A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 17C and Proper 18C.
The text: Luke 14:15-24.
Since Luke 14:1-24 is one story, I already covered the gap in the lectionary in last week’s In-Between and sermon. The central point of both is that Jesus is invited to this dinner party by people who want him dead and he goes anyway. And he even has the audacity to teach them, even when they don’t seem to have ears to hear.
There’s something audacious about this that we don’t want to see. I think it scares us enough to make this idea of Jesus walking into the lion’s den and confronting the lion as like, just being good and something we should all do.
I am constantly being told that we’ve all lost civility and that we need to be nicer to each other. Implicit in that statement is a second: but you go first.
That Jesus goes to this dinner party and confronts the powerful is evocative precisely because it is uncommon and audacious. This isn’t a Christian playbook so much as a vision of what proclaiming the gospel actually looks like. And that there’s the positive and the negative; the easy and the hard.
And I fear that we read these too heavily on an abstract notion of Jesus proclaiming a set of beliefs to a mildly resistant band of scallywags instead of what is actually there. Jesus believes these men are liars who are abusing their authority and ruining the lives of the poor. Our sugar-coating to protect the sensibilities of our own powerful people is doing everyone a disservice.
Not Really a Parable
It’s funny that the author refers to the first set of teachings at the dinner party as parables (vv. 7-14). They are not. Jesus is speaking rhetorically: don’t take the good seats. What if somebody more important shows up? How embarrassed will you be when everyone hears that you have to move?
What concludes the scene is an actual parable (vv. 15-24) about a dinner party like the one that they are at. The difference is that people don’t want to come to this one.
It’s interesting to me that Jesus doesn’t come right out and say what’s going on, and yet he couldn’t be clearer.
The middle section of the story ends with Jesus making some recommendations to the host of the real dinner party. He suggests the man expand his guest list so it is actually representative of the people he is responsible for.
We know why they aren’t on the guest list to begin with, of course. They are undesirable to the powerful. They have nothing to offer them. And there is little ROI: return on investment. So why should they be invited, anyway?
Oh, because real celebrations aren’t exploitative. You aren’t supposed to get more power from throwing a party. You’re not supposed to get invited to more parties with more powerful people. That isn’t what parties are for.
And that isn’t what God is looking for.
This is something I think we’re likely to skip over in our reading of this moment. So slow it down.
These rich and powerful religious leaders are claiming a moral authority based in God’s dream for creation. We take these encounters too much like instruction or platitude and shave off this nuance.
Jesus tells the host of a dinner party that he’s throwing a party for the wrong reason. For an evil reason. And because we’re unwilling to call that spade a spade, we’re also reluctant to hear what the good reason is: because God loves a party based in gratitude with an open guest list. This is precisely what we’re going to hear more about in the coming weeks.
An Actual Parable
This in-between passage (vv. 15-24) is an actual parable. A different dinner party with an expanded guest list.
But there are three things I’d like to note about this before wrapping up.
1) The host expands the guest list after the invited guests refuse.
This is a recurring theme with Jesus regarding God. And I think it is worth dwelling on briefly.
It seems that expanding the circle isn’t a first order decision but a second. So it seems like we’re God’s second choice. But much like finding the love of your life after dating other people, we can clearly attest to the idea that order = preference is just ridiculous.
What it suggests to me is far less about a ranking of God’s preference than the ranking of human preference.
This isn’t a parable evaluating the host’s taste in parties. It’s about the cruelty of the guests who refuse to show up.
2) Excuses aren’t facts.
These first set of invitations go out to people who refuse to come to the host’s party. All of them. And each one makes some stupid excuse.
We’ve all made up an excuse not to show up to something. So I don’t think this concept is on trial here.
Jesus emphasizes that none of them go to the party. This isn’t statistically probable in an objective situation. So whether they collude by direct communication or by systemic rejection, the point remains. They are all responsible for rejecting the host.
And this is a move I’ve seen a million times in real life.
People make terrible excuses for not doing the right thing. Then we get all tangled up in the logic and plausible deniability of their dishonest testimony. And somehow their responsibility for doing the right thing stops being our priority.
Whether or not testing out oxen is a good enough excuse to miss the dinner party is not the point. The point is that the all of these powerful men are skipping the party at the same time.
Their excuses aren’t facts. Nor are they the point.
3) The point is the guest’s rejection
The guests reject the host. Their excuses are intended to get them off the hook. But they aren’t the why.
We are left to glean why they reject the host from the context, then. And given who Jesus told the real host to invite and then the very people the parable’s host does invite, we can deduce why the original guests collude.
The host is willing to eat with poor people.
And we recognize that this is a popular criticism from them about Jesus.
If we’re still spinning our wheels on the excuses, we aren’t likely to get down to the real point. And we’re far more likely to not only let them off easy, but confuse why Jesus would even tell the story in the first place.
In other words, we’re all really likely to miss the whole point!
And if we do, who benefits?
That’s right. Those people making excuses, hoping you’ll forget that they are rejecting God.
Telling
How this parable unfolds is that it begins like his hearers expect it would and ends in a completely different place. And this must feel incredibly convicting.
A powerful religious leader hosts a party. When the guests all refuse to come with all their lame excuses, I bet the hearers all starting to squirm. Then he invites the very sorts of people the powerful avoid. And then there’s still room! So guess what? He goes out looking for even more!
There are some interesting ways to spin this parable to speak to the nature of God evolving over time and that God’s nature is to keep pushing and expanding and rediscovering the point.
We can also center ourselves directly on the expanded guest list. These people aren’t only welcome, but invited to the dinner party. Don’t let anyone try to uninvite them.
But I find the nature of this as a negative example to also be part of the telling.
We are so prone to excuse the intentions of the powerful. Not because we have bad intentions. But because we want to think the best in everyone.
And yet, that “everyone” is only extended in one direction. Toward the powerful Jesus so frequently questions. We are also so prone to impugn the intentions of the powerless. And excuse this by saying we’re trying to be balanced.
But this dichotomy needs to be addressed. Over and over!
We let the powerful off the hook with their terrible excuse (“boys will be boys”, “youthful indiscretions”, “we don’t want to ruin his life”, etc.). But do we offer everyone that same liberty? There is no objective way we can say yes.
This way of excusing the powerful in our own world is a negative juxtaposition with God’s vision. This is the product of the kingdoms of humanity versus the kin-dom of God. Following an impulse to protect the powerful and oppress the powerless rejects God.
But expanding the guest list and throwing a party to celebrate in gratitude? Now that is something completely different.