Luke 14 v I5-24

Have you ever been in a situation where someone says something that sounds innocent enough, maybe even right and good – but you think “Well, that’s me put in my place!” When Jesus was out to dinner with respectable, well-to-do religious types, there was always a bit of tension in the room. This time was no exception. Jesus has already healed someone and it was the Sabbath when “work” – including healing – was forbidden. Then he’s given some free advice about not homing in on the most important seats at a banquet; then he’s talked about inviting the people who can’t invite you back instead of just your rich friends. He says “you’re blessed if you invite the poor, the maimed, the blind and the lame to dinner.”

And someone says “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” At best, is was just sentimental, religious smugness. The speaker clearly thought he would be there. “Won’t it be lovely when we – the righteous – all get to heaven!” And there may have been a sting in the tail. Jesus has said you’re blessed if you care for the poor – but the man says “Everyone who gets to heaven is blessed – so we don’t need to bother too much about the poor.” It’s a challenge.

So Jesus tells a story. That’s a good way of breaking the tension, making people think and hammering home truth. It brings something important out into the open. It’s a story about a well-to do chap who decides to throw a banquet and and when everyone he invited doesn’t turn up, he invites the poorest people.

Now when we look at the parables Jesus told, we need to remember that a parable is not an allegory (or a alligator!) In other words, we are not supposed to look for a meaning in every detail of the parable. A parable has usually one main point. The details are there for local colour: they turn what could be a drab, dull story, into an interesting, imaginative one; and they illustrate the main point. So, what is the one main point in this story? How do the details lead us to that main point?

Firstly, whenever Jesus – or the Jews of his own day – talks about a banquet – he’s talking about salvation, the Kingdom of God. Of course, the Pharisees only thought of future Kingdom, in Heaven. Jesus was thinking about the present as well as the future Kingdom: the “sweet here and now” as well as the “sweet bye and bye”. Okay, so the banquet is the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is a banquet.

Now 2000 years ago without being able to “Create an Event” on Facebook, or even get invitations printed, the normal thing to do was, well in advance, to tell people when and where the party was and that they were invited; then on the day you’d send messengers to tell them everything was ready. But in the story, those who were invited made excuses – and not very good ones: two had bought things – a field, a team of oxen – and “needed to try them out”. The third claimed he had just got married, so he couldn’t come. Maybe his new bride wouldn’t let him out of her sight! Possibly he was thinking about the old law that said a newly-wed was excused military service for a year (that was to make sure the man had an opportunity to father children before putting his life in harm’s way). There is a world of difference between an invitation to a banquet, and call-up papers. So this was another excuse. Basically the same thing applied to all three of them. They didn’t want to go, or had other things that they wanted to do. Their excuses amounted to a plain, blunt refusal to attend.

So the host sends out his servants, to bring in anyone they can find. They are to begin with the broken people inside the city, first of all. For the second time, Jesus mentions four groups of people, “The poor, maimed blind & lame”. (see v 13, 21) Still there are empty places, so the servants are sent out again to find the rough sleepers out in the field. “That my house may be full!” Never mind trying to figure out who these represent. Think rather what kind of picture is painted of the host? He’s got a big heart. He cares about the broken, the outcasts, the people everyone else looks down upon.

The one tough thing the host says is “none of those originally invited will get a taste!” It was common to send portions to people who couldn't get to a banquet – like sending pieces of wedding cake to people who couldn’t get to the reception. The master is in effect saying “I know your excuses are just excuses. If you don’t want to come, you don’t want to eat my banquet – well, nobody’s forcing you, so you don’t eat it. Simple as that.”

So the main point is – our big-hearted, generous God invites everyone to his kingdom banquet. The only way you can eat it is by accepting the invitation; the only way you can be locked out, is by rejecting the invitation.

So are some people God’s “first choice”? And other second choice? That’s not what the parable is saying. Even in Old testament times, God has had a heart for all people in the world: for all nations. Isaiah 45. 22 says “turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth!” The one main point is that God invites everyone, and we only exclude ourselves if we turn that invitation down.

That leaves us with what we do. Basically, we need to hear the heartbeat of God

Firstly, whoever you are, you are invited to the kingdom banquet. Hear the father’s heartbeat. Rich or poor, old or young, male or female, smart or not so smart, you are invited. The banquet is ready. Are you coming? You need to accept the invitation God gives you.

Secondly, if you’re already on the guest list, if you're already enjoying the banquet hear the father’s heart-beat. Can you see around the table, everyone you want to? Can you see around the table, everyone the father wants to? Sometimes we can get a bit smug, a bit lazy, a bit self centred.

Rick Richardson in his book “Evangelism outside the box” describes a childhood experience, going to the beach in a big car with two adults and six kids. Only on the way home, one of the kids noticed that Chris, aged three, wasn’t in the car. Rick says his mum spun the car around and the trip back to the beach was a white-knuckle ride to find the lost kid. An illustration of the father's heart for the lost. God wants his house full!

So does God play the “numbers game?” Right about now, the numbers game is giving the Church in Scotland a wake-up call. Attendance in Scottish Churches is half of what it was thirty years ago. Being bothered about our church’s survival, about keeping the thing going, getting people in so they can pay their tithes and go on the rotas, is not a good motive for mission. Being bothered about our reputation as a lively growing church, is not a good motive for mission. We have lots of good things in our church. We have hard working and generous people of all ages; we have a few families, a worship band, a prayer team, and a relaxed atmosphere. What about all the people we’re not reaching? We can’t be complacent. God wants his house full – so survival, or even growing – is never enough. God wants his house full. But it’s not about the church. The banquet is the kingdom, not the Church. God – quite simply – loves a party. We need to hear the father’s heartbeat. To enjoy the banquet and to take the risk of going to the last the lost and the least “That my house may be full”.

© Gilmour Lilly April 2017

Luke 11.. 1-13

The story
This weeks "food story" is not about a banquet.  It's about ordinary food: bread.  It’s a story of working class people. The house that’s described has only one room:  the opposite of the luxurious villa  where Levi lived.   Parables are often a story within a story.  When his disciples asked Jesus “Teach us how to pray”, part of his answer was this story. And it goes like this...

So a few hours after dark,somebody knocks your door. It’s your old buddy from the coast, on a journey on foot.  No mule, no chariot.  So he’s travelling at night to stay cool.  Halfway through the night, he’s tired and hungry; and courtesy demands you give him hospitality.  Water to wash his feet isn’t a problem; and there’s a skin of wine hanging up – but no bread.  So you go next door and start banging the door – until eventually a window opens, and a bleary eyed and rather angry head appears.  

“Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”   

“I want some food.  I know your missus made extra bread yesterday: can I borrow some? You see, a friend has just arrived on a journey, and I have no food in the house.”   

“You got to be joking mate.  You know what time it is?  If I start blundering about in the kitchen cupboard looking for food, I’ll end up waking the kids.”

“Yes, I know.  But look, this is so embarrassing.  He’s got another few hours walking to do so he can’t stop the night.  And I really have no food.    Can you please lend me these three flat breads: My missus will make some fresh first thing in the morning and pay you back!”  

“Come in and shut up, and I’ll get you the bread.  You really have a blooming cheek.”

The point
 We are looking for one main point.  (Remember the alligator?)    Jesus says ”You want to know how to pray?  Well, learn that God delights to hear and answer our prayers.”  Go on praying because God graciously responds to the needs of his children.  We are not talking about the old “traffic lights” illustration, you know, how we sometimes tell kids 'sometimes God says “No!”, sometimes he says “Wait”! And sometimes he says “Yes!”   “He will give you whatever you need”'.  That's not what Jesus is saying.    

The problem
Some of us have stories of answered prayer.  All of us have stories of un-answered prayer.  And we have – or we should have –  an ethical question about whether it is OK to order God around.  Whether it is OK to ask God for an easy life just because I am a Christian? Whether it is OK to become myopic in our praying for local needs when there is a world of suffering out there?  Whether it is OK to “pray in” thousands of pounds for a Church refurbishment – when there are thousands forced to make use of Foodbanks in the UK, and millions starving worldwide.  

The difference
Prayer is about relationship.  In the first parable, the first thing the guy said when he knocked his neighbour's door was “Friend.”   Their relationship was one of friendship. (That wasn't why the request was granted, but it was why the man felt at liberty to go knocking on his neighbour’s door!)  In the Lord's Prayer the first word Jesus gives us is "Father"   “Abba!”  
In Aramaic, that was the word a child would use.  Pete Greig tells the wonderful moving story of a wee boy in Palestine who fell off a swing in the park. There was a that few seconds of silence as he realised what had happened, then he started to wail “Abba!” Sometimes our prayers are like that.  “Daddy, it hurts!”  

It’s also the word of respectful familiarity a grown man would use.  So it’s the word Jesus used in the garden of Gethsemane.  

In the second parable, a son asks a Father.  Our relationship with our heavenly Father is the guarantee that he sill not play tricks on us.     Which of you fathers would give his child a scorpion?  There is trust and generosity and compassion in the parent-child relationship that won't play tricks on us. There was once a Dad who was an astute and hard-headed businessman.  One day he set his small son on the mantlepiece, and told him “jump off and I will catch you!”  the boy jumped.  The dad did nothing, and the wee boy was crying on the floor.  When he stopped crying, Dad said to him “There is a lesson for you my son. Trust nobody – not even your own Father!”  The point is that a good father doesn’t do that – no dirty tricks – not even to teach us a lesson.   Jesus use the “how much more” argument, to show that God doesn’t give us bad things when we ask for good.  In the first parable, we are asked to put ourselves in the place of the person banging the door.  In the second we are asked to take the viewpoint of the Person being asked! In all of Jesus’ teaching on prayer, it is the relationship between us and our Father that is all-important. 

Prayer is about the kingdom. Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is cut right back. No Frills. "Hallowed be your Name. Your kingdom come".  We ask the Lord to bring about a situation where people honour God’s name and character.  We ask for the blessings that come when God is acknowledged as King and allowed to rule.  Then and only then do we say “give us, forgive us, lead us”.  We pray for the generous, gracious impact of God’s name and character and rule, in our lives, in our community, and in our world.  In the parable of the friend, the man was not asking for something for himself.  He was asking for bread to give away. That's kingdom prayer. It's about mission.  What does God want to do in our world?  

Prayer is about Need.  I wonder if the story of the friend at midnight illustrates where we are at in our churches?   Someone comes to us, on a journey; tired, hungry, needing food – maybe physical food; maybe companionship, belonging, healing; certainly spiritual food – answers to serious questions; forgiveness; a direct encounter with God.   Have we anything to give them?  Or do we sometimes not even want to be hospitable to people on their journey?  Maybe even, people have got so used to our having nothing to give them, or not wanting to let them in, that they have giving up knocking our door.   We’re on our knees.  We’re crying for help. Lend me three loaves, for I have nothing to set before him!  We need to be giving people the good things of the Kingdom.   And God has the resources. Ask the Father.  And Jesus says, “how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask!”  The resource we need – so that we have food for those who come to us hungry – is the Holy Spirit. 

So God wants to give us what we ask.  We need to recover the Kingdom impact of the Church.  We need to recover the desire to reach the lost.  We need to see a recovery of spiritual hunger. We need to  have something to give people. We need the holy Spirit to come and fill us again.  That is stuff we need to pray about.  That is what “Thy Kingdom Come is all about.”  Praying for men and women to find Jesus.  Bashing God’s door with a sense of urgency.  I want to encourage all of us to get involved.  If you do internet, log in, find some resources, and use them.  And if you don’t do the internet we will provide some printed resources you can use.  If you have family members who know Jesus, pray with them. If you don’t, find someone else to pray with.  We will be having times to pray together.   

Our world needs Jesus, and we need the Holy Spirit.   Having the cheek to ask. It was “because of his shameless audacity (NIVUK)” that the man got what he asked for. I’m not like that.  I’m polite.  Last Sunday, we were walking out at Limekilns, and I really needed a pee.  As we walked past the Scout hut, out came Andrew Mitchell, who had just come back from a camp. We talked for a minute or two about his weekend and then – we walked on.  I thought it was just too cheeky to ask if I could nip in and use their facilities, so I kept it in!  Too embarrassed. And probably too proud. And I suspect that pride so often lies at the core of our inability to come to God with outrageous requests.  God wants to give us what we ask.  How desperate are you?

© Gilmour Lilly May 2017

Luke 5. 27-39 New Wine for new mission.

We begin a mini-series on the Kingdom banquet – looking at some texts involving Jesus and food, from the writing of Dr Luke.

You have to ask, at the very start, what made someone like Levi the tax collector (who gained the nickname Matthew meaning “Gift of God”) do what he did.  To walk away from a prosperous business as an independent agent collecting taxes for the Romans. 

He certainly wasn’t a loner: he had a fairly wide circle of friends who were ready – at moment's notice – to come and feast at his house.  Maybe not the type of people you would want at a the Sunday school tea-party. A bit loud, especially after they had had a few drinks; language could be a bit off.   But they are having a great time.  In fact, Levi had a pretty good life.  He was well off.  The Romans would look after him if – or when – he got any trouble from his fellow-Jews.
  
He would probably not be one naturally to agree with Jesus.  He was a hard-headed, pragmatic businessman who didn’t mind cheating people to line his own pockets .  Jesus was spiritual, an idealist, who never pulled his punches.   He believed in taking the Bible seriously.  He believed in the life everlasting.  He believed in the reality of the spiritual world: in miracles, in deliverance.  He believed in high standards.  

But Levi had probably heard what Jesus was doing.  The thing immediately before the calling of Levi (in Matthew Mark and Luke) is the healing of the man who was lowered through the roof.  Matthew  probably knew something of what had happened.  Jesus had healed the guy.  Jesus had forgiven him.  Jesus had behaved like a bit of a rebel, an outsider, risking everything.  Power to heal.  Authority to forgive. Courage to be different.  Jesus had some qualities that piqued Levi’s curiosity.  So when Jesus said “Follow me” Levi was up for it.  “I’m in.”  

And “I’m in” meant “I’m ready to change!”  The words Luke records in verse 28 are clear and explicit.  Levi left everything, stood up, and began following Jesus.  There was going to be some sort of handover of the job he had been doing.  That was taken care of immediately.  That done, he stood up, in a decisive and meaningful action.  Billy Graham’s famous catch-phrase when he made an appeal at the end of his talk, was “I want you to get right up out of your seat.”  We need that – whether it’s standing up, going to the front, getting baptised, receiving the bread and wine of communion – we need decisive moments when we articulate decisions by doing something.  Levi stood up and followed Jesus.  Followed isn’t a one-off action, as though he followed Jesus down the street.  It is an “imperfect” verb.  That is to say, it describes an incomplete action.  He stood up and began to follow Jesus.   He began, as he stood up from his desk, a journey of following Jesus, a journey of discipleship.  

The next thing he did was invite all his friends, colleagues, acquaintances, to a banquet, a huge feast, so they could get to know Jesus too.  He was a fairly well-off sort of guy.  That was about to change.  But at this moment in time, Levi had the resources to throw a party with Jesus as guest of honour.  He was new to following Jesus; he was utterly unjesus

prepared.  But he had an instinct for the ways of the Kingdom that set the scene for much of Jesus’ ministry.   He saw the connexion between the Kingdom and a banquet.  In the NT, especially in Luke, the banquet is the Kingdom and the Kingdom is a banquet. Often it’s a Chinese banquet – because it included sweet and sour.  For broken people, the Kingdom offers healing, hope, new wine and new clothes.  It is genuinely a gift, an enrichment and a blessing.  But it is also a challenge and carries a cost.  Levi left everything as he began to follow Jesus.    To put it in a more nuanced way, he saw the connexion between the Kingdom, discipleship, mission and hospitality.   

Now word gets around.  The Pharisees heard that Jesus had gone to eat with this crowd of tax  collectors and others – the implication being "other low-lifers, other undesirable types”.  Two questions emerged from what people observed, and they’re sharp, searching and aggressive questions, fired at the disciples but answered by Jesus.  What is thrown at Jesus is thrown at his People, and vice versa.  “A servant is not greater than his master” (Jesus said Matthew 10. 24).  

1. “Why do you guys hang around with tax collectors and sinners?”  Luke may be delicate and sensitive about how he describes Levi's friends.  But he doesn’t mind letting us know that the Pharisees weren’t so delicate.  
2. “Why do you guys not fast like John the Baptist’s followers do, but eat and drink?” Jesus knew he couldn’t win with these people.  See Luke 7. 33f For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, “He has a demon.”  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”   

Jesus was no more able to avoid contact with broken people than a doctor is able to avoid contact with sick people.  And he was no more able to suppress celebration, than a bridegroom is able to prevent a wedding feast.   Jesus’ presence with the broken was a healing presence.  And his presence with them was the centre and the cause for celebration.  Jesus is here.  He is present….  Isn’t he?   So the life of the Church, as it experiences the Kingdom of God and the presence of Jesus, is a life of celebration.  We are together, guests at the same sort of outrageous banquet, as the one Jesus went to at Levi's house.

To answer the question about fasting versus feasting, Jesus finished off with two short parables, almost word-pictures, that say the same sort of thing…
1. ‘No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.” (v.  36)
2. “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.  No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”  (v. 37ff)

There’s a golden rule for interpreting the parables.  They are not allegories.  We are not meant to find meaning in every detail.  They have one main point.  And in this case, both parables have the same main point.  The new clothes of the Kingdom and the fresh young wine of the Kingdom don’t match the old clothes and old wineskins of traditional Judaism. 

Levi’s banquet was a celebration of the new thing – the new Kingdom – that had come with Jesus.  A celebration of the healing, the joy, the forgiveness.  A celebration of clothing for people’s nakedness and wine for their thirst.   But sometimes, in that banquet, there is a sense of the sweet and sour:  things we don’t want to accept.  There’s a cost. New means change, and change can hurt. For the Pharisees, “the old was better”.  They preferred to old, the familiar, the comfortable, the controllable and predictable, to the new, unfamiliar, slightly gritty and edgy and surprising.   Their mindset, their assumptions, their rules and structures – keeping themselves separate from dodgy people, washing before they ate, fasting regularly, keeping the Sabbath, and so on – that was better.   And sometimes we do as well!   

The Kingdom, the banquet, the new cloth, the new wine, the healing and forgiveness that Jesus. brings, are not there to patch up the old structures of religion.  For religious people, that’s the “sour” bit.   The  DNA of the Kingdom is reaching out to the lost. It doesn't think we are better than they are.  The Kingdom won’t be boxed in by our Baptist – or any other – structures.     And the Kingdom, the banquet, the new cloth, the new wine, the healing and forgiveness that Jesus brings, are not there to patch up our old lives.  Sure, it makes life better.  But we don’t just buy it to  make life better – like hair colour or Thomson holidays or whatever.  The Kingdom challenges us to full commitment.  To a process of inner transformation.  Living for self, to living for others. Grasping to giving.  Isolated to connected.  Individualism to community. Critical to encouraging.  Hatred to love.  Prejudice to open-ness.

The Kingdom banquet, the new wine needs new wineskins.  New ways of thinking.  New ways of living.  Religious or not, the message of the Kingdom invites us to a life of celebration – of transformation – and of mission.  We hear Jesus' invitation to feast with him, to know the joy, to celebrate the grace, to undergo the transformation that the Kingdom brings.

© Gilmour Lilly 7 May 2017