the resurrection of the righteous and adds his own plaudit. 'Blessed is the man,' he says, 'who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God' (Luke 14:15).

This was merely a conventional platitude, the kind of empty cliche that you hear at funerals when people don't really know what to say, but feel they must say something religious. 'Ah, well, vicar, he's gone to a better place now. What is it that old hymn says? There is a happy land far, far away.' You know the kind of thing. In first-century Jewish society, the rabbis talked a great deal about the coming kingdom of God. Prophets like Isaiah had likened it to a huge free feast laid on by God himself that would make even the most lavish banquet at Buckingham Palace look meagre and parsimonious by comparison. So if you were a first-century party-goer, and short of something sufficiently pious to say in the company of clergymen, a useful standby was, 'Blessed is he who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.' This immediately marked you out as a respectable supporter of the ecclesiastical status quo. It was a coded way of saying, 'Oh, you don't have to worry about me, Jesus, I'm very religious.'

And, no doubt, the man expected an equally conventional reply as a result; the first-century Jewish equivalent of 'Amen, brother! Hallelujah!' perhaps, followed by a rapid change of subject to something a little more conducive to the digestion of Black Forest gateau. But if so, he gravely miscalculated. Jesus was far too shrewd to be deceived by his unctuous piety, and far too good a pastor to allow it to pass unchallenged.

You see, it was a classic case of familiarity breeding contempt. This fellow thought he was spiritually OK. He knew about and believed in heaven, and was quite sure he was going there. He naturally assumed Jesus would want to support him in this confidence. But, interestingly, Jesus doesn't. The master teacher had a special weapon in his armoury of rhetoric with which to prick the bubble of this kind of religious complacency. We saw him wield it against that lawyer in the last chapter. Here he displays it once again, to devastating effect; a parable with a sting in its tail.


 * A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests... (Luke 14:16).

This fellow was looking forward to the heavenly banquet secure in the knowledge that he would be there. He's waiting for a conventional reply to his conventional cliche about the blessing of the heavenly feast. And as Jesus begins to tell his story he must feel reassured that that is exactly what he is going to get.

By speaking of a great banquet Jesus is clearly taking up this well-known metaphor of the kingdom of God to which his fellow guest had already referred. The story opens, you will notice, with preparations for the coming feast already well under way. Guests have received their invitations. Jesus' audience would have no trouble decoding this. It is clearly a reference to the preparatory work of the Old Testament prophets who had given preliminary notification of the kingdom's future arrival. As for these guests who had been invited, they (of course) were the Jews, God's chosen people to whom the prophets had addressed their inspired words. No doubt Jesus' audience anticipated that the story was going to go on, through its extended metaphor, to expound the bliss of the kingdom of God, to describe how rich the menu would be, perhaps, or how honoured the guests.

But at this point Jesus' story starts to take a less conventional line.


 * At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready' (Luke 14:17).

In the ancient world a host would often invite guests a day or two before a feast so that he could determine how many to cater for. Then, when the food was prepared for the expected number, he would send a second invitation summoning his guests to come without further delay. In his story Jesus exploits that contemporary protocol, but in doing so he injects a slightly unexpected note of urgency and imminence. 'Come, for everything is now ready,' the host in the story urges. If they had thought about it (and I'm sure their minds were working overtime to try to do so), Jesus' audience couldn't miss the implication of that. The ancient prophets had announced the coming of the kingdom in the future tense. But Jesus here is suggesting that a new stage in God's timetable has been reached. God is now sending a servant to announce, not that the kingdom of God will come at some future date, but that it has already come. The banquet is ready; the kingdom is here; it's time, therefore, to act. 'Come, for everything is now ready.'

Who is this servant, charged with so revolutionary a message? I don't think there can be any doubt that Jesus has introduced himself into his parable here. For this was precisely the role he understood God to have given him, his unique messianic mission. He had not simply come to prophesy about the coming kingdom of God, but to inaugurate it! And before Jesus' audience can recover from this startling claim implicit within his words, the Stealth bomber starts dropping its Cargo.


 * But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.'
 * Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’
 * Still another said, I have just got married, so I can't come.'

Here is an astonishing suggestion: that people could be personally invited to share in the kingdom of God, and yet decline. Even from a friend, an invitation to dinner isn't lightly turned down. To refuse God's invitation, however, is not just folly, but downright insolence.

It might not have been so bad if these people had dreamed up some good excuse. But the pretexts upon which they made their refusal were so feeble and contrived as to be quite insulting. Can you imagine anybody buying a house without going to look at it first? No more could any first-century Jew imagine someone buying ten oxen without seeing whether or not any of them were crippled. Can you imagine anybody getting married at such short notice that they have to cancel a dinner engagement made a day or two before, so that they can go on their honeymoon? Still less could a first-century Jew, for whom a wedding was something planned months ahead, imagine such a thing!

Every one of these excuses is a transparent fabrication, a deliberate slap in the face. They don't even pretend to be real excuses. Each of these people, in their own way, is saying to their would-be host: 'Frankly, old chap, there are lots of things I'd much rather be doing with my time than spending it in your company.'

'Dinner is ready, you say? Yes, I know I said I'd come, but that was yesterday, old man. I'm terribly sorry to say I've just decided I need to repaint the bathroom tonight.'

'Dinner is ready? Well, yes, I know I said I'd come, but that was yesterday, old man. I'd decided to go for a little spin in the sports car this evening instead; the weather's so nice.'

'Dinner is ready? Well, yes, I know I said I'd come, but that was yesterday, old man. Please forgive me; I've made a date with this delicious blonde from the office, and you know what they say about "two's company"?'

None of Jesus' hearers could fail to detect the outrageous impertinence of such excuses.

And Jesus of course is suggesting by means of his parable that men and women turn their backs on the kingdom of God with just the same insolence. They do so for the sake of mere trivialities, the pursuit of material gain, personal pleasure, or sexual adventure. They choose such things rather than accept God's invitation. Don't they realize what they're missing? Alas, the implication of Jesus' story is that all too often familiarity breeds contempt. There are far too many counter-attractions bidding for the time and attention of these people. They may have been interested in going to the party once, but all sorts of other things have invaded their life since then.

One suspects that at this point Jesus' story was beginning to get uncomfortably close to the bone for some in his audience. The Stealth bomber had indeed penetrated their defences and had dropped its load. But Jesus wasn't finished. In a final coup de grace he goes on to press the detonator.


 * The servant came hack and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
 * 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'
 * Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet' (Luke 14:21-24).

Do you see what I mean about a sting in the tail? Not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.' To get the point, we must ask ourselves: 'Who were these original invited guests? Who did they represent?' The answer, of course, is the Jews, the religious people, the Bible-believing people, those who saw themselves en route to heaven, like Jesus' smug colleague at the Pharisee's dinner party. Yet, in this scorching punch-line, Jesus concludes: 'Not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'

Can he be serious? He's implying that the religiously privileged will be excluded from the kingdom of God. Who then is to be included? 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' Here were the very same outcast and destitute beggars, the poor and the disadvantaged, whom Jesus advised the Pharisees to invite to their dinner party, but who were conspicuous by their absence at that particular table. Such people will be there at God's banquet, affirmed Jesus. And, as if their admission to the kingdom were not offensive enough to Jesus' respectable audience, he adds: 'But there is still room.' Then, says the master, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in.'

It is possible, of course, that this second sending out of the servant just reinforces the first, thus intensifying the humiliation for Jesus' audience. Most commentators agree, however, that Jesus is doing a little more than that. He's anticipating the incorporation of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. The gospels certainly teach that Jesus did foresee such a development. 'The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit,' he told some chief priests and Pharisees a little later (Matthew 21:43). Though admittedly it's not absolutely clear from this parable, it does seem likely that those in the roads and country lanes represent non-Jewish outsiders whom Jesus would soon draw to himself by his Spirit after his death and resurrection.

The irony, then, could not be more complete. Those who were expecting to enter the kingdom because they had received advance invitations through the prophets would miss out. But those who expected to be shut out because they were not good enough, or had never even heard of the banquet because they were downright pagans, would be the ones to enjoy it.

Familiarity, this parable emphasizes, does indeed breed contempt, and Jesus responds that contempt is a sin that God does not lightly forgive.

What does the sting in the tail of this parable mean for you and me, then? Perhaps it depends on where we're coming from. Some, like Jesus' dinner guests at that Pharisee's table, come from a religious background. We may have been baptized or dedicated as children by believing parents. Maybe we attended Sunday School or church youth clubs. We may have made some response to gospel meetings in our early teens. We may have heard the Christian faith set out, not once but dozens of times, and as a result we think we're Christians. But are we? That's the question this parable puts to us. We may know how to say grace before meals, but Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God demands more of us than pious platitudes. It demands decision and commitment. 'Come,' he says, 'for everything is now ready.' There was, maybe, a time when you could mark time spiritually, but now that Jesus has come, an active response is required, for the kingdom is here. That kingdom must take precedence over all the other interests and ambitions we have. Are we ready to accept such a radical reorientation of our priorities? he asks. The warning of his story is that many are not. Not everybody who hears the invitation, or even everyone who shows some initial response to the invitation, actually comes up with the goods when decision and commitment are required of them.

For some, perhaps, it's career that takes first place; for others it may be sport; for some it could be the pursuit of academic study; for others it may be a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I have bought a field; I have bought five yoke of oxen; I have married a wife. The excuses change, and yet, in another sense, they are always the same—feeble, contrived, and as far as God is concerned, downright insulting.

Jesus says of such excuses: 'Then the owner of the house became angry.' This is not surprising. If you'd gone to great pains to prepare a banquet for much-valued friends, and they turned their backs on it, wouldn't you be angry? It is naive to think that God is not angry with us when we find excuses for putting other things before him in our lives. It cost God a lot to lay this banquet of his kingdom before us. He had to pay a price to open the door of heaven for us. A cross stood on a Jerusalem hillside, stained with blood. It stood there so that we could be absolutely sure that this banquet, though free, was not cheap. He paid that price because he wanted to invite you to the banquet. Turn your back on the invitation and you slap the face of a divine host who has given everything because he loves you. No wonder he's angry.

So there is a solemn warning here in this parable for those who are familiar with Christian faith: don't let that familiarity breed contempt. But the parable also carries a very strong encouragement for people without a religious background. God is planning a party for you. All the jubilees and carnivals, banquets and fiestas, laughter and festivity of a thousand years of human history won't compare with the wonder, the glory and joy of the celebration which the King of the universe has on schedule. It will be a magnificent occasion, beyond human imagination, the prelude to a whole new world. Who wouldn't like to be part of that celebration? Jesus tells us, in this parable, that you are invited to it. Admission is free and each of us is welcome to share in it.

Perhaps for some this is a problem. As the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame felt out of place at a Pharisee's table, so they feel like a fish out of water in church. 'I'm not the religious type,' they say. 'It's no good these church-goers inviting me to become a Christian; they don't know what I'm like. If they did know, they'd immediately show me the door. I'm just not good enough. If they knew what a mess I'd made of my life, if they knew all the habits and sins hidden beneath this polite and respectable exterior of mine, they would know I could never become a Christian. There can be no place for me in Jesus' kingdom of God. The invitation can't be for me.'

Alternatively, like those in the roads and country lanes who didn't even know the banquet had been arranged, some may feel completely bewildered by Jesus' invitation. Perhaps they come from a culture completely alien to Christianity; a country where another religion altogether claims the allegiance of the majority of the people. 'It's all very well for Europeans and Americans to think they're invited to this party,' they say to themselves. 'It can't be for me. I'm from Asia (or Africa). I'm a Hindu (or a Muslim). Me a Christian? That's impossible; unthinkable. There can't be any place for me in Jesus' kingdom. The invitation can't be for me.'

But Jesus in fact tells this story precisely to point out that you are wrong to feel excluded in that way. This story reveals that there is more room in the kingdom of God for people like you than for anybody else. Notice the word the host uses to command the servant: 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in' (Luke 14:23). The verb 'make' is a very strong one. Some translations render it, 'Compel them to come in.' Translated like that, it has occasionally led to illegitimate conclusions, as when it was quoted to defend the Spanish Inquisition.

But such applications fail to understand the function of this strong injunction to the servant. He is not being sent out with ropes, chains and machine guns to drag reluctant strangers back to his master's house! That isn't what the master means when he says, 'Compel them to come in.' The master's command is born of his recognition that the people he's sending the servant to reach out to will be utterly surprised when they receive the invitation. Their immediate reaction will be that the servant has got it wrong; the banquet can't be for them. They will feel that they are far too poor to be invited to a great house like that of the servant's master. They will feel that as Gentiles or strangers, they can't be intended as guests. The invitation must have been delivered to the wrong house. Hence the master says, 'Make them come in.' He means, grab them by the arm, persuade them, convince them, cajole them even. The servant is to use all the means at his disposal to assure them that the host's invitation really does include them. And that's why we can be so confident that God's invitation includes us, whoever we are. It is not qualified or limited by 'ifs' and huts'. No matter how unworthy we may feel, no matter how 'unchristian' and alien, the invitation is for all. You are invited. God wants you in his kingdom. He urges you to come along; the party is ready for you now. Why delay?

No doubt we have our plans for the coming months and years. Perhaps a student is studying for a degree. What is he going to do then? Perhaps another has found someone she wants to marry. What about when the wedding is over? Maybe they have ideas about a career. Maybe they are planning to have a family. But the career will end and the children will grow up. What then?

The truth is that however much you can cram into these fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years that God has given you, it only ends in one place. The estate or the five yoke of oxen we've just bought, even the wife we've just married, seems so very important to us. And of course, they are, in their way. But none of it lasts. It all ends in a wooden box with brass handles and a small engraved name-plate.

In contrast, what Jesus is speaking about here will last for ever. He's concerned about the kingdom of God, something we human beings were designed to share with our Maker. We are meant to live for ever in God's company in God's world. Even though we've thrown that unique destiny away, he's giving us a chance to have it back again! Are we going to turn our backs on such a prospect yet again?

By all means study for your degree, but study for it for him. You may well get married one day, but that home you build can be a home for him. Certainly you'll have a career; make it a career for him. Come, he says, the kingdom is ready, and it's waiting for you. You can start putting up the decorations for the party even now. God wants you to use the life he's given you to prepare for a kingdom that will last for ever.

So why delay? Come, he says. Everything is now ready. No matter how unworthy and alien you feel in respect of this Christianity business, the invitation is for you. If you're already familiar with the invitation, be warned. Familiarity can breed contempt. The invitation can be refused, neglected, forfeited. And the people who are most in danger of that are the people who know it all already. There are no exceptions to Jesus' imperative: 'Seek first the kingdom of God,' he says. He insists that there will be ho place at all in that kingdom for those who make feeble excuses for putting it second to anything.