The Banquet
Luke 14:16-24
16 Jesus replied: "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
17 At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.'
18 "But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.'
19 "Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.'
20 "Still another said, 'I have just got married, so I can't come.'
21 "The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
22 "'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'
23 "Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.
24 I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"
(NIV)
In 1990, an article appeared in a newspaper called the Boston Globe that recounted the story of a most unusual wedding banquet.
A Woman and her Fiancé went to the Hyatt Hotel in down town Boston to book the meal for their wedding. After they poured over the menu they decided on the best of food – silver – china and flowers It turned out they had expensive tastes: $13000! So they paid half. Then made out all the invitations. Before they were sent the groom got cold feet! The lady returned to Hyatt Hotel to cancel but she couldn't the manager said sorry, I can only give you $1300! So the Choice: Take the cash –or have the banquet anyway. What was the jilted bride going to do?
Ten years before, she lived in a homeless shelter she had herself a got job, saved money and was now doing well.. She thought, the party will go on, but not a wedding banquet a party of a different kind! A BIG blow out!!!! Who was she going to invited now ? With a wild notion she decided to treat the down and outs of Boston to a night on the town, So she sent invitations to Rescue Missions and Homeless shelters everywhere. And so in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel hosted a party the like they had never seen before!
People who were used to eating, half-nibbled Pizza scraped off of paper cartons found in the trash the morning after, where now eating Chicken Cordon blue (boneless chicken, in honour of the absent groom). Hyatt waiters in tuxedos, served hors d’oeuvres to:
Bag ladies
Vagrants
Addicts
All kinds of low-life down-and-out you could ever wish too see, exchanged a night on the streets to sip champaign, eat chocolate, wedding cake and danced the night away to big band melodies!!!
Doesn’t that touch your heart? It gets better!
The Forgiving Father.
Luke 15:11-24
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons.
12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.
14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.
15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no-one gave him anything.
17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!
18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.'
20 So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate.
24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
It was in Michigan, just above Travers city, where a young girl grows up on a cherry orchard.
Her parents are old-fashioned- Overreact to her nose ring, her music, length of skirts.
She gets grounded often and she seethes inside, “I hate you!”
One night she has an argument, has had enough and decides to act on plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times – to run away!
She had been to Detroit once before and she knew of its lurid reputation for gangs, drugs, violence. She thinks, it's the last place they will look.
She’s there 2 days and a man in the biggest car she has ever seen, gives her a lift, buys lunch, gets her a place to stay. Gives her some pills, she feels better than ever felt before. Ha! They kept me from all this fun! The good life continues, month, two months, a year. The man with the car – she calls him boss- teaches her a few things that men like. Under-aged, they pay premium rates for her. She lives in a penthouse with room service. She sometimes thinks about her old life, ha, how boring it was but one morning she gets a bit of a scare, on the milk carton is her picture – an advert – “Have you seen this child?” But she has change.
A year passes, Illness – Boss throws her out! She’s broke and turns tricks at night, but that doesn’t pay much – but it pays for her habit. She sleeps on the street, in metal grates in Dept stores. Dark circles under her eyes, it's a long way from the orchard. She no longer feel like a woman of the world, suddenly everything has changed. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold frightening city. She whimpers, pockets are empty, she’s hungry, she needs a fix. Suddenly, as she is lying in the gutter one night, she has a memory jolt! In her mind she sees a single image: a million cherry trees blossoming in Travers City in May, her golden retriever running for the tennis ball she throws for him and thinks… Why did I leave!? The pain stabs at her heart as she thinks, even my dog back home eats better than I do now. More than anything else in the world, she wants to go home.
She calls three times, straight to answer machine, hangs up first two. Third time she says, “Mom, Dad, its me, I’m wondering about maybe coming home. I am catching a bus up your way and Ill be there at Midnight tomorrow. If your not there, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus till it hits Canada”.Bus takes 7 hours accounting for all the stops that it makes. She has time to ponder her plan an realise its flaws What if they never got the message. Should she have waited another day to call them. Even if they are home, maybe they wrote her off as dead long ago.
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the story she has to prepare for her father. Things like, Dad, I’m sorry… Dad, Can you forgive me… This is tough, she hasn’t apologised to anyone in years! Finally the bus rolls into the station – the driver announces over the crackly PA 15 minutes folks that is all we have here. She checks herself in her little mirror, fixes her hair… Looks at her tobacco stained fingers and wonders if they will notice, IF they are there. She walks into the terminal doesn’t know what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes she had played in her mind could have prepared her for what she saw!
There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Travers City, Michigan, stand a group of about 40 people. Brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmother and a great grandmother to boot. They are all wearing silly party hats and blowing those buzzer things with the blow-out bit and across the entire terminal wall there is a big computer generate banner that reads “Welcome Home!”
Her dad breaks forward out of the well-wishers. She’s in tears and she try to get her rehearsed speech out. He interrupts, “hush child we have no time for that, no time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet awaits a home.
During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian Faith. They thought, Incarnation, naa others have it, Resurrection, naa others have that too. And the debate went on until a certain C.S. Lewis walked in the room and asked what was all the fuss about. They explained it to him and her responded, “Oh that’s easy, Its GRACE.”
Grace, the notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge, no string attached, that let’s face it, goes against every instinct of humanity, yet that one word, that concept is central and unique to the Christian message. And that one word sums up the outcome of both these stories. Grace.
How do we define it?
Unmerited favour?
Gods Riches At Christ’s Expense?
Maybe, but I much prefer Yancey’s definition:
“True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence of getting close to sinners and touching then with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today’s AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus’ day.”
We have an in-built resistance to grace, and Jesus was aware of it and spoke about it often. He never analysed or defined grace and in the NIV the word grace appears only four times and not one of those occasions did it come from the Christ’s lips. Rather than discuss grace as a concept, he spoke about it in action, in parables! About banquets and lost sons.
We are used to trying to find a catch, no wonder with these scams that go on, but with Jesus, his stories of extravagant grace include no catch, there is no loophole. Everyone of his stories of grace end in “too good to be true.” They are barely believable! This is not how God intended it, but since we are infiltrated with world’s fog, we struggle to grasp it. For God, grace is intrinsic to his nature, he never intended it to be so difficult to grasp or practice.
Yet, how different are God’s ideas about forgiveness, than the ones we have for him. Sure, we see a God as a God who forgives, yes but reluctantly after making the repentant human feel shame. We imagine God as a thundering figure who prefers fear and respect, to love. Yet here is Jesus telling us about a father who publicly humiliated himself as he rushed out to embrace a son who squandered half the family fortune! There is no solemn lecture, “have you learned your lesson boy?”
This is my son, he was dead and now he is alive again! Lost, but now he’s found. And this story is among other similar startling tales. A housewife who jumps up and down cause she finds a lost coin. These images are not what come to mind are they? Yet these are the outcomes that Jesus insisted upon. Each of the three stories in the discourse, the coin, the sheep and the son, all serve to make the same point. Each serves to mark a loss and the thrill of finding! And not just finding, but the scenes of jubilation that ensue.
In effect, Jesus is saying, “Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of these two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I have just found one of my most valuable possessions that I had lost.” Yancey writes:
“To God himself, it feels like the discovery of a lifetime.”
With grace, it’s personal, not just personal, but shockingly personal. God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because an end had come to all suffering and pain to humans… God rejoices because one of his children was lost, but now he’s found.
“I tell you, there is great rejoicing before the angels in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over 99 who need not repent.” Jesus Christ