Session Four - Invitation to God's eternal banquet

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Session Four - Invitation to God's eternal banquet

Release date: 11th November

November 11, 2024 • Bishop Joe Kennedy • Luke 14:15–24

Hello and welcome to the fourth session of Bishop Joe's course 'Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus'. Press play above to watch and listen and/or you can read the script below...

Hello, I’m Bishop Joe and welcome to the fourth in this series of six invitations to dinner with Jesus, taken from St Luke’s Gospel.

Today’s we’re reading from Chapter 14, and verse 15.

One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to [Jesus], “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’ ”

So then, if we want to hear what Jesus is saying here, we need to start to read not at verse 15, but back at verse 1. Here’s what verse 1 says:

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were closely watching him.

Right there are the clues we need.

Jesus is feasting at the house of a man who belongs to both the social and religious elite in his society. The man invites along his rich friends – it’s an elite gathering. What is Jesus doing there, he is not rich. But he’s been invited too. Why is that? Perhaps because he is drawing crowds, and they were curious to meet him. But it’s also there on the page, it’s because they want to catch him out. They are watching him closely, we’re told. Looking for ways to critique him, or even condemn him.

Jesus know this. He knows that his host and his fellow guests have a huge entitlement complex. When Jesus cures a man at the dinner, he knows that they will feel it is their place to police his actions, and tell him off. When he looks round the table, he sees his fellow guests jockeying for position, seeking the places of honour. He had placed himself at the bottom on the table, and was doubtlessly left there by his host.

Then, as we take up the story (verse 15) one of the guests says to Jesus, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread [there words are blessed is anyone who will come to the feast] in the kingdom of God!” What Jesus sees here a more advanced sort of entitlement complex – here is a person who feels that he and his fellow guests will certainly have places at the feast in heaven, seeing how important they are here on earth.

Jesus loves his guests, so in response, he tells them this story.

“Someone gave a great dinner and invited many people. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’”

Now this is exactly what has just happened. The rich person who was hosting the meal Jesus was actually attending had, just a few days earlier, sent formal written invitations to Jesus and to the other guests. At this point, the rule was that you either accepted or sent your apologies – and they had all accepted. That’s how come they’re there. Then, when the feast was ready, the host had his messenger sent out to each guest who had accepted, telling them that everything was ready and they should come now. So here they all are.

We know that this is what had just happened, because this was how members of the social elite in Jesus’ day invited people for meals. That was the routine. So everything so far in Jesus’ story is perfectly conventional, for posh dinners in the society Jesus lived in. As they listen to Jesus, they think he is telling a story about them.

But now Jesus’ story takes an unexpected turn. Jesus says this: when the messenger arrives to tell the guests who had accepted that they should come now, because the feast is about to start, when the messenger arrives - every one of them begins to make excuses. The first says, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my apologies.’ Another says, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out, I can’t come sorry; please accept my regrets.’ Another says, ‘I have just been married, and I cannot come, I’m really sorry.’

Now the important thing is to see that this is absolutely scandalous behaviour. For even one of the guests to duck out at the last moment, having previously accepted the formal invitation, was just completely socially unacceptable behaviour. A sign that you had no manners at all. But in Jesus’ story, all the guests do this, every one of them!

If all of them are ducking out at the last minute, then what’s happening? What’s happening is a plot, a conspiracy, a calculated, public humiliation of the host, who is left with a full table and a room full of empty chairs.

And what’s more, the excuses they offer… bought land, bought oxen, got married…. well, in Jesus’ society, they excused you – or just about excused you – from going to war. The implied comparison of your dinner party with a warzone is hardly flattering, is it? It’s all somewhere in the same ball-park as ‘I’d rather be dead than seen at your party’.

So this is what Jesus’ story is all about: its telling a story about a bunch of elite people, a group of friends, who got together and colluded to publicly insult the host of a party in a totally outrageous fashion. And then Jesus says that the host is, understandably, upset. He sends his messenger first into the town to invite to his party people who have very few means – people with jobs that don’t pay very well and those whose disabilities prevented them from earning a living. And then he sends his messenger into the countryside – the lanes and hedgerows – to compel (in inverted commas) anyone he meets to come to the party. “No, no, I insist, do come!”

Now, here’s the thing. The people round the table, listening to Jesus’ story, would never have insulted one another like this. They had too much respect for one another to act this way. And if, inconceivably, any of them had ever actually been insulted in this way, they would never have responded in the way that Jesus describes. To offer last minute invitations to people further down the social scale would have been to publicise even further the fact that you had been insulted and stood up.

So by now everyone listening to Jesus’ story realises that this story is not about them, after all. They started out thinking that it was a story about one of their parties. But it’s not about one of their parties. But it’s not about one of their parties, so whose party is Jesus talking about?

He’s talking about his own party. After all, these rich, entitled people might just have thought it funny to insult Jesus in the way he described, if he had invited them to a party. What with him not being as far up the social pecking order as they were. They knew that and Jesus knew that too. And they also knew that he spent most of his time not with them, but with the very people that they looked down on.

“Blessed is anyone who will come to the feast in the kingdom of God!” Jesus tells his story to help his hearers see that he was inviting them to the feast in the kingdom of God, but they were too full of themselves, too caught up with themselves, to accept his invitation.

Jesus extends that same invitation to you and to me too. So, will we accept, you and I? In the end, our answer to that question is the only thing about us that will matter.

More from Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus

INTRO to Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus

Bishop Joe Kennedy

Join Bishop Joe as he leads us in responding to six invitations to dinner with Jesus, as they come to us in Luke's Gospel. With each invitation, Jesus calls us to experience for ourselves the generosity of God. Session one begins on Monday 21st October, and then a new session will be released each Monday until Monday 25th November. Press play above to watch and listen to the introduction and/or you can read the script below... Hello and welcome to Six Invitations to Dinner with Jesus. I’m Bishop Joe, and I’m delighted that Bishop Philip has commissioned me to offer six biblical reflections and conversation starters for our Diocese’s Fruitful App. Before we open the Scriptures together, I want to invite you to think with me for a moment about the wonder of God’s Word. And the first thing to say, surely, is that it is astonishing that God communicates with us at all. We don’t often consider how startling it is that God should communicate with us – tiny creatures on a rocky outcrop in the middle of nowhere much. And yet, God gives us the Scriptures as his written Word. And the Father sends Jesus, who is his living Word. It is said that Queen Victoria used to complain that Gladstone spoke to her as if she were a public meeting. Matters are quite different between us and God. God never addresses us as if we were a public meeting. God speaks to each of us as though we were the only person he speaks to. God’s Word is always a word of personal invitation, from person to person. In this series, I shall be inviting you to join me in accepting six invitations to dinner with our Lord, which come to us in St Luke’s Gospel. Each invitation is personally addressed to you. With each invitation, Jesus opens the door for you to experience the generosity of God. Join me, as together we respond to the invitation of Jesus.

Session One - Invitation to fast in a desert

October 21, 2024 • Bishop Joe Kennedy • Luke 4:1–13, Exodus 17

Hello and welcome to the first session of Bishop Joe's course 'Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus'. Press play above to watch and listen and/or you can read the script below... Hello, I’m Bishop Joe, and welcome to this, the first of six invitations to dinner with Jesus. This first dinner invitation is to join Jesus not for a feast, but for a fast. Here’s the story. It’s from Luke Chapter 4. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. So, Jesus crosses the Jordan and then goes out into the desert for forty days where he finds nothing to eat. He invites us to join him in the desert. But do we want to join Jesus in the desert? I’m not sure most of us do, most of the time. An invitation to a feast sounds like a good thing. But an invitation to a fast sounds much less appealing. So what’s going on in this story? Well, I think one key to understanding this story is to ask whether it sounds a bit familiar. Where have we seen something like this before? This is a story about crossing a body of water and then spending forty days in the wilderness, finding no food and becoming hungry, and being tempted in a variety of ways. What’s that? It seems to me the same shape as the story of the Exodus, isn’t it? In the Exodus story, you’ll remember, first the Hebrew people cross the Red Sea, escaping from Egypt; then they spend forty years in the wilderness; and in the wilderness Satan tempts them. What’s more, he tempts them in the same ways that he tempts Jesus in our story. Let’s look at the temptations in turn – and see for ourselves. In Exodus Chapter 16, if you look it up you’ll see that the Hebrew people get hungry in the desert, and they give in to the temptation to believe that God has abandoned them (that’s why they’re hungry) ‘Oh, it was better back in Egypt,’ they complain. Well, Jesus gets hungry in the desert too in our story. But Jesus doesn’t give in to the temptation to believe that God has abandoned him. Jesus continues to trust his Father’s promises to care for him. Even if he were to die of hunger, yet he will trust that God’s love will never abandon him. OK, that’s the first temptation. Here’s the second one. In Exodus Chapter 32 – why don’t you look this one up too? Moses is gone, he’s off speaking with God; and again the Hebrew people give in to the temptation to believe that God has abandoned them, so that they have no God to protect them and care for them. So they decide to turn to Apis, one of the false gods of the Egyptian people. It was absolutely better in Egypt, they decide. Even the gods were better. So too in our story, Satan tempts Jesus. ‘”Worship me,” he says to Jesus, “and I will look after you.” But Jesus does not give in to the temptation. He continues to trust that God is caring for him. Thirdly, and finally, the Hebrew people are tempted over and over again during their time in the wilderness to test God – to demand that he proves that he’s caring for them. For instance, in Exodus Chapter 17, they’re longing for a drink of water. And in their desperation, they demand that God proves that he loves them. They “quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’” So too Satan tempts Jesus with the thought that he can be sure of the Father’s love only if the Father performs a miracle to save him. But once again, Jesus does not give in to the temptation – he continues to trust in his Father’s love, and does not ask the Father to prove his love. So Satan tempts the Hebrew People in the wilderness in the Old Testament story of the Exodus. And then Satan tempts Jesus in the same ways in the New Testament story in the wilderness. That’ really interesting, isn’t it? But surely – and in many ways this is the key point – surely, we have also seen these same temptations in our own lives too. When we sense mortality enter the room, the devil whispers in our ear that death is stronger than God’s love for us. When things go wrong in our lives, the devil whispers in our ear that it would be better to give up on God and turning our attention elsewhere. When we long for something but cannot attain it, the devil whispers in our ear that if God loved us he would prove it by giving us what we want. Do you see, in the Exodus story, in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, and in our lives too – the devil has just the one song to sing. He’s a one-hit wonder. Throughout our lives, he whispers again and again the lie that God does not love us and cannot be trusted to care for us. And this is why Jesus invites us to join him in the desert. It’s not that Jesus has gone into the desert and invites us to join him there, so that we can suffer with him. No, that’s not it. Rather, what’s true is that at times we all find ourselves in the desert, and Jesus comes looking for us there. He invites us to keep company with him in the desert moments of our lives, when we are feeling unloved and tempted. When we turn to Jesus in these moments, he will speak again to us the truth which Satan wants to hide from us. Jesus will speak the truth to you – that God loves you with an everlasting love, a love stronger than your grave, a love which will never leave you, a love which will in the end answer your deepest longings. So let us take courage, with the great sixteenth century theologian, Teresa of Avila, as we listen to her words: “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.”

Session Two - Invitation to lunch in a cornfield

October 28, 2024 • Bishop Joe Kennedy • Luke 6:1–5, Deuteronomy 23:25

Hello and welcome to the second session of Bishop Joe's course 'Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus'. Press play above to watch and listen and/or you can read the script below... Hello, I am Bishop Joe, and this is the second of the six invitations to dinner with Jesus from St Luke’s Gospel which we are reading together. This one is an invitation to lunch. And it takes place in a cornfield. You can find it in Chapter 6. One Sabbath while Jesus was going through some grain fields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? How he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Well, so last time, we were invited to a fast. No food at all. Today, we’re invited to a fast-food restaurant. This is definitely ‘food on the go’. I remember as a child being a bit disturbed by this story – it can feel to us like Jesus’ disciples are stealing the food. After all, the grain was in someone else’s field, wasn’t it? So, I wondered as a child, why doesn’t Jesus tell them to leave the grain alone? But then as an adult, I discovered that the Law of Moses laid down that when you were passing through a grainfield you were free to pluck corn from the field and eat it, so long as you plucked it with your hands, and don’t get serious and take a sickle to it. You can find the law in Deuteronomy Chapter 23, verse 25, if you want to look it up for yourself. So, when Jesus’ disciples pluck the grain and eat it, that wasn’t a crime in itself. It’s the timing of the act that causes controversy. The Pharisees complain that Jesus’ disciples are helping themselves to a snack on the Sabbath. That’s the problem. Now, the Law of Moses lists all the forms of work which you must not do on the Sabbath, so that you are free to rest that day. So for instance, you mustn’t reap, thresh, or winnow grain on the Sabbath. And these are the rules that the Pharisees claim Jesus’ disciples have broken. By picking the corn, they have reaped. By rubbing it in their hands, they have threshed. By discarding the husks, they have winnowed. The Pharisees, seeing Jesus’ disciples doing these things, ask why they are doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath. In response, Jesus asks the Pharisees a question. That’s something Jesus does often: he often answers a question with another question. But before we get to that, we might have some questions of our own to ask the Pharisees. Firstly (it occurs to me) how do they know that Jesus’ disciples did this? Perhaps they just happened to be following the disciples and noticed them snacking as they walked. Or perhaps – seems more likely to me – perhaps they were spying on the disciples, looking for some way to catch them out and accuse them. Secondly, we might ask the Pharisees whether it’s really reasonable to equate what the disciples are doing– picking just a few grains of corn, rubbing them in your hands and eating them – to equate that with the hard work of harvesting, which is surely what the Law of Moses intends to forbid on the Sabbath? And the interesting thing is that later Jewish tradition didn’t think that was reasonable. The Babylonian Talmud is quite happy with the sort of small-scale harvesting on the Sabbath that Jesus’ disciples engage in in our story. So – we can’t be sure – but it's plausible that the Pharisees in our story are applying a ridiculously strict standard to judge the behaviour of Jesus’ followers. Anything to make them look bad. OK, so these are plausible things Jesus might have said to the Pharisees. He might have asked them whether spying on other people to catch them out was a good thing to be doing. Or he might have asked them about laying heavy burdens on other people’s shoulders – being pedantic. It seems to me that these are the more obvious lines of defence. But what makes this story so fascinating, is that Jesus doesn’t go for these lines of defence. Instead, Jesus chooses to tell a story found in the First Book of Samuel. Jesus reminds the Pharisees of the time when a young David is travelling with a little group of followers. He has been anointed king but is waiting for God’s People to recognise him as king. He and his followers are hungry and so they eat the showbread in the temple – bread which it was lawful for only the priests to eat. But David claims the right to suspend this law, presumably on the grounds that he is the King of Israel. So, Jesus’ argument seems to conclude, if it was okay for David to give the showbread to his hungry followers, then it’s also okay for me to allow my hungry followers to harvest on the Sabbath. Do you see how much Jesus is upping the ante here? Jesus might have simply told the Pharisees not to spy on other people, or not to make a fuss about very little. But he didn’t. Jesus accepts the accusation that his disciples have stepped outside the stipulations of the Law of Moses, and that he has allowed them to do so. But he says he is permitted to do this because he is the new David – the expected Messiah who has come to save Israel. He is Lord of the Sabbath because God has appointed him Lord and King, of Israel. We can learn from Jesus only if we give time each day to prayer and to listening to God’s Word in the Scriptures, only if we spend time with Him. And we can learn from him only if we let go of the notion that we have life figured out and allow our hearts and our minds to be taught by him. That is what it means to have Jesus as our Lord, our King.