Sermon - Trinity II 2021 - Luke 14:15-24

Parable of the Great Banquet, the Brunswick Monogrammist, 1525

Wedding receptions are pretty big deals these days. A great deal of work goes into planning these receptions, which means you want to know who is all going to show up. Invitations get sent out months in advance in order to determine how many tables, chairs, and plates to prepare. The hosts do not want to run out of food or space for all the guests, because that would leave the guests disappointed and the hosts embarrassed. 

For this reason, party crashers can be somewhat frustrating. People show up who you weren’t planning on, and they eat food and take space meant for someone else, and then you risk running out. In Jesus’ parable today, the issue is the opposite of party crashers, it’s people not showing up.

“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.” Instead of not having enough for everyone, no one showed up to enjoy the banquet! This isn’t just embarrassing, it’s depressing. Imagine spending months and thousands of dollars preparing for a wedding reception, and then no one comes. 

A string quartet and stunning dancefloor, yet no one to dance. Roasters filled with food and sheets of cake sitting there uneaten. The bride and groom arrive with an elaborate entrance, to the sound not of cheering, but of crickets. The thought of the hosts alone at their reception is enough to break your heart.

But Jesus’ parable isn’t just about earthly parties, wasted food, and temporary disappointment. Jesus’ parable is about God’s great eternal banquet feast, which He is preparing now and has been for thousands of years. Jesus isn’t just teaching us to go to parties when we’re invited, but He’s teaching us about God’s great banquet feast, He’s warning us against making excuses not to attend His feast, and He assures us that His great banquet will be well attended even if we refuse the invitation.

Throughout the scriptures, both old and new testaments, God’s kingdom is described as a great feast. The promised land for the Israelites was a land flowing with milk and honey. The psalmist says that He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies, and my cup overflows. Wisdom has slaughtered her beasts, mixed her wine, and set the table. The prophet declares that the Lord will prepare a banquet, a feast of finely aged wine and choice meat. Jesus performs His first miracle at a wedding providing wine. Jesus compares heaven to a feast on more than one occasion. Jesus regularly joins people in their meals. Before Jesus was crucified, He instituted the Lord’s Supper, and after He was resurrected He ate with people many times. The revelation given to St. John reveals heaven as a great wedding feast.

Even today, now in the new testament church, what do we do? For 2,000 years the church has gathered together weekly and on other feast days, in order to feast, to receive the Lord’s Supper. The church gathers together eating not just bread and wine, but the Father serves us as food His beloved Son, Christ, who says “I am the bread of life.” Each week you come here because God has invited you to the great supper, and you feast upon God Himself! 

Jesus fills and nourishes you here! Jesus fills us with His righteousness, His grace, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life. We need strength for each and every day, and so Jesus nourishes our bodies with His own. We grow lonely and discouraged, so Jesus joins Himself to us that we cannot be alone, and then He surrounds us with others at this banquet. We sin much and daily, and so God declares us forgiven; guilt taken away! Our lives are so fleeting in this world, and so Jesus feeds us the medicine of immortality that we may have life everlasting.

Jesus does all of these powerful things here in this feast we receive in this sanctuary, and He does all that and more at the final and perfect feast which awaits us still in paradise. This is a feast more marvelous than anything any of us have ever experienced anywhere else; we don’t want to miss it! It’s disturbing then that it’s so tempting to excuse ourselves from this feast.

God prepares this great feast, invites us, everything is ready, and then we begin to make excuses. “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it… I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them…I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” We may not always make those exact excuses today (though, we often do), but we do certainly make the same type of excuses.

It’s not that it’s wrong to buy and sell land and goods and get married, it’s not that it’s wrong to enjoy things in this world. It’s godly to work, spend time with the family, and to take leisure on occasion. In fact, God calls us to labor in our vocations and be with our families. But the fact that so many are devoted so diligently to these matters, that they forget God as a result, is worthy of reproof. 

To spend all of our time and energy in those things that earn us money, entertain us, and make us happy, while neglecting God’s feast, is precisely what Jesus is warning us against. Effectively, when we do that, we’re telling God that we would rather stay here on earth and get whatever we can out of it, than Go and be with Him in heaven eternally. There really is no worse sin than rejecting God’s feast, because the feast is Jesus and heaven. If you reject the feast, you reject God. “For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”

But God will not be mocked. Even when all reject the feast, He will fill His house, the banquet will be full, heaven will be full. Even if He must raise up people from the stones to fill His house, it will be full. “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.”

Many of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, rejected Jesus and refused the invitation to God’s feast. So God raised up a people from among the Gentiles to go to His feast. We here today, and our ancestors, were among those Gentiles God invited to the feast. We that are here today at the feast, are the poor, crippled, blind, and lame. We’re not the elites in our world today, and yet God chose us to be His people and has welcomed us into His feast.

Like the Master’s slave, we shouldn’t shy away from inviting anyone and everyone to our Master’s feast. Afterall, who are we? We’re just a bunch of poor, criplied, blind, and lame people; we’re not better than anyone else. Anyone and everyone we meet, regardless of their scars and how rough they may be, all are invited. This isn’t our feast, it’s Gods, and all are invited (even if they’ve left us before or we don’t like them). 

If God’s house still isn’t filled up, if all of the invitations still don’t encourage people to come, God will compel people to come to His feast by force. By means of adversity, sorrow, sickness, pestilence, famine, war, and other evils God will compel people to come to His feast. If we think this world is too attractive and that we’d rather stay here than attend God’s banquet, then God will expose this world as ugly and frightening so that we might run into His arms and join in the great banquet.

God is indeed quite serious about His great banquet. This feast is what this entire world and all of history has been directed towards! The invitation has been sent, the feast is now ready, the announcement has been heard. “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

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On this Second Sunday of Trinity, Martin Luther wrote the great hymn O Lord, Look Down from Heaven, Behold. You may listen to it here: 

English Text


J.S. Bach also wrote a Cantata for Trinity II based upon Luther's Hymn. Listen here:

English Translation