May 24, 2009 Sermon

The Great Feast
Luke 14:15-21

For years I heard the emcee call out their names. I saw the bright smiles on the winners' faces and the occasional coach mopping tears from his or her cheeks as they jogged up to the front. More than once a winning team turned out to be sitting beside us and they would force their way through us to get up front. One year our team felt we had done exceptionally well. As the sixth, then fifth, then fourth place teams were announced we told each other, “Good! We don't want to hear our name yet!” The announcer did not call us for third place. Second place did not come to us. We grabbed hands and edged up into crouches, all the better to leap up when they awarded us the championship. And the winner was—not us. We were not even an also-ran.

We all know how it feels not to win. In fact, most of us know how it feels consistently not even to finish near the front. And let's be honest. It hurts.

Came a dream year. The team worked hard. Their sense of purpose, of mission, governed their behavior. They treated each other with respect. They buried grievances. They sacrificed their own interests for the good of the team. Real friendships emerged. They experienced that rare joy of accomplishing things together far beyond the abilities of each individual. They won an early tournament going away. At their first practice after that victory, they barely mentioned winning. They talked, instead, about how to improve. Team members voluntarily came in early and stayed late to work. They competed like champs. In fact, they were champs.

That team, last year's Odyssey of the Mind team from Northern Lakes Community Church, heard its name called when it came time to hand out the gold medals for the State of Michigan. The kids sprinted up to receive their prize. Jill Butryn, my co-coach, and I received the coveted yellow envelope. Inside, the cover sheet read, “Congratulations on being invited to compete in the 2008 Odyssey of the Mind world finals!” The wording struck me as a little odd. It came in the form of an invitation. We had the privilege of receiving another one of those yellow envelopes last month. This year's OM team again earned its way to the world finals. And again, it received an invitation. Why an invitation? Do they not know that any team that prevails in the competition will certainly go? Why not assume instead of invite?

But not so fast! While this year's team parents and coaches did not seriously consider not going, the expense of making the trip concerned us. Apparently teams from faraway places like Poland and China cannot afford it. The world economy has tanked. Though invited, not everybody can make it. Sometimes, worldly concerns prevent us from accepting invitations. Even invitations to the most exciting, exclusive events in which we have longed to participate can go unanswered.

Jesus told a parable that illustrated how people can turn down even the invitation to eternal life. Its message to us, who “hear” his parable all these centuries later, is clear: Accept the invitation!
A Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner on the Sabbath. Another man at the dinner had dropsy, which the Oxford Study Bible defines as “abnormal fluid retention”. Jesus knew his hosts were watching to see whether he would heal the man. But he silenced them by noting that every man present would not hesitate to pull his beast of burden out of a well if it fell in on the Sabbath. Their devotion to the Law, in other words, varied according to their economic interests. Jesus healed the man. He then noted how the guests jockeyed to sit at the places of honor around the table. He urged them to honor others at the expense of self. Jesus concluded by telling his Pharisee hosts and his guests that when we sacrifice to serve the needs of others God will repay us “at the resurrection of the righteous”. A guest exclaimed, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of heaven!” For perhaps the only time, Jesus told a parable because somebody understood him. He told the parable of the Great Feast.

The parable is simple. At Tuesday morning Bible study I asked who each of the characters in the parable represented. The folks present at Clancy's Kitchen that fine morning scored 100%. The giver of the feast is God. The first-invited guests are the Chosen People, the Jews. The second and third sets of invitees are the people of all nations whom God chose to include once the Chosen People rejected him. And the slave doing the inviting is the one who had just healed a man and advocated self-sacrifice: Jesus. God invites. God invites through the person and work of Jesus. We need to accept the invitation.

We must guard against smug overconfidence. Just because God has invited us does not necessarily mean we have sat down at the table. We must accept the invitation. We must guard against the things that preoccupy us, that distract us from the feast. In the parable Jesus gave those who refused the invitation excellent excuses. One had bought a new piece of land and wanted to inspect it. Another had just purchased a new set of oxen and wanted to try them out. A third had just married. How might his new bride have responded if he had gone out to dinner without her on their wedding night? The things that keep us away from God may have great value in and of themselves. Their evil consists mostly in keeping us from God.

What distracts you from accepting the invitation to sit at the feast of salvation with Jesus Christ? Is it a piece of property, a relationship, a new set of wheels? Is it your worries, your fears, your aspiration to amass wealth? Whatever keeps us from accepting the invitation—whatever its inherent value (or lack thereof)—if it keeps us away from God it serves an evil purpose. A woman I know awakened one day to the fact that she had used her children as a kind of shield to keep her from drawing too close to God. Driving them here and there and fretting over them and getting a second, part-time job to keep them in the clothes that would grant them acceptance from their peer group just did not leave her time or energy for God. A man I know realized one day that the thing that kept him from accepting Jesus Christ was his fear that other guys would think him soft or weak for doing so. Is anything keeping you from accepting the invitation to the feast of salvation with Jesus by your side?

First we must know that Jesus has invited us. This Great Feast at which we have a place is nothing less than eternal life in the presence of God. Jesus Christ died on the cross in order to get us that seat. Though we sin, and therefore cannot earn our own salvation, he has given it to us anyway. Do you believe this? Have you invited Jesus into your heart as Lord and Savior? If you have not, or if you remain unsure whether you have, please speak with me privately. I will guide you through the process of accepting Christ. Or if you prefer, I can connect you with one of several elders in this church who are gifted with this ability and have a passion to help people come to Christ. Take that critical first step. Come to Christ.

But once we have definitely accepted the invitation we must keep on accepting it. Oh, most of us need not get saved again and again. Yet as our lives flow by we drift away from Jesus. Our cares, our obligations, our desires come between us and him. Jesus told the parable of the Great Feast to people who knew full well they had been invited but had allowed other things to keep them from accepting. We must watch for this pitfall as well. In order to attend that feast we have the daily duty of, in the old phrasing, attending to Jesus.

Attend to Jesus. Give him time. Give him attention. Give him thought. Unfortunately we constantly fall for the lie that we can have something for nothing. We look for a pill to keep us skinny. We want money without work. We hope to be loved without being lovable. We do not earn our seat at the Great Feast through our work, but we must do at least the minimum it takes to remind ourselves to accept the free invitation Jesus offers us. My small group has started reading The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. In another of his great books, Mere Christianity, Lewis writes that we have this curious idea that Christianity is something we can buy and then keep, like a garden hose. But Christianity is a relationship with the holy God in Jesus Christ. The only way we can have a living, healthy relationship with anybody is by attending to that person. There’s that word again: attending. It means more than just showing up, as in just attending class without listening to the teacher. Attending means working to interact with Jesus Christ.

Attend to Christ. Pay attention to him. Pray. Worship. Serve him by serving the people he loves so deeply—just as deeply, as a matter of fact, as he loves you. Accept his invitation by attending. Attending to him.