Week 48 —Guess who’s coming to dinner 
Matthew 20:1-16 

After Hanukkah, Jesus left Jerusalem and traveled east of the Jordan, spending the winter in the region of Perea.

It seems every few months, we hear of a political leader or religious leader of some denomination who is caught in some moral failure.  They may have had illicit sexual relations or have embezzled funds or whatever.  That doesn’t mean all politicians or all preachers are wicked.  You don’t judge all the pastors in churches of America by the failures of a few.

But wait a minute, isn’t that exactly how we tend to judge the Pharisees in the New Testament?  

If I say Pharisees, the first word that comes to many people’s minds is “hypocrite.”  We are often quick to over-generalize and lump them all together, but not all Pharisees were the same.  Some leaders of the Pharisees had worked their way into high positions, some even on the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court.  These mostly stayed in Jerusalem, lived in the finest homes, and became wealthy.  These are the ones who most often find themselves in conflict with Jesus.  Understand that not all Pharisees were trying to kill Jesus, but mostly just the powerful ones in Jerusalem.¹  And Jesus spent 90% of his ministry away from Jerusalem in the countryside.  Many Pharisees lived in small villages, and while they were financially stable, they were certainly not rich.  They were highly respected in their communities.   And they weren’t trying to kill Jesus; they were confused by him, and they were just trying to understand him and figure out who he was.

In Israel, in Jesus’ day, every child wanted to grow up and become a Pharisee. It was the most highly respected vocation. It was like kids in our day who aspired to grow up and be president (but kids don’t say that anymore.)  Children today want to grow up and be professional athletes or entertainers.   But if you were a child living in Israel in the first century, you wanted to become a Rabbi.  So, you would study hard in school and memorize much scripture.  You would try hard in every aspect of your life to follow every commandment.  From childhood, you would be indoctrinated in the theology of ritual cleanliness and proper sacrifices.  Hundreds of years of tradition were passed down to you on how to live as God wanted you to live. 

But only a few were chosen.  Only the brightest children would continue school past 13 years of age.  The rest would learn a trade.   If you made the cut and did well in school, perhaps you would find a rabbi who would allow you to be his disciple.  Your family would be so proud.  You would then study even harder and carefully follow all of the laws and ways of the Pharisees.  Then, one day, you would become a rabbi and gather your own disciples.   You would be in charge of the spiritual development of not only these young men but also your community.  You would take this responsibility seriously.  You would continue constantly studying and discussing the scriptures with your fellow rabbis and disciples.  You would keep ritually pure at all times.  You could quote all the written law, the oral law, and the sayings of the ancestors.  By this point, you felt that you knew all you needed to know about being a true child of God.  You had arrived.

And then this Jesus shows up.  He seems to be a prophet, but he doesn’t fit the mold you were taught.  He seems to ignore some aspects of ritual purity that you were taught were so important.  Oh, he keeps the ones written in the scripture, but he seems to ignore the ones passed down as oral law from your father and grandfathers.  He says things that challenge your teachings.  You would think he would have studied under a prominent rabbi, but he didn’t study under anyone; he just set out to gather disciples on his own.  And he is not too picky about who he chooses.   He has poor fishermen, a zealot, and even a tax collector among his disciples.  None of them had proper schooling.  He even has women following him.  Can you imagine that?  It is almost like he is making a mockery of your profession.

And yet….he heals people.  People no one else can heal.  You have never healed anyone.   He casts out demons.  You have never done that.  It is said he walked on water.  Where does that power come from if not from God?  Some of the leaders in Jerusalem say his power comes from the Satan, but that is hard for you to accept because he helps so many people and does so much good, and the adversary does not do those things.  And though he has no official rabbinic authority, he speaks with great authority.   He knows the scriptures and quotes references from scripture that back up everything he says.  But he interprets scripture in ways different from what you’ve been taught, and what he says seems to make so much sense to you.  You are simultaneously curious to know more about him but also scared of what he may do.  Some say he has claimed to be the Messiah.  Your leaders in Jerusalem have decided that he is a blasphemer, a false Messiah.  And you know that every time we have someone rise up and claim to be the Messiah and gather a large following like this, it brings enormous trouble from Rome.  Whole towns have been burned to the ground because of a rebellion started by such a person.²  That scares you most of all.

So don’t assume all Pharisees are alike. Many live outside Jerusalem in Galilee and Perea and are not angry at Jesus. They don’t want to kill him, but they are very confused by him.  

The Gospel of Luke records three instances of Jesus being invited to dinner with Pharisees.   In Roman times, people were very strategic with their dinner invitations.  Hosting dinner in Roman times was a social investment. It was a chance to increase your social standing by having important people dining in your home.   By having them as your guests, they would be expected to reciprocate and invite you for dinner in return.  You don’t invite enemies to eat with you.  You don’t invite people you don’t like.  You don’t invite people who can not return the favor or raise your social standing.  So, Jesus would never be invited to dinner with the Pharisees in Jerusalem.  They have already decided he must go.

But these Pharisees in small towns in Galilee in Luke 7 and Perea in Luke 11 and Luke 14 did invite Jesus over.   Jesus obviously can’t return the invitation.  He has no home.  So why did they invite him over?    If you assume all of the Pharisees are out to get Jesus, then you would guess that they were trying to trap him.  The Bible is clear that some did try to trap him, but this was always done in public because the point would be to make him look bad in front of a crowd.  A private dinner would not be a good place for this.  Pharisees gathered together frequently to discuss scripture and how to interpret it.  How can they best live out God’s law in their time under Roman oppression?   They wanted to see exactly who Jesus was away from the crowds.  They wanted time to ask him questions.   So, let’s look at one of those dinners with the Pharisees in Luke 14.

Luke 14:1-6   One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.  And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy.   And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”   But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away.   And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”   And they could not reply to these things.

Besides Jesus, these Pharisees also invited a man with a chronic disease.³  It was the Sabbath.  This was a set-up.  They wanted to see if Jesus would heal him.  Again, the Bible doesn’t say they were trying to “trap him” as it does three times in Matthew 22.  They were “watching him carefully.”  

Healing on the Sabbath was not against the Sabbath rules in the Scripture.  The Old Testament rules of what is allowed and not allowed on the Sabbath are not very specific.  Here is what is specifically regarded as work:

Plowing, reaping, binding, threshing, winnowing, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, gathering wood, kindling fire, sewing, tearing, and carrying burdens (essentially any activity related to harvesting or construction of the tabernacle or preparing food, as well as tasks requiring physical labor or creating a fire)

So, in defining what is work and what is not, there were many grey areas, and the scribes and Pharisees often discussed whether something was work or not.  Together, they looked at the scripture and came to a conclusion so they could provide guidelines for their community.   For example, is walking work?  Walking 20 miles (a day’s journey) would certainly seem to qualify as work, but what about walking next door or in your home?  They had to draw the line somewhere.  So this was debated, and a strict distance was determined.   You can walk 2000 cubits, a little over half a mile.  Walking further than this was considered work and breaking the Sabbath.

The Scriptures listed carrying burdens as a violation.  But could you carry food to the table for dinner on the Sabbath?  This was debated (and you can read some of these debates recorded in the Mishna), and it was determined that you could carry things inside your house, but you could not carry things outside of your house.  So today, an orthodox Jew can not carry a handkerchief in his pocket while walking to the synagogue on Shabbat, but when he arrives home, he can carry furniture up and down the stairs without breaking the law.

This seems odd to us, but someone had to help define work so the people would not accidentally break the Sabbath laws but could still function.  It was an important job for the experts in the law.

During the Maccabean War, around 160 years before Jesus (the victory that we celebrate at Hanukkah), the Macedonians attacked a strictly observant Jewish village on the Sabbath.  The people of this village viewed warfare as work and refused to defend themselves.  Not surprisingly, all of them were killed.  The next day, the priest determined that self-defense was allowable on the Sabbath.⁴

Healing was also debated. There is a principle called “Pikuach Nefesh,” which means “preservation of life” and takes precedence over all other commandments, including those of the Sabbath.  You were allowed to break almost any other law if it was required to save a life. Saving a life imminently in danger was not only allowed but was required.  The Mishna says, “If any person saves a single life, Judaism considers that he has saved the whole world” (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4.5). 

But healing outside of immediate life-saving measures was not so clear. In Jesus’ day, the question of healing was highly debated. Some sages said it was allowed on the Sabbath, and others said it was only allowed if it was immediately life-saving. We have records of this debate hundreds of years before and hundreds of years after Jesus.  

Jesus likely performed most of his healings on days other than the Sabbath. Mark 1:32 shows evidence of this: The people waited until sunset (when the Sabbath was over) to come to Jesus for healing.

Mark 1:32   That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.

In Luke 13, Jesus heals a woman who had a disfiguring back problem on the Sabbath and says:

Luke 13:15-16   Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?

Here, he is using the Jewish principle of “tzar baalei hayim,”  or the prevention of suffering to living things. 

Jesus is in line with the school of Rabbis who accept healing on the Sabbath. Scripture records instances when Pharisees opposed him for this view. However, the debate among the Rabbis raged on for hundreds of years and was not settled until around 200 AD.⁵

Luke 14:1-6   One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.  And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy.   And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”   But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 

Jesus tries to engage them in the question of healing on the Sabbath.  They don’t want to commit to the discussion and remain silent.   They set this up to see what he would do.   Jesus states his opinion by healing the man.  He then gives them an argument they can’t refute.

And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”   And they could not reply to these things.

Of course, they would all immediately retrieve their son or animal from a well. But that would be work. Jesus asked hard questions. Again, they have debated whether healing is okay on the Sabbath for hundreds of years.   And Jesus seems so sure of himself.  He speaks as though he has immediate access to the wisdom and heart of God.   They really don’t know how to respond to that.  They are silent.  So Jesus moves on.

Luke 14:7   Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them….

Luke then provides us with some irony. Remember that the passage began with, “They were watching him carefully,” and now Jesus is speaking after he notices their behavior. The tables have turned. Who is watching who?

Luke 14:8-11   “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.  But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.   For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

What is Jesus communicating to these Pharisees and experts of the law?   He has observed their self-seeking behavior and starts with some social advice on how to avoid embarrassment.  Honor must be given, not assumed, pursued, or taken.  But then, his last sentence hints at a worldview where honor is based on a completely different measure.  In Jesus’ view, it is humility that is highly valued.

This flies in the face of the standard of dinner invitations of the day.  Again, Jesus has an entirely different worldview.   The greatest deed is doing good to someone who can not possibly repay you.   Note that there will be repayment, but it will not come now.  You will be blessed.  There is our Beatitude word, ‘Makarios’  — as in Blessed are the pure in heart….  It doesn’t mean you will receive a blessing, but it means you will be happy, fulfilled, and in a state of bliss.  You forfeit the possibility of the reward of a return dinner invitation, but you gain happiness and fulfillment from living as God would have you live.  And note there will be a reward. Not in this world but in the next.  “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”  Jesus says there is a reward for doing good to those you cannot repay: ‘in as much as you have done it unto them, you have done it unto me.’  Do you want to have Jesus over for dinner?  Invite the poor, the invalid, the forgotten to your home to eat.  Jesus will one day thank you for having him over for dinner.

Then, one of the Pharisees present hears Jesus give a blessing that speaks of the resurrection and the world to come. He riffs on that and offers a blessing of his own. Or maybe, sensing the tension in the room, he is trying to change the subject quickly.

Luke 14:15   When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

Who could disagree with that?  It is a true statement.  Those who join God in the kingdom and dine in the great messianic banquet will be most blessed.  Jesus could just say, “Amen,” and let it go.  But they are at a dinner, and Jesus is just talking about who gets invited to banquets.  Jesus knows these religious experts are making a dangerous assumption about the banquet God throws in the last days.  They are assuming they know who will be invited to God’s banquet.  Why, of course, they will be there; they are the children of Abraham.

Jesus is in the same area that John the Baptist preached and baptized.   Remember what John said when the religious elite came out to see him there:

Matthew 3:7-9     But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

John told them they needed to repent and be baptized.  It wasn’t enough that they were Jewish.  

Sometimes, we just assume people around us have a good relationship with God.  After all, they go to church, say the right things, own a Bible, and come from a good Christian family.  However, these people John called out were the religious leaders of the day, the most observant people in the country.  John said don’t presume.    Do you know where your friends and family members stand?  We don’t talk enough with each other about things that matter.

Well, Jesus is not going to let this opportunity pass.  The conversation at this dinner has been about who gets invited to dinner, and then someone brings up the dinner of the last day.  So Jesus gives a parable about who will be invited and who will attend that great banquet at the end of days. 

But we need a little context.  The Old Testament is full of references to the Messianic Banquet.   Here is one from Isaiah:

Isaiah 25:6-9   On this mountain, Yehovah of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.   And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.  He will swallow up death forever, and Yehovah Elohim will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for Yehovah has spoken.  It will be said on that day,   “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.  This is Yehovah; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

A feast of rich food.  For those in Isaiah’s day, well-aged wine and bone marrow were on the menu of kings.  I have never had either one, but the chefs on the Food Network love that bone marrow.  The point is that when God throws a feast, it is the best of the best.  (I am sure there will be prime rib and Diet Coke just for my wife.)

And as the people swallow the food, God will swallow up the veil over all the nations – the veil of death.  They dine and rejoice in their salvation.  God has spoken, and God is victorious over death and reproach. This is the banquet the man at the Pharisee’s dinner referred to.  But Jesus needs to say a little about who will be there.

Luke 14:15-24   But Jesus said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.  And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’   But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’   And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’   And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

  So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’   And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’   And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.   For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

A man gives a banquet, much like the banquet they are currently at.  He invited all the right people, and they agreed to come.  This initial RSVP was essential in those days.  Your choice of meat for the meal would depend on the number of guests coming.  You wouldn’t slaughter a cow for four people.  Whatever is prepared has to be eaten that day.  There is no refrigerator for leftovers.   But when the preparations for the meal are complete, the servant is sent out with the announcement to come now, for the banquet is ready.  

But in Jesus’ story, it says, “they all began to make excuses.”  All of them.  Jesus gives three examples.  They are flimsy and clearly fabricated excuses.   ‘I have bought a field and must go out and see it.’  This is not believable.  No one bought a field they had not inspected.  This would be like a guest calling you at the last minute before dinner and saying they could not come because they had just bought a house they had not seen yet.  The second man bought five yoke of oxen and needed to check them out.  When a team of oxen was sold, there would be a field to test them to ensure they were healthy and could pull evenly together.  That would be like your dinner guest calling to say, “I just bought five cars, and I need to see what color they are and if they can start.”  The third excuse is equally weak.  ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I can’t come.’  But they didn’t just get married.  You would have never scheduled a banquet at the same time as a wedding celebration in your town.  And you aren’t asking him to leave the country or go to war; he would be absent for only a few hours.  Jesus has them give excuses that are not reasonable.  They are just not interested in the host or his banquet.  Their land, oxen, and other people are more important than keeping their commitment to the host. 

So the food is already cooked, and his expected guests are more preoccupied with their possessions and family relations.  What does the host do?  He sends his servant out into the “streets and lanes” to the poor area of town.  Still not filling the banquet hall, he sends his servant out of town to the Gentiles to invite them to the banquet.   The host has broken all ties with the social system of status and reciprocity.  He has followed Jesus’ advice in verses 12-14.  No one is too unclean to attend this banquet.   

It is not evident when you read the parable in English, but the last line is different and key to understanding Jesus. The host in Jesus’ parable has been speaking to a single person, his servant, but in the last line, the ‘you’ is plural. That changes how you read it. I think when Jesus speaks, he tells the parable, looks up, and delivers the last line to everyone in the room.

Luke 14:24   For I tell all of you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. 

Jesus is telling them that the Messianic banquet is his banquet.

God is preparing a banquet for the end of time.  It will be a feast, a festival of celebration of salvation.  This is the great Messianic Banquet, and God has sent his suffering servant out to issue invitations to the banquet.  Many who were invited first refused to come, so Jesus extended the invitation to the unexpected – to us.  God wants his house to be full.   He is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance.  But Jesus tells us repeatedly that those you expect to see are not there.  Those who are very sure they will attend will not be allowed in.  

The story of the Pharisee’s dinner ends right there.  We aren’t told how this group of Pharisees reacted to Jesus’ parable.  And I think Luke did that on purpose.  What is most important to know is not how they reacted but how do you react.   The day of that banquet approaches.  Everyone is invited, but not all will choose to attend.  I hope to see you there.

1. I found 27 instances in scripture when people desired to kill Jesus.  All but two of these happened in Jerusalem.  The exceptions are after the healing of the man with the withered hand (Matthew 12:14, Mark 3.6, Luke 6:11) and after his message in the synagogue in Nazareth  (Luke 4:28).  
2. The capital of the region of Galilee, Sepphoris, was destroyed and its 30,000 residents either crucified or sold into slavery in 4 BC, about the time of Jesus’ birth.  This was Rome’s reaction to an uprising by Judas the son of Ezekias.  Sepphoris was only 3.7 miles northwest of Nazareth and it is likely that Jesus and his father and brothers worked in Herod’s rebuilding of the city that continued throughout Jesus’ time here.
3. “Dropsy” was the symptom of generalized swelling or edema that we now know is most commonly due to congestive heart failure or chronic kidney disease.
4. See 2 Maccabees  2:31ff.
5. It was Samuel of Nehardea who finally gave the final opinion on healing on the Sabbath with an interpretation of Leviticus 18:5 “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man does, he shall live in them.”  Simon “revealed” the hidden meaning that the Jewish people can only observe the Torah if they stay alive.  So, acts of healing should not be restricted on the Sabbath so that the people will be well enough to keep the Torah law.  (from The Jewish Chronicle, February 19, 2015.)