A Sermon Based on the Parable of the Great Banquet

Introduction
The text of Luke 14:16-21 tells the parable of the great banquet. The host of the banquet tells his servant to invite the guests—but the guests have various excuses for why they cannot come. The host becomes angry and commands his servant to “go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame,” and they shall be the guests at the banquet. The meaning of this text is simple: it alludes to the question regarding why Jesus would “eat with sinners” (Lk 15:2) instead of rejecting them the way the Pharisees did. Jesus came to the Jews and it was the Jews who rejected Him because He did not fit their idea of what a Savior should be. They expected an Earthly or worldly savior—one who would lift them out of their subservient position beneath the Roman State and give them a Kingdom on Earth. Christ preached His kingdom in Heaven, obtained through humility and service to the will of God—proclaimed through one’s love of God and through one’s love of neighbor (Mk 12:30-31). This paper will provide an exegetical outline of the message to be prepared when delivering a sermon on this text.
Exegesis
The context in which the parable of the great banquet is situated is that of Christ’s back-and-forth with the Pharisees—the Jewish leaders who set themselves in opposition to Christ’s teaching of mercy and to the good works that Christ was doing in healing the sick and forgiving sinners. The Pharisees routinely tried to trap and ensnare Christ and get Him to invalidate His cause. They pointed out that He kept company with sinners and went to their houses whereas they, who were “righteous,” would never do such a thing. As Luke shows in 14:11, leading up to the parable of the great banquet, Christ insists on humility—not pride—for there is no way by which a proud man may get to Heaven. Pride is for people on Earth who seek to set themselves up over others and be thought of as great and to be admired by all. The Pharisees were filled with such pride and it contrasted sharply with Our Lord’s humility.
Christ did not set out to oppose the Pharisees. He set out to be the Redeemer of the Chosen People—the Jews. But upon extending the invitation to His great banquet in Heaven, they refused Him and gave various excuses—just like the invited guests in the parable. Thus, Our Lord, like the host in the parable, turned to others because it was the will of God that Heaven be filled. If the Jews would not come in the manner that God desired them, then God would invite others who would.
This parable carries a special weight because it is told by Luke. It exists in the Gospel genre and is in the sub-group Parable, but Luke serves as a significant message giver in that he was a Gentile himself—i.e., a non-Jew. His background was said to be in medicine and for that reason there is a special quality of love and mercy in his character, as one who practices medicine is one who desires to heal others and save the sick. Luke is thus a fitting representative of the particular message being communicated in this parable. But greater context can be obtained by analyzing the greater text in which it occurs.
The parable of the great banquet is actually told in the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. This shows that Christ was not avoiding the Pharisees or seeking to deny them their invitation—their part in the “good news” of salvation. The leader invited him to eat on the Sabbath in his house, and Christ accepted the invitation. He wanted the Pharisees to accept His invitation to them to adopt humility rather than pride and seek the Kingdom of God in Heaven.
This is the reason that Christ stops on the way to the Pharisee’s house to heal a man with dropsy (Lk 14:1-6). Christ asks the Pharisees if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath and they do not know what to say because they do not want to validate Our Lord’s message. So they say nothing. Christ does not disparage them, but heals the sick man, then continues on to the house of the leader of the Pharisees. When he arrives there he notices how the guests are all men like the Pharisee—important people vying for place, jostling one another to get the best seat so that they will be noticed.
But Christ’s message is not to behave or to think or to live in this way. Christ tells them there and then that rather than inviting others of one’s own stature, one should invite the poor, the sick and the crippled—because then one is truly showing the kind of love and mercy that God wants His children to show to one another. This serves as the backdrop for the parable, which is actually one of many that Christ gives on that occasion.
Why is Christ giving so many parables on this occasion at this dinner party at the house of the Pharisee? The answer is simple: He has taught often directly to those following Him. He has given instruction. He has spoken plainly. But for those who are hard of hearing they are like words that fall on deaf ears. Thus, Christ tries a different approach. He tries to reach them by way of stories. Stories have a special character that draws one in. It is the plot: one gets interested in the action of the story and in the characters involved that they cannot help but listen. The meaning of the story is not always plain or on the surface and once it is heard the story can stay within one longer and germinate. It is another trick that Christ uses to heal the sick—and indeed it does work. Nicodemus, who is described in John 3:1-21 as a Pharisee, is converted by Christ’s stories and teachings (John 19:39). His words find fertile soil in this particular Pharisee who then seeks more enlightenment from Christ and receives it. So Christ knows what He is doing by using this approach of story-telling in order to convey a deeper message about His mission and the will of God. He wants to touch the hearts and minds of the prideful Pharisees and this is an approach that bears fruit for those who may be hard of hearing but are not hard of heart. As always, Christ is received by men of good will and shunned by those who do not have such a will.
Christ knows that the Pharisees are proud of their own steadfastness and observance of the Law—but there is more to God and His Law than simple observance, or rather a legalistic mindset. God is for the spirit of the law—which gives life—rather than the letter, which kills (2 Cor 3:6). The Pharisees consider themselves to be righteous but this consideration on their part is superficial because it stops at a mere surface reading of God’s commandments. It does not plunge inward to see that God’s Law is based on love not on harshness or pride. Thus, Christ recognizes their desire to be righteous and validates it—but He tells them that the way to be righteous is not through putting on airs and observing only the letter and not the spirit of the law. He states: “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Lk 14:14) just before telling the parable of the great banquet and just after telling them that they themselves should be inviting the poor and the sick to eat at their tables—because this is in conformity with the true spirit of God and His Law.
Preaching
Fabarez (2002) notes that Jesus serves as the ultimate guide as to how preaching should be conducted. He is the original preacher and, of course, the greatest. Fabarez (2002) states that since “Jesus taught theological truths expecting His audience to sort out how to apply them, then we should also” (p. 142). However, Jesus also taught using parables, and Luke 14:16-21 is one such example. The parable is a story that reveals in a deeper and experiential way the divine truth that Our Lord wants us to think about. As a preacher, it is not my job to tell you individually how to apply these truths to your own life. That is your job: my job is simply to communicate the truths that are contained within these parables so they might be made more evident to you.
At the same time, Lloyd-Jones (2011) points out to preachers that “the Spirit is using you, and dealing with you, as you are preaching, quite as much as He was at the time of preparation” (p. 204). This means that just as Christ tailored His parables and His message to His individual audience, giving them a story that they could take back with them and find something in to grow from, the preacher can tailor his message so that it applies to the audience. He may or may not know the audience well, but he can listen to the Holy Spirit, Who knows all things, and can direct the preacher’s heart and mind in the sermon to give a message that will fit the audience’s needs. In this sense, it is important to pray beforehand and during the preaching so that one’s heart and mind are open to the Spirit and its directives.
Ultimately, however, preaching should be oriented towards delivering the Good News, as Vines and Shaddix (1999) note. This Good News refers to the “salvation that God gives to men in Christ Jesus” (p. 21). It rings with the “note of joy and victory” and thus preaching should not aim to discourage or depress one’s audience but rather to elevate them and invite them to engage in the spiritual journey that God wants all to take to Him. Christ Himself delivered this message in His preaching and it underlies all of what He does and says on Earth: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17).
Applying the Message
As Christ applied the message regarding the spirit of God and His Law to the Pharisees with whom He was eating, so too must the preacher apply the message of the parable of the great banquet to his own audience and help them to see that what God wants from us all is to be humble, to love our neighbors and to love God by keeping His commandments. Christ does not do away with the Law but rather fulfills it—i.e., brings it to its fullest meaning. That which was conveyed within the law but never made explicit is made explicit in the Person of Christ and in His life and in His works and teachings and, ultimately, in His sacrifice on the Cross.
Thus, we should remember that Christ is never far from the Cross and that this Cross correlates with the humility and the healing of the sick that Our Lord is always recommending and demonstrating for others in his own actions and works. Christ lives the way of the Cross and tries to get others to see that the way to Heaven is through the Cross—not through avoiding it.
In one’s own audience or parish or wherever the message is being given, there are bound to be individuals who see the Cross and know it is there and recognize it waiting for them in their own lives but are not quite ready to approach it, to pick it up, to shoulder and to carry it to Heaven. They may feel themselves to be weak, for Heaven to be too far, for the time to be not quite right. They may come with the same type of excuses that the guests invited to the great banquet have: maybe one has just gotten married, so is putting off taking up the Cross for a later date. Maybe another has too much work at the moment and cannot possibly deal with taking up a Cross right now.
The preacher should always be sure to remind his audience that the Cross does not sit around and wait—for time is always passing and what is here today is gone tomorrow. It is presumptuous and folly to think that one will simply take up the Cross when it is likely to be less work. On the contrary—how much greater the work will be when we judge that now it is time to do it! The weight of the Cross will surely feel so much greater to us then than it does even right now. If we reject it now because we are put off by its weight, what makes us think that we will be any more inclined or willing to shoulder it in the future when we are that much weaker as a result of our present indolence?
But God does not want us to fear His Cross: He tells us—“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:29-30). The preacher must always remember to give his audience encouraging words so that they will want to act now. The Cross is there for us now and we should not be fearful that it is too heavy or that we cannot handle it or that our sins are too great and the Cross will crush us because of it. We are reminded that “where sin abounded, grace did more abound” (Rm 5:20). That means that God is always offering us the grace we need to carry the Cross at every single moment of every single day.
There is never a time that we should seek to flee the Cross, for Christ did not seek to flee His—though He did ask of the Father in Heaven that if it should be His will then to let the Cross pass Him by. But notice what Christ does in this moment: He does not complain to God to take the Cross away. He first says that He wants to do the Father’s will—and if it is the Father’s will that the Son should accept the Cross, then Christ is ready to do that.
Christ even gives an example of how we ourselves can be ready to embrace the Cross: through prayer! What does Christ do on the night before He is arrested? He prays for many long hours in the Garden while His friends sleep, not knowing that the hour is fast approaching. Christ knows what is coming and he takes refuge in prayer because this is the foundation that we all must stand upon when we shoulder the Cross. What would happen if a builder came to build a great palace on sand? It would sink. The builder needs a strong foundation—a rock foundation—if he wants to build a great building. So, too, the Christian must establish a foundation of prayer if he wants to be able to shoulder the Cross and merit his way to Heaven. We cannot get there on our own powers, because we ourselves have no foundation. God provides the foundation when he hears our words directed towards him, when He sees our hearts opening to Him. He gives the grace—the spiritual foundation—to follow Him and take up His yoke—which we must believe is sweet and light and lovely.
Christ tells us this parable of the great banquet because in it is the message of the Cross: it is the message of love that Christ is giving. He is extending the invitation to His kingdom in Heaven—but one must pass through the portal that is the Cross in order to get there. Those who reject the invitation, reject the Cross. Those who become humble and show love to others are the ones who accept the Cross and are the ones who will pass through the portal that is God’s love into the Kingdom of Heaven.
As a preacher it is important to put this picture before the eyes of one’s congregation because it emphasizes the final point of the sermon, which is that the audience should be willing to engage with the Holy Spirit just as the preacher does when developing his sermon. The Spirit is always there to animate, just like grace is always there for the receiving, just like the Cross is always there waiting, and just like God’s Kingdom in Heaven is always open to those who will follow the two commandments identified by Christ as being greatest: to love God and to love one’s neighbor.
The Pharisees forget who their neighbors are and instead focus only on themselves and maintaining a superficial holiness—an appearance of holiness that masks an underlying selfishness and pridefulness. Such attributes are not Heavenly and do not correlate with the Cross. The Cross is ugly and ignominious—like the sick, the lame, the crippled, the poor, the homeless—those who God ends up inviting to his great banquet since the Jews reject Him.
The Cross is also beautiful—made beautiful by God’s love, which shines through it and impacts all who receive it in a positive way. The Cross does not weigh you down but actually lifts you up—just as it lifted Christ up for all to see. You become a model for others—a model of Christian joy in suffering when you take up your Cross daily. Others see it, they see what you are doing, and do not think that you have to point it out to others. We know joy when we see it. We recognize it and when we see joy in suffering, it lifts up our own hearts so that we want to join in and partake and give glory to God for the gladness He brings when we offer ourselves to Him that we might be His servants and do His will on Earth instead of our own.
Indeed, why should we not strive to be the servant in the parable of the great banquet? Neither the host, nor the guest—but the one who does the will of the host and goes out to invite others: why can we not be this person? We can—and when we take up our Cross in love, we are this person.
The preacher should be mindful to close with such words because they inspire the audience and give the audience the hope and joy that is needed to want to be friends with God and to follow Christ to the Cross. As this is always Christ’s message to His friends, the point that He is always trying to emphasize to them, as it is the ultimate mission of His on Earth—the mission of Redeeming mankind and inviting them to partake in that experience by taking up their own cross and showing the kind of love and compassion that God wants to see among His children—the preacher must strive to always make this his final point.
In conclusion, any exegesis can help to give background information on a text or to provide interpretations based on theories and approaches—but the aim of any sermon should be united with the aim of Christ’s message, which is to remind humankind of the basic ideas that Christ represents and wants to communicate to us through the Holy Spirit. By prayerfully opening himself up to the guidance of the Holy Spirit throughout the process of studying the text upon which a sermon will be based, the preacher prepares the ground of the soul, so to speak, to receive the Word of God that will come through this process of study and examination. The preacher then must combine the knowledge obtained through this analysis of the text with an awareness of the audience—just as Christ had an awareness of His audience, so that the message can allow them to orient themselves to the ultimate directive that God has for all men of good will: to be humble and to take up the Cross and follow Him.

References
Fabarez, M. (2002). Preaching that changes lives. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson
Lloyd-Jones, D.M. (2011). Preaching and preachers. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Vines, J. & Shaddix, J. (1999). Power in the pulpit. Moody Press