Dan Joseph
We all make excuses, we end up being asked to do things or being invited to places we don’t really want to go, we say ‘yes’ at the time, and then try to worm out of it later on.
Over the years I’ve heard some amazing excuses, I have a friend who works in a Human Resources department and apparently the range of reasons why someone can’t come to work range from the common place to the frankly, bizarre. For the record, my favourite ever excuse is from the TV show Blackadder, where he can’t attend because, “his wife’s sister’s puppy fell into the strawberry patch”
The parable Jesus tells in our reading today can’t have sat comfortably with the folk who first heard it. He seems to be admonishing the listeners (the religious leaders of the time) by teaching one of his more uncomfortable parables about the character of God. To those who heard it, the background and the imagery would have been very familiar – he evokes a passage from Isaiah, which talks about how the “Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain”
If you’ve invited folk over to supper, then, if you’ve gone to any trouble preparing the meal, it’s fair to assume that they’ll turn up. In the story we hear of a man who has invited lots of people to dinner. The more guests that don’t show the more food that ends up being wasted, the more annoyed you can feel about the effort gone into preparing the meal.
The host who was throwing a ‘great banquet’ must have gone to a lot of effort in preparing the evening, the food, the ambience, and the place settings. But instead of hearing the sound of guests arriving, he hears the sound of apologies and excuses being trotted out.
After the first one or two, it’d be ‘oh well, never mind’ but as the list goes on, as everyone who was invited ducks out, well the host could be forgiven for feeling rather taken for granted. The excuses get less and less plausible; at first it’s a piece of land that needs to be looked at – as if it’s going anywhere (!), then it’s some oxen that need to be examined – this one sounds even less likely, it’s rather akin to buying a car without actually seeing it first. The third one is even ruder, and tries to excuse himself by saying he’s just got married. (As if that’s the sort of thing that would slip your mind when accepting the invite!!)
In the light of history, it’s possible to interpret this parable as being prophetic: Jesus came into the world to bring deliverance and salvation, and by rights the obvious people who should have seen this and accepted him, would have been those who had devoted their lives to their faith – the religious leaders. And yet they do not. Their response is to try and catch him out again and again. They listen to him preach – they hear his message and invitation, and yet they do not accept it, there’s always some reason why not, some regulation – some excuse.
When it turns out the obvious people on the guest list are going to shun the invite, the host extends his invite wider, and he sends his staff out to collect the poor and the disadvantaged. They get the invite to the big banquet, even though, because of their situation, they must know that there is no way they could repay the compliment.
Though the host must be furious at the way he has been rudely treated, his response is to be even more gracious, even more inviting and generous.
Even though the dinning area is filling up it’s still not full. The folk brought in would have been the people from the immediate area, the local community. And yet the host tells his staff to go out again and bring people in from even further a-field, this would means strangers, people who were not part of the community. To those who were listening to Jesus this would have been clear enough. Gentiles, people who were not Jewish would be invited to God’s great feast.
For us, this parable has a number of important images. The first one is that of the staff who are charged by the Master to go out and bring people to the banquet. This is us; we have all of us been given a commission to invite folk into communion with Christ.
Now sometimes we’ll talk to people and they may have a very plausible reason why they can’t do something like come to church.
Sometimes it’ll be an excuse, folk never seem to be short of a reason why they won’t accept faith into their lives, and when we hear those reasons – we have to look to this parable for an example on how we should react. Instead of getting frustrated and saying ‘well I won’t ask anyone again’, we have to be patient and just ask other people. Maybe people who we hadn’t thought of.
The invitation we give is so important, we celebrate our open communion and call to worship and it’s important to remember that there are so many barriers put up by churches to stop folk being included – gender & sexuality are obvious ones that many of us think of, but for people who are divorced, folk who are single - they too can find themselves missing an important welcome from their local church.
Instead of responding to the call to go out and be Jesus’ messengers in the world; too many church’s end up casting themselves in the role of God’s bouncers – deciding who can & who can’t gain admission.
The first time I ever visited a Metropolitan Community Church, it was a very different place to this one, they missed a lot of opportunities to do good works; but the welcome was there, that’s what spoke to me. It’s the same welcome that was there at the very first service nearly 40 years ago held by Troy Perry. And it’s the same welcome in our service today.
In the parable the last part is the host telling his staff to go out and get more guests. But it doesn’t end with the table being full; it ends with the task of finding more people to share in the banquet still in progress. The work of reaching out God’s word into the world is still a work-in-progress for us today; some people choose to read this passage and focus on the thought that when the table is full then those guests who excused themselves will no longer have a chance to share in the feast. That may well be true, but for me, it’s not the most important part of this reading.
Jesus’ parable speaks to us about the character of God, that we are all invited to share in his feast, regardless of whether we think we are worthy, regardless of whether we think we deserve it – it’s a gift of grace. A gift of a God who continues to show his invited people generosity and love.
We are God’s invited people. Whether you see yourself as a guest who’s just on their way in, still trying to find yourself a good seat, or you see yourself as one of the staff who has heard the call and is ready to spread the word; You are part of God’s invited people.
Spread the word – there are still seats left.
(Dan Joseph)