Scripture Daily

Context No. 2547 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 14:19-24: in context

19“Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go try them out. Please have me excused.’ 20“Another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I can’t come.’ 21“That servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.’ 22“The servant said, ‘Lord, it is done as you commanded, and there is still room.’ 23“The lord said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 24For I tell you that none of those men who were invited will taste of my supper. For many are called, but few are chosen.’”

In Jesus's parable of the great banquet, the invited guests all beg off with excuses. One has bought a field and must go see it; one has bought five yoke of oxen and must try them out; one has just married and cannot come. None of the excuses is scandalous; they are ordinary business and family matters. The master, angered, sends his servant to bring in the poor, the lame, and the blind from the streets, and to compel people from the highways, so that his house will be full.

What keeps the invited from the feast is not villainy but respectable busyness. Property, work, family, all good things in themselves, become the reasons to decline the invitation to the feast. That is the quiet danger the parable exposes. It is rarely gross sin that keeps people from God's table; it is a hundred legitimate-sounding priorities, each reasonable on its own, that add up to a permanent I can't come. Meanwhile the feast fills with those who had no such excuses to offer, the poor who simply came. The seats do get filled, but not necessarily by those first invited.

What reasonable-sounding priorities, work, purchases, even good relationships, am I letting become my excuse to decline God's invitation?

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