The Guy in the Back Row

The Guy in Back Row

Luke 14. The parable of the Great Banquet. The focus of Tim’s sermon this week. Did you ever notice the launching pad for this wonderful parable? What was the stimulus that caused Jesus to go on such a “God wants quantity not quality” tirade? The whole point of the parable seems a little odd, but when we consider it as a response to a small, short, seemingly harmless remark made by an unnamed, probably slightly tipsy, little guy in the back row, well, it’s even odder.

Here’s the situation. Jesus has been asked to lunch by a prominent religious and community leader. A man of great social standing and probably some wealth, he is a leader of the Pharisees which means he is a Torah-abiding, clean living soul who would have been regarded by all to have been “blessed by God.” Well, almost all. Jesus seems to be rather unimpressed.

Whatever the glad-handed reason the Pharisee gave for inviting Jesus we are told that the Pharisee’s real motive was to “carefully watch” Jesus as they tempt Him to heal on the Sabbath. This is an old ruse that Jesus has seen before and He is not caught off-guard. It is Jesus Himself who forces the action by taking hold of the bait (a man sick with “dropsy”) and healing the guy before anyone could figure out what was happening.

Jesus seems to be telling his host, “Healing on Sabbath? Don’t be stupid. Of course you heal on Sabbath if you can.” He sends the healed man on his way in perfect health. “Next!” Jesus seems to say. Actually He says, “You tell me, Legal or notlegal?”

But the Pharisees are dumbstruck and say nothing. So Jesus continues on the offensive. He is sarcastic and in-their-face. He challenges His host and the host’s friends, “Which of you wouldn’t help your own son if he fell into a well on Sabbath? Oh wait. I forgot who I was talking to. Never mind your own children, you probably aren’t that attached to your own children. How about your cow? If your prize cow fell into a ditch on Sabbath you’d fetch it out pronto, right?”

Can you imagine? The nerve of the guy. But Jesus isn’t done. He then presumes to lecture them on proper seating etiquette. Now if there is one thing a group of Mid-Eastern religious leaders understand, it is proper seating arrangements and customs. Their status in the community depended upon it. They would never break the rules, either way. First they would never, ever sit in a too-high seat. They all knew the pecking order and rehearsed it every time they ate together. Likewise they would never, ever sit in a seat too low because, why should they? They earned the seat they’re in. Their whole value system of who’s who was manifested in these seating arrangements. It was their system of evaluating who’s who and they took it very seriously.

And this brings us to the whole point of Luke 14 - that man’s way of evaluating the worth of other human beings is all wrong, that mankind’s system of valuing and evaluating stinks. As Jesus said of the Pharisees in Luke 17 a couple of weeks ago, “You are the ones who justify themselves in the eyes of men. But God know your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.

This is more of that. You guys have not the understanding to be evaluating anything. All of your judgments are wrong. You should heal on the Sabbath, of course you should. What are you, nuts? You should not just invite your friends, and important people to lunch. You don’t know who is important and who is not. You don’t understand how God looks at people, how He sees them, what He sees in them, how He loves them, why He loves them. You guys don’t get it, can’t get it, have not the capacity to get it.

That, in essence is what Jesus tell them. “You’re upside down. You’re backwards. You value all the wrong stuff. You think you are good with God but you are not. God detests the way you guys think.

Jesus is letting them have it with both barrels. He is blasting them. He continues blasting them, “Don’t invite winners to your partys. You don’t know the difference between winners and losers. Invite losers. Even though you won’t know why, you’ll have a better chance of getting something right.”

And it is at this particular moment, at this tense juncture, it is this moment when Jesus is about to really tell them the whole truth about themselves that our little Guy in the Back decides to pipe up and participate in the conversation. He probably has not understood anything Jesus has said. It probably has not occurred to him that Jesus is ripping on their whole life-structure. He is still secure in his little hierarchy-good-time-bubble. And he squeaks what appears to be the most innocuous little amen blessing known to man, “Blessed is the man who shall eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

Oops. Dead quiet. The wiser Pharisees wince and put their hands to their foreheads and look down, Jesus takes a breath, looks them in the eye and decides not to tell them the whole truth, He changes course and tells them the parable of the Great Banquet instead.

Here’s is the short paraphrase. Blessed is the man who eats you say? That’s true Cy but it ain’t gonna be you. You think you are “in” by virtue of belonging to the right club but here’s the thing about God: Everybody you invite God rejects and everybody you reject God invites. You can’t be more wrong about this than you are.

And here is the hard truth for us: we’re the Pharisees. They are stand-ins for all humanity. They aren’t the Keystone Cops of the Neaar East. They aren’t Curly, Moe and Larry. They’re us. Our judgments, what we value, who we think is important it’s all dead thinking. Our value system, the things we tell ourselves to make our little souls feel okay is 180 degrees out of phase with reality. Happily, as it turns out, all of humanity gets invited to the Banquet too. But we must first abandon our natural value system for one that aligns with God’s values if we can sus them out. Nothing can keep us out except this bit right here – that we think we know something when we don’t.

The guy in the back row then turned to his neighbor and whipered, “What did he day?”