…The the master of the household was furious and said to his slave, “Go out quickly to the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” Then the slave said, “Sir, what you instructed has been done, and there is still room.” So the master said to his slave, “Go out to the highways and the country roads and urge people to come in, so that my house will be filled.” – Luke 14:21b-23 (NET)
In Luke fourteen, Jesus tells a parable of a great banquet. A man had planned the event, invitations had been sent, requisite preparations had been carried out, and food and wine had been prepared in accordance with the number of people that had accepted the invitation. Though we will not take up space setting up the context for this banquet, what we do see, contextually, is that this parable of the great banquet is set within Jesus’ own attendance at a meal to which He had been invited, which closely follows His speaking of, in chapter thirteen, the great messianic banquet that will be hosted by Israel’s God. Luke, as an excellent story-teller within what is a culture that communicates its stories primarily in oral/aural fashion, builds on that which comes before, never leaving Jesus’ words unexplained. This, of course, is why we can never look at portions of the Gospel in isolation, and why, in order to have any authentic and plausible meaning, they must be understood in relation to the multiple layers of narrative on offer.
Rather than get into interpreting the details of the banquet, or even explaining the nuances of the story, this study will attempt to place the banquet within Luke’s narrative of Jesus, which stretches past the Gospel that bears the same name, and on into the book of Acts. When we consider the nature of story, always realizing that details offered up early in a story will have bearing upon or come to fruition later on in the telling, we must be mindful that Luke sometimes brings resolution to a statement from Jesus within Acts, rather than neatly tying things off within the first half of his two-part series. As we do so, we will also consider the mission of Jesus, as presented by Luke, bearing in mind that the mission of Jesus is defined by the situation within God’s creation, and within God’s plan of redemption for His world, as it is being enacted and carried forward by the people of His covenant. To this end, as we hear the parable of the banquet, we should be able to find points of contact with Luke’s ongoing presentation, as well as the whole of the Biblical narrative, which gives shape to Jesus’ mission.
As Jesus opens the story, we know that the banquet is ready to commence. However, something strange and quite unexpected happens. Those who had been invited, and who had accepted the invitation, fail to follow through on that acceptance, offering up excuses as to why they cannot now attend. One says “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it” (14:18b). A second says, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going out to examine them” (14:19a). A third says, “I just got married, and I cannot come” (14:20). Now, we will not dwell on the implausibility of the excuses, which is what enrages the spurned host, but we should add that it seems as if the point being made is that all that were invited made excuses, and therefore, were not going to be attending. Rather than retaliate, as Jesus’ hearers would have expected the man to do, especially in a culture defined by honor and shame, the insulted party-thrower re-directs his wrath, re-extending his invitation in another direction.
This is where it gets even more interesting, and also where the narrative connections, both that of Jesus in Luke/Acts and Jesus inside God’s plan, take over and are revealed. As we have already seen, “…The the master of the household was furious and said to his slave, “Go out quickly to the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” Then the slave said, “Sir, what you instructed has been done, and there is still room.” So the master said to his slave, “Go out to the highways and the country roads and urge people to come in, so that my house will be filled” (14:21b-23). How does this fit within the over-arching Biblical narrative?
No comments:
Post a Comment