Dinner is On - What's Your Excuse for Not Showing Up?
You know this one. The invited make excuses, the poor get the seats, and everybody nods about how the outsiders got in. Read it again, and read what happened five minutes before it was told.
Jesus is at a Pharisee’s table on the Sabbath. The lawyers are watching Him to catch Him. A sick man is set in front of Him and He heals him — with His hands, in full view — and sends him out the door. Then He tells the guests where to sit and tells the host whom to invite. And then one man on the couches finally speaks, and here is what he says: Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.
Shall. Future tense. A man who has just watched the kingdom happen in front of him, in a Gospel where Jesus has already told the Pharisees that a healing means the kingdom of God is come upon you, describes the kingdom as something to wait for. Nobody at the table corrects him. The One they are waiting for is reclining across from them.
So Jesus tells him a story about a supper. Not someday. Tonight. Come; for all things are now ready. The men invited had already accepted — that is what the second summons means — and every one of them, with one consent, finds a reason. A field he bought and hasn’t looked at. Oxen he bought and hasn’t tested. A wife. Two of them are polite. The third just says I cannot come. And every lawyer at that table knew where those three reasons came from: they are the grounds Deuteronomy gives a man for staying home from a war. The bidden bring war-exemptions to a dinner.
The master is angry. He does not cancel the supper. He sends for the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind — the exact list Jesus had just handed the host of that house — and when there is still room, he sends to the roads and tells the servant to compel whoever is out there to come in before the food is cold. And then a line whose voice Luke does not settle: none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.
The room says nothing. Jesus gets up and walks out to the crowd.
Here is the stake, stripped to nothing. The bidden believed in the supper. They accepted the invitation. When the servant came they had something they would rather do, and a good reason, and good manners. That is all it took. You do not have to deny the kingdom to miss the supper. You only have to keep describing it in the future tense while it sits on the table in front of you.
The Bereans searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). Open Luke 14 and read it as one scene — the healing, the seats, the guest list, the remark, the story — without a break, because Luke gives you none. Find the word now in verse 17. Then find your excuse.
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