Reflection:
In Lk.14:1 – 24, Jesus teaches disciples and Pharisees about being guests (v.7 – 11), hosts (v.12 – 14), and invitees (v.15 – 24) of the kingdom banquet. Jesus confronts two major social issues in table fellowship practice: social honor and materialism. While a guest of the Pharisees, and after challenging his fellow Pharisee guests about their own status-seeking (14:7 – 11), Jesus challenges his Pharisee host in this public luncheon. Despite the unwritten code against such public statements from a guest, Jesus invites him to shed both social honor and materialism: ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’ (14:12 – 14). Consistent with 6:20 – 36, Jesus wants to move relationships beyond mere reciprocation; such relational patterns keep people separated from each other, keep some marginalized and stigmatized, and keep some in places of power. Jesus’ kingdom program decidedly runs against these patterns of relationship.
One can imagine an awkward silence. Someone raises his cup to say a blessing that he thinks everyone, including Jesus and the host, can affirm. He says, ‘Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’ (Lk.14:15) But Jesus does not allow the tension in the room to dissipate so quickly. Instead, he increases the awkwardness in the room by implying that the Pharisees in his current company will not be there. He does this by telling the stinging parable of the banquet, where the invited guests choose not to come for three half-serious, half-ridiculous reasons (Lk.14:16-24).
Through these excuses, Jesus reveals that he did not think too highly of people’s reasons not to join his own community of disciples. He makes the first invitee out to have an attachment, significantly, to land. The second invitee is either materialistic or a workaholic, or both; he feels he must try out a team of five oxen – a sure sign of wealth, since most landowners had only one or two oxen[1] – without a moment’s delay. The third invitee is either too bound to family even in the case of having just gotten married (as Jesus will challenge family attachments in v.26, even to ‘wife’) or simply incapable of seeing overlapping opportunities (why not bring her, too?). Those excuses involve attachments to material wealth (land, harvest) in two cases and family (wife) in the third, concerns that Jesus repeats in v.25-35. As a result, the banquet host in the parable gives up on his original invitees and instead invites ‘the poor and crippled and blind and lame,’ the same group mentioned in 14:13.
Jesus’ social inclusiveness is so radical that he welcomes people who have been labeled ‘sinners,’ as poverty and physical handicaps were often thought to be divine punishment for individual or family sin. Jesus’ table fellowship practices modeled in real life the inclusiveness of the kingdom of God. That is, Jesus ate with sinners as a physical picture of how God desires to restore sinners to right relationship with Himself. The very act of eating, so strong a literary theme in Israel’s Scriptures (see below) and so scrutinized by the Pharisees, provided Jesus with the opportunity to demonstrate the invitation of the kingdom. Jesus provoked awkwardness, embarrassment, and not a little hostility. Clearly, Jesus’ sense of love and urgency about this matter is so great that he causes public tension with the Pharisees.
My wife Ming graduated from Harvard University in 1992. She majored in Social Studies and had dreams of being a Supreme Court justice. But she encountered Jesus during her freshman year, and he began to transform her at a deep level. For example, her bulimia stopped. But just as startling was her change in career path. Even though she took the LSAT and missed 1 question, even though she got into Harvard Law School, she chose instead to go into Christian ministry. She joined InterVarsity staff at her college Christian fellowship at Harvard, living near campus and calling Harvard students to make Jesus the highest priority in their lives, and welcoming them into her life. She did that for 8 years and enjoyed it, even though she made very little.
After we got married in 1999 and had our son in 2000, she chose to do the full time mom thing and enjoyed that. Then in May of 2001, an opportunity came up for us. We had chosen to live intentionally in the second highest crime area in Boston, a low income neighborhood that is mostly Caribbean, African American, and Puerto Rican. Our next door neighbors, a Jamaican family with a single mom and four kids, were going through a time of craziness. They had reported to the Boston Housing Authority that their landlady would not clean up the mice and roaches in the house, so the landlady was threatening to evict them. The oldest son in the family (age 17) had just gone to juvie lock-up for the second time. The oldest daughter (age 16) had just gotten pregnant. On top of that, “H”, the single mom, just started a second job, a night job. That left the two younger kids, “S” and “C”, who were 13 and 6, home alone most of the time. Because we’re good friends with “H”, we asked her, “Hey, how about if the two kids stay with us, and we’ll make sure they do their homework and eat right.” “H” gladly agreed. So we took them in. Less than two weeks later, Stacy’s report card came in, revealing that even though she was going to be in 7th grade, she was testing at the 2nd grade level. Even though she wasn’t learning at her grade level, she kept getting social promotions at school because she’s not a behavior problem. At that point, Ming and I asked the question, “Is there a way for her to get caught up? Do we want to home school her?” Ming home-schooled “S” for 8 months, even though our own son wasn’t even a year old. We saw some results, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Ming and I had never been so frustrated, so angry. We had never prayed so much. Yet Ming stuck with “S” for that amount of time. We welcomed her into our lives with the hope that this welcome of her into our lives would reflect the radical welcome of the kingdom.
Some people I know consider all that a waste of a Harvard education. What would you say? Perhaps this decision raises emotions about your worth, how people perceive you, what is an appropriate investment in yourself, and about childraising versus career choices, especially for women. Maybe you think that she wasted her ‘potential.’ Yet the myth of potential is that you have this ‘potential’ that you need to translate into either dollars or political influence or both. Your potential is the sum total of your smarts, your social skills, your family’s money, your political acumen, your good looks, and your emotional stamina - how far you can go before you hit the wall and collapse. A different way of looking at it is the ‘tyranny of the cost-benefit analysis.’ At some point, trying to develop your potential becomes tyrranical.
[1] Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus. (SCM Press: London. 1972) p.176-77.
