An Engraved Life

Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

Look for Jesus in Luke’s Gospel and you are likely to find him at a dinner table.   That is where we find him again today. The leader of a major religious party in Judaism has invited Jesus to his dinner table. And, before the evening meal is served, Jesus decides to do some table talk.  

Jesus tells a story about another table, one that is set for a wedding banquet. At this feast, there are place cards that adorn each setting. Caterers and florists scurry about attending to last minute details, and on the hour, guests arrive holding their smartly engraved dinner invitations. It is a sought-after invitation, because this feast is a no-holds-barred affair.

  By the time of Jesus, the image of a “wedding banquet” had little to do with fancy dress, hungry stomachs, delicious fare. The “banquet table” had become a common metaphor for God’s final heavenly feast, a feast to which everyone should want an invitation. It had far less to do with food than with fitness – just who was fit to sit at this banquet table?

Earlier in Luke, a person asks Jesus, “Will only a few people be saved?” It has been my experience that those who ask that question feel that they already have their engraved invitation in hand and are worried more about the future company they might have to keep. Typical of how Luke tells a story, Jesus does not answer the question directly, but looks to that final banquet feast and says, “People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (13:29).

Among the various groups of Jews in Jesus’ day, most had a definite notion about who would be invited to God’s final banquet table. Patrick Willson writes: “When scholars unrolled the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . they . . . found what one group understood to be the invitation list for that great banquet: ‘All the wise men of the congregation, the learned and the intelligent, men whose way is perfect and men of ability . . . the men of renown’.

         “That’s who is invited, but:

‘No man smitten in his flesh, or paralyzed in his feet or hand, or lame, or blind, or deaf, or dumb, or smitten in his flesh with a visible blemish; no old and tottery man unable to stay still in the midst of the congregation; none of these shall come (“The Messianic Rule,” The Dead Sea Scrolls in English). Patrick goes on to conclude, “There is no room for those who have been wounded by life; no room for those who have been broken by the journey” (Patrick Willson, The Christian Century).

         I don’t hear much talk these days about a final heavenly banquet, even so, these two lists of the “invited” and “uninvited” sound remarkably current. Our culture idolizes the best singers, best athletes, best dancers, best chefs, and so our society spends massive dollars trying to disguise any imperfections. The “invited” list by current standards would be the healthy, wealthy, and wise.

         The “uninvited” list to the banquet table is just as familiar. There is no room at the table for the unruly young or for the old with weak bladders or for those who suffer from attention deficit disorder or dementia. The “uninvited” list includes anyone living below the poverty line or who has ever been in prison or has ever flunked a high school or college course or has been laid off a job or has signed divorce papers or has tested positive for Covid or has attended an AA or Alanon meeting or who uses a cane or crutches or a wheelchair. The “uninvited” list is for all those who simply do not belong at God’s festive banquet table. 

          While the “invited” and “uninvited” lists of Jesus’ day remain pretty consistent over time, in our story today, Jesus rewrites those two lists. Sitting at table with a prominent religious leader of the day, Jesus talks first about table manners. Table manners, says Jesus, involves being humble enough not to assume that you deserve more than you really do.

         Jesus goes on to tell the story of a person who took the best seat at the table, only to be asked to move to a lesser seat by someone who arrived late, but who had more frequent flyer miles. The Apostle Paul will later suggest that Jesus embodied what he taught here in Luke. Paul will write to the Philippians: “Jesus humbled himself . . . Therefore, God also highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:11). It is not long before the religious leader knows that Jesus is talking about far more than table manners.

        Well, before this prominent religious leader can slip out to check his cell phone to see how his stocks are doing, Jesus gets right up in his face and says, “You know the Dead Sea Scrolls’ ‘invited’ list to God’s great banquet table, well, pay it no mind. Instead, pay far more attention to the ‘uninvited’ list.” Jesus tells his esteemed host to invite those to your table who would never dream of receiving such an invitation and who could not possibly throw a feast for you in return. When you do, says Jesus, it may dawn on you that we all come to God’s great banquet table by invitation only and not by family name or educational credentials, not by religious standing or financial holdings. We come to the banquet table by invitation alone from our good and gracious God.

Luke does not say it here, but I am convinced that Jesus loved this religious leader too much to let him drown in the deceit of “entitlement.” Jesus knew that if you wake up thinking that you belong at God’s table, that you are entitled to premium seating at the banquet table of God by birthright or hard work, by social standing or religious piety, then it will not be long before you start thinking: “If some are entitled to be at this table, like me, then some are not.” In fact, those of us holding engraved invitations must be extra careful to guard the “uninvited” from getting anywhere near this table.

Yes, our job must be to fence off the “uninvited” from God’s great banquet table, whether in West Bank refugee camps or along the US-Mexico border or in isolated American locations that are euphemistically called: “reservations” or on our cities’ vacant lots that double for tent city “Motel 6s” or even in the church for those who don’t have their theology quite right. How easy it is to think “With my engraved invitation in hand, I belong at God’s banquet table, but others do not.”   

To be fair to the religious leader in Jesus’ story, most of us do not even see our own sense of entitlement. Entitlement is almost always someone else’s issue; it is for the other race that think they are so entitled or for the other gender that think they are so entitled. It is almost always about and for the other, the other, the other. The dinner gift that Jesus gives this religious leader is a mirror to look at how easy it is to choke spiritually on our own distorted sense of entitlement.

So, the next time you are tempted to assume that you have your own personally engraved invitation to this festive table, a table that is a foretaste of God’s great heavenly banquet table, feel free to give in to that temptation, because, in Christ, that engraved invitation to this table and that table is indeed for you.

But the next time you look twice at who is standing in front of you waiting to take a piece of bread or to drink from the cup and you wonder what do “they” think they are doing here or surely “they” would be so much happier sitting at another table with their own kind, then turn around and walk to the back of the line and start over again.

And hopefully, on your way back, you will notice that every single person standing in line is also holding an engraved invitation from God to this table, engraved by the very heart of Christ.

         AMEN