Another brief aside reminds us that the Temple---the place where God has reposed (rested, taken up residence)---has been the created order, the tabernacle, the Temple, Jesus, and the church, each of which can be spoken of as the Temple of God. The church of Christ serves as ambassadors of the kingdom of God, by which God will ultimately make manifest His rule of the creation, reminding us that God intends to once again repose within His created order---now doing so through the church of Christ, and pointing out the long and quite discernible movement of God towards a final restoration and renewal of this creation.
Returning one final time to the parable that has allowed us to break off from our trek through the Gospels in observance of Jesus’ meal-related words and deeds, and which is serving as the catalyst to our conclusions concerning the church at Laodicea, we again remember that throughout the parable, it is to be implicitly understood by those within the early church community that are receiving and presumably benefiting from Luke’s record that the servant of the master within the parable is Jesus. However, as we saw, by the end of the parable an evolution has taken place, and Jesus comes to stand in the role of the master. This is made poignant by the two-headed statement from the one that tells the parable, while also standing in the position of the Messiah that speaks about and lives out the messianic banquet, that “not one of those individuals who were invited will taste My banquet!” (14:24b)
Again, in an era of expectation, and in speaking to a group that was populated by Pharisees, religious leaders, and most likely other relatively educated social elites, who would undoubtedly have had minds that operated on various levels of expectations; and who, perhaps, had consulted with each other prior to the meal as to how they were going to treat or approach Jesus at this meal to which He had been invited, the various levels of implications would have been quite clear, and they would have caught on to the fact that there are multiple levels of meaning on offer with Jesus’ closing statement. This, of course, is supported by Luke’s record of an earlier statement from Jesus, in which He says, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me” (10:16).
Because Luke is offering a tightly constructed narrative in which the pieces build on each other (and maybe even turns upon this parable of the great banquet in its march to a grand climax), this statement has a new and useful light shed upon it. Of course, we should not neglect to mention the “ears to hear” aspect of Jesus’ and Luke’s usage of words concerning “listening” as the words from the tenth chapter are artfully appended to the tale of the great banquet of the fourteenth chapter. It is not a stretch at all, especially in a culture that is trained to listen to the telling of stories, to imagine that Luke expects those that hear his story to be able to hang the pieces of the narrative together in this way. For our purposes, we would be doubly negligent if we failed to consider this issue of a failure to listen and subsequent rejection of both Jesus and the Father, as we listen to the words of Jesus to the church at Laodicea and get a sense of the rejection that has Jesus standing outside of this church, knocking and speaking and offering to participate in a meal with them. As we consider the substance of the biographies of Jesus, and the importance of meals within those biographies as they are firmly ensconced within the messianic banquet tradition and expectation, does not the offer of participation in a meal suggest a route for contemplation and proper understanding by those to whom Jesus speaks?
When Jesus functions as the servant in the parable, and even when He is understood to be functioning as the master that is sending the servants, there is a sense of mission at hand. If this is so, then it would seem to be part of the design of Luke’s construction to bring the words from the tenth chapter forward into the process of understanding Jesus’ communication in the fourteenth chapter, especially in light of the fact that Jesus speaks to the His disciples in the tenth chapter in the context of mission. Indeed, the tenth chapter begins with “After this,” which, according to the text, is immediately after Jesus speaks of the “kingdom of God” (9:62b), which we should look upon as something greater than mere coincidence, “the Lord appointed seventy-two (or possibly seventy, depending on the manuscripts in use) others and sent them ahead of Him two by two into every town and place where He Himself was about to go” (10:1). Here, not only do we note the parallels to the master’s sending of his servant to make preparations for the grand banquet (though since the meal is a gathering in of associates rather than the master going out to meet, we do not press the analogy too far), but we also make note of the fact that this is kingly behavior, as a ruler would send emissaries ahead of him to the places he intended to visit, so that adequate preparations could be made.
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