Scripture: Isaiah 25:6-9

Text: Luke 14:1,15-24

Weekly Bible Study: Bible Study Blog

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How was Thanksgiving dinner? Was it just another holiday or was it memorable? Our Thanksgiving was good. It wasn’t the best Thanksgiving we’ve ever had. I’m sure the best was the Thanksgiving ten days after our son Andrew was born. We were very grateful to finally be parents. Our Thanksgiving certainly wasn’t the worst either. You heard about the worst a couple weeks ago. It was when we were invited to a home for Thanksgiving dinner but upon arrival discovered we were going to a restaurant.  The wait for a table was long, the food wasn’t good, the waitress was surly and it wasn’t a kid friendly restaurant. I wasn’t grateful because I longed to be somewhere else. 

 

In that sermon, I said longing is the enemy of contentment. This is the truth we discovered in the first sermon of three studying a dinner party which Jesus attends. Jesus sees the guests longing for the best seats near the host. In response, he tells them a parable about where to sit at a banquet and our need for recognition. The parable doesn’t have anything to do with manners. It’s about the kingdom of God. Jesus says to enter the kingdom for God, you can’t be longing for recognition or for that matter, longing for anything. Longing is the enemy of contentment. If you are filled with longing, you can’t be thankful for what you have. Longing is the enemy of contentment; gratitude is the antidote. I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with gratitude and that you will use gratitude daily as the antidote for this season of longing.

 

Last weekend, we studied the second story from this dinner party. It was about the guest list. Jesus looks at those who were invited and says to the host, “Your guest list stinks. There are people missing.”  Jesus isn’t being rude because he isn’t talking about manners. He is teaching us about God’s kingdom. In the kingdom, God is the host. When God is the host, the guest list is as wide as humanity.  In comparison, our guest list is too narrow. We leave too many people off our lists. I challenged you to expand your guest list at Thanksgiving and Christmas through our mission efforts. With 39% of Lawrence Township School children being food-insecure, clearly poverty and hunger are present in our community in a way that is absolutely shocking. You responded and I hope you will continue to do so. We expanded the number of families we will serve through the end of the year from 70 to 125 with the growth coming primarily among township families referred to us by the Caring Center.  Each of us needs to be involved. If you participated in the Thanksgiving food program, I’m sure your Thanksgiving was better because your guest list was wider.

 

This week, I conclude this sermon series with a sermon on regrets. When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, did you have regrets? Lots of us have regrets about how much we ate. The average Thanksgiving meal packs a whopping 3,500 calories. With leftovers and an entire weekend of consumption, the average American greets Monday with 1-3 extra pounds.[1]  Eat like this through the New Year and you’ll find yourself with 12 pounds of regrets.  Thanksgiving dinner can begin a season of diet regret.

 

I’m sure some of you had regretful moments at the Thanksgiving dinner. Holidays can bring the out the best and worst in people. It is stressful because the schedule is different, the day is loaded with competing expectations, and you spend more time with people than you normally spend. Plus we have a history which we carry around with us, family baggage that sometimes gets unpacked at Thanksgiving and sometimes, it’s not pretty. I hope that your day went smoothly but I know some of you had a few moments of regret this week.

 

I’m sure that some of you have regrets for your post Thanksgiving activity on Black Friday. You’ve already spent too much. Each year I become more convinced that the effort to get us to shop till we drop is a national crisis. It bankrupts our day of Thanksgiving, shifting us immediately from gratitude to longing. Black Friday is beginning to bleed into Thursday with some stores opening up at 9:00, others at midnight. Soon, you’ll be able to leave your feasting table and head out to shop. If you allow yourself to step back and take a look at this, you know it is regrettable.

 

The regrets we are talking about aren’t these. The regrets which are the subject of this sermon are those associated with invitations, those with RSVP.  We all know that “répondez s'il-vous-plaît” means “please reply to this invitation.”  Experts believe that the initials were first used in the early 18^th century when Louis XIV was entertaining at his palace in Versailles and some of his guests needed a reminder to respond to the invitation. Etiquette teaches that we must respond to RSVP. It’s not an option.  It is a matter of respecting the invitation.

 

Responding to an invitation didn’t get invented in the 18^th century. Its origin is as old as civilization but different cultures have different ways of responding. Knowing the social customs is important when we interpret our lesson today. It is a third parable from a Sabbath dinner where Jesus teaches about the kingdom of God. In response to his first two parables, one of the dinner guests responds: "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!"  (Luke 14:15) It is an awkward interruption, almost as if the dinner guest is declaring where he’ll be when the kingdom comes. It causes Jesus to tell his third parable of the evening. There is a lot packed into it that can easily be missed.

 

The parable begins simply. “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.  (Luke 14:16b)  In the near east of the first century, invitations weren’t sent out. They were verbal and the social custom of the day was to extend the invitation twice. There was an invitation in advance and then another invitation at the time of the banquet.[2]  This makes sense. It was an oral culture without calendars or bulletin boards or refrigerators to post the invitation. A second invitation served as the reminder. “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.” This is the first invitation. The second invitation follows in the next verse. “At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’” (Luke 14: 15)

 

Now you understand that the second is extended only to those who accepted the first invitation. They’d said they were in, that they were committed to attend. But suddenly, their commitment is gone and all they have are excuses.

 

Things come up. We know this. It is one of the things I’m always telling brides and grooms. Inevitably there is the discussion about how expensive weddings are. The average cost of a wedding is just under $30,000 with half of that spent on the reception.[3] Couples are always worried about no shows. They don’t want to pay for any more dinners than necessary. But there are always no shows. Even people who are very close to the bride and groom, who send in their RSVP card the second they receive the initiation will go missing. Almost always, there is a good reason, a good excuse. Someone falls ill or there is a death in the family or the boss requires them to work late. Regrettably, there are always some who have legitimate excuses and the result is the father of the bride picks up a few meals which no one eats.

 

This is where the parable and our reality part. The meals were eaten. The host made sure of it by inviting everyone who was passing by. It is a striking image, a funny one really. Imagine the wait staff at the Oak Hill Mansion, standing out in front on 116^th, signs in hands waving cars into the banquet. Free wedding banquet food; all invited. Piling into the Mansion are people who’ve been out shopping at the mall, someone whose been to the gym, a soccer mom with her sweaty children returning home from a game, kids joy riding around with their buddies, a homeless man and someone coming home from the hospital, all showing up to eat the plates of the guests who had an excuse. The host wants to “compel people to come in, so that the (my) house may be filled.”  (Luke 14: 23b)

 

It sounds ridiculous and of course it is. This would never happen in polite company and it wouldn’t have happened in the first century. It would be bad manners for all of the first invited guests to have regrets and unthinkable to invite just any passerby into the banquet. But parables aren’t about manners. We’ve said that for the past two weeks. Parables aren’t about etiquette; they are about the kingdom of God. Jesus is teaching his dinner guests and everyone who has studied this story what it means to participate in God’s kingdom. He’s asking the question, “Are you in or do you have an excuse?”

 

This parable is about the committed, about those who are followers of Christ, who’ve said yes to Jesus. We’ve said, “Count me in. I’ll be there.” We’ve committed our lives to Christ, but when it comes to serving him we make excuses.

 

We are an excuse laden culture. Excuses are the lies we tell ourselves and others to avoid things that we don’t want to do or don’t have the discipline to accomplish. We’ve become such an excuse driven society that there are even web sites devoted to helping you create excuses to get yourself out of a responsibility. One of the most obnoxious is myexcusedabsence.com which allows you to customize your excuses for anything from jury duty to professional obligations including falsified letters from doctors. Excuses are the way we avoid the unpleasant truths which we don’t want to address and they are as common in our spiritual lives as in our personal lives. What’s your excuse?

 

Some of you use the excuse “I don’t have time.” Your spiritual discipline lacks consistency. You don’t worship regularly. You don’t pray regularly. At best you worship once or twice a month and you offer the excuse, “I don’t have enough time.” You really convince yourself that this is a legitimate excuse but deep down inside, you know it isn’t the truth. We make time for things in life that are important. When people say, “I don’t have time to exercise or I don’t have time for a relationship or I don’t have time to go to church” they are ultimately saying, “This isn’t important to me.” You have as much time as anyone else including the people who are committed to a weekly spiritual discipline. The difference is that they make it a priority. It’s amazing that people who say they don’t have time for a regular spiritual life somehow find plenty of time for watching TV or shopping at the mall or going to the Colts game. It’s easier to blame the problem on a lack of time, but the real problem is a lack of commitment.  You said yes to Jesus’ first invitation to be a follower but when the next invitation was extended you said, “Please accept my regrets. I don’t have time.”

 

Others use the excuse “I don’t know how.” We hear this often from people who are asked to go deeper. I don’t know how to teach the children or volunteer with youth or serve on a committee. I don’t know how. When it comes to excuses that we offer, I don’t know how is one of the feeblest excuses. It is in fact, a learned excuse. When you are a baby crawling, you didn’t offer the excuse, “I don’t know how to walk.” You learned to walk.  Somewhere along the way, you learned to offer the excuse, I don’t know how. Maybe it was in elementary school when you are called on for an assignment and you got out of it by saying, “I don’t know how.” Maybe it was flawed parenting that did too much for you and didn’t allow you to learn to stand on your own. “I don’t know how” is your basic eighth grade fear when the worst thing that could happen to you was looking stupid. “I don’t know how” becomes the excuse instead of “teach me how” as an expression of commitment. When it comes to our spiritual lives, “I don’t know how” is basically saying, “I’m unwilling to learn; I’m too lazy to go deeper.” You said yes to Jesus’ first invitation to be a follower but when the next invitation was extended you said, “Please accept my regrets. I don’t know how.”

 

When it comes to serving Jesus, what’s your excuse? Please accept my regrets. I don’t have time. Please accept my regrets, I don’t know how? Please accept my regrets….I bought a piece of land, I have a new ox, I just got married. What’s your excuse? We all have excuses and when it comes to excuses, they all work. It’s why Jesus tells the parable the way he does. He knows that all excuses work and most appear to be very legitimate. But when it comes to the kingdom, what seems like a simple excuse can become painful regret. 

 

Some of you know the story of John Newton because of a movie about the 18^th century slave trade. Newton trafficked thousands of slaves from Africa to the slave blocks in England and the Caribbean, something he excused as being ordained by God. In 1754, during a storm at sea, he feared for his life. On his knees, he asked God to spare him and in exchange, he wouldn’t hide behind any excuses any longer. He kept that commitment, left the slave trade and became a preacher and a writer of hymns. In 1772 he wrote a hymn called “Faith’s Review and Expectation.” It was about how his excuses led to personal blindness and how he’d finally come to see.  “Faith’s Review and Expectation” is arguably one of the most famous hymns ever to be written. It was sung by both sides of the civil war. It was used as a requiem by Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears.  It was a hymn for the civil rights movement and was sung when Martin Luther King offered his “I Have a Dream” speech. As Nelson Mandela was released from prison, “Faith’s Review and Expectation” was sung just as it was sung when the Berlin Wall was torn down. Time and time again, over the past 235 years, when our excuses have turn to regret, “Faith’s Review and Expectation” has reminded us that our blindness can be transformed by grace and we can see. It is the power of “Amazing Grace”. What’s your excuse? See it for what it is. Step past your blindness and see.

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