THE WEDDING FEAST OF THE LAMB, Luke 14:7-14 Jesus uses the illustration of a wedding feast often in his teaching. The hope of the Christian is that one-day we will all be in attendance of the wedding feast of the Lamb. Heaven is often envisioned as a great banquet. In today’s text Jesus uses the wedding feast to remind us not to think more highly of ourselves then we should. Status is important to us in our culture. Positioning is everything. If you have every been part of planning a wedding or a large banquet you know that much time is spent figuring out the seating arrangement. The honored guests get to sit the closest to the dais. At a wedding the family gets the best seats starting with the immediate family and working out to the cousins and more distant relatives. Then comes the close friends and finally off in the back are seated the coworkers and the acquaintances. The closer you are to the dais the more status you have. The same goes for a fundraiser dinner. The big donors sit up front and the smaller donors get the seats in the back. Everyone attending such an event knows who the important people are based on how they are seated. Status matters. When there are no assigned seats and people are allowed to seat wherever they want the same principle drives peoples choices. Everyone tries to get to the banquet early so that they can claim the choicest seats. Everyone want to be seen as important. There is a reason for this. We are all trying to position ourselves for advancement. Everyone on understands that whom you know is as important if not more important than what you know. You can’t control every aspect of every situation but you do have some control over how people perceive you. Status matters. One of the foundational beliefs in today’s culture is that idea that the individual is more important than the group. People are more concerned with putting themselves forward than they are working for the good of the whole. What matters is how I am viewed but those who can benefit me rather than what is good for the most people. The thinking is when I attend an event, who can I rub shoulders with, who might open doors for me in the future. How can I work the room for my own advantage? Our culture puts the individual at the center of everything. Pride drives our decisions. Everything centers a round what is good for the individual. Our whole lives we are taught to consider what is good for the individual. We are always positioning ourselves for advancement. This view of the world stands in conflict with the biblical worldview. In the Bible the individual exists for the good of the collective. We are all members of the body of Christ. We are all given spiritual gifts to benefit the body. We all contribute or time, money and resources so that the work of the kingdom will go forward. Paul uses the illustration of the body to drive this point home. One is the arm, one is the leg, another the eye, etc. His point is we all have a role to play and none of us can exist alone. We are saved into the body of Christ. We will all be part of the great throng gathered around the throne praising God for all eternity. Christianity is a group experience. Our culture tells us it is all about us. Jesus tells a parable, a story about a wedding feast. He tells us to act exactly opposite to how our culture would have us to act. As people are entering the banquet hall and jockeying for seats all look for the place of honor Jesus tells us to stop. If fact he tells us not to push ourselves forward but rather to take a seat in the back. If you sit in the front and someone more important than you comes the host will tap you on the shoulder and move you to a seat in the back and everyone present will see that you are not as important as you think you are. Rather Jesus says take a seat in the back. It might be that when the host sees you he will ask you to move forward to a more honored place at the feast. Because Jesus tells us that in the kingdom the first are often last and the last first. The proud will be brought down and the humble lifted up. The problem with our cultural worldview is that it is centered not in God but in the individual. The I is the most important thing. The world revolves around the individual. Our self worth is found in the praise of others. We are constantly thinking about our image. People spend hours on facebook monitoring their online image. How am I perceived in cyberspace? When people think of me what image comes to mind? How important do they think that I am? If people don’t have the right impression of me then my life is a failure and I have no value. But not so in the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God my value and self-worth come from the fact that I am created in the image of God. That alone should be enough but Jesus, when I sinned went to the cross and died to pay for my sins. I am worthy because God thinks I am worth sending his Son to die for. So I God is pleased to call me his child does it really matter what the people of this world think of me? When I am invited to a party I can sit anywhere just thankful to be invited in the first place. There is no need to push myself forward because God is the one who opens doors for me. The gifts he has given to me will make room for me. When I look over life the question I should be asking is not how do I get ahead but rather what can I do to improve the lives of the people around me. What job can I do that will have the greatest good for the most people? How can I be a servant to my community? The world and the church are walking on two different roads. Jesus than takes this idea a step further and addresses the host of the banquet. He in lies another challenge for us as Christians in this world. When we throw parties we the idea of honor and pride is also present. Not only are guests seeking to be noticed but so is the host. When we throw parties we tend to invite people of honor. We invite people who we can benefit from; people who will invite us to their parties and the vicious cycle begins. The idea is to always and continuously surround yourself with important people who can help you out. You not only work the parties you attend but you work the parties you create. The danger in our society is that class matters. Who you know means everything. You gather around you people who can help you. Positioning is everything. People tend to move in tight closed circles. The problem for the church is that we have been called to reach the world around us for Christ. I have been in enough churches and spoken with enough Christians to know that most of our people only know our people. Church becomes the center of their lives and the only people they know are church people. When I do Mission U workshops the people attending want to reach their neighbors for Jesus. The problem is they don’t know their neighbors because the only people they associate with are other Christians. This is easy and rewarding, but not biblical. Jesus tells you that when you throw a party; invite the crippled, the lame, the blind, in other words the outcasts. They will not be able to return the favor. They will not aid in your advancement. The only good that will come of it is that you will serve those in need. If you are important because you are created in the image of God and are the recipient of God’s grace than you need to live our that reality in your life here and now. The outcasts of society are all created in the image of God and recipients of the grace of God therefore they are worthy of respect. It has nothing to do with how they carry their lives. They are worthy of respect because of the God who made them. The world does not value them because the world does not value God. We are different and are called to a different way of life. We value God and therefore value those created in his image. If we claim to follow Jesus we must walk after him. Therefore we must seek out those whom Jesus sought and serve them to his glory. In so doing we will be living our faith out loud.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:11:35 +0000
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