March 22, 2000
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April 23 Lesson
Who's on the guest list and what is being served?
___Luke 5:29-32; 14:12-15
___5:29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners?'"
___31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
___14:12 Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
___15 When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___About 12 times a year, there's an unusual banquet given in Waco. It's a banquet at Mission Waco, a non-profit ministry organization and missions training ground. The banquet is the culmination of a weekend simulation in which participants learn first-hand what it's like to be homeless. They are forced to live on the streets for two nights, with few if any of their own possessions.
___And then they're invited to a banquet. At this banquet, however, each participant is assigned a country to represent. Guests are divided into the appropriate regions: India, Europe, Mexico, Africa, Asia and the United States.
___When the food is served, not everyone gets the same thing. Those assigned to America get steak and potatoes, while those assigned to Europe, Asia and Mexico are given less. Those representing India get a mixture of rice, curry and chicken and a piece of flat bread.
___The "banquet"--an appropriate title for only a small number of the participants--is an object lesson to teach the disparity of the world's resources. It's intended to be a wake-up call to fat and sassy Americans who blindly think everyone else enjoys the same high standard of living they do.
___What people eat tells us volumes about them and their lifestyle. Who they share their resources with and whom they eat with also speak loudly.
___It might be considered impolite to point out to a person gorging on plenteous food that others around him have little or nothing to eat. But that's the audacity Jesus demonstrates in these two accounts told by Luke. He speaks not only of physical hunger but of spiritual hunger.
___Tax collectors and
___doctors
___The text from Luke 5 comes right on the heels of Jesus calling Levi to follow him as a disciple. Levi is another name for Matthew, the writer of the first Gospel in the New Testament.
___Jesus' mother must have never taught him the old axiom that you're known by the company you keep. If she did, Jesus took hold of a higher ethic from his Father. Jesus not only associated with sinners, he sought them out.
___Levi was a tax collector, one of the professions most reviled by the Jewish people because of the Roman occupation. Tax collectors were viewed as unscrupulous traitors who lined their own pockets dishonestly.
___So, Levi was not the kind of character you'd pick for your campaign team if you were running for office. This did not make for good public relations.
___That was only the beginning point, however. Jesus associated with many more of Levi's friends, even attending a banquet with a whole roomful of tax collectors.
___The religious leaders of the day didn't like this at all. "Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?" they asked him, no doubt puffed up with pride at the purity of their own associations.
___Sadly, their criticism of Jesus is not a thing of the past. There are many among us today who advocate the same type of guilt by association mentality as the Pharisees. This operates on many levels, including:
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___There's a natural tendency for this to happen the more involved we become in church activities and religious things. But it runs counter to the example of Jesus. How can we be "salt" and "light" in the world, as we're commanded, if we're inaccessible to the world?
___Phil Christopher, pastor of First Baptist Church of Abilene, was our pastor at a church in Kentucky several years ago. I have a vivid memory to this day of a truth he shared with us there, something he was just learning himself. He had become a coach of his daughter's youth sports team--a commitment that was taking him away from the church but one that was opening many Jesus-kind of relationships.
___"I realized I didn't know many people who weren't Christians," he confessed several months after starting coaching. "I have more opportunities now to talk to people about Jesus than I ever had before."
___This illustrates one of the dangers of the idea some Christians have that all Christian children ought to be sequestered in their own special schools to avoid corruption by the world. While private "Christian" schools serve a good purpose in many places, they must not become the primary place Christian children go to school. Were that to happen, who would have opportunity to build life-changing relationships with non-Christian children? And how would we be salt and light in our communities?
___These are issues I think about frequently as a parent of elementary-age children. Negative influences can be found nearly everywhere. Rather than focusing on these potential negatives, I have begun praying more earnestly for the potential positives.
___A theme of my prayers is this: "God, please help my boys to be more of a positive influence on the children around them than other children will be a negative influence on my boys."
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___Unfortunately, Jesus was not the last person to be criticized by religious figures for associating with sinners. Pastors are sometimes criticized by well-meaning church members for tending to the needs of those outside the church more than those inside the church. Deacons or lay leaders in the church may be criticized for friendships or business associations with non-believers. Denominational officials today are sometimes criticized for working on important social or legal causes alongside people who embrace radically different theologies on other unrelated issues.
___Is there a doctor in the house?
___Rather than guilt by association, Jesus practiced love by association. He went out of his way to see the outcasts, the forgotten, the isolated, the scorned, the sinful. He embraced them and drew them to faith.
___This is the vision Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, is preaching all across the state. He's urging Texas Baptists to reach their arms around all the people of Texas, to hug them, embrace them and draw them to Jesus.
___It's a daunting task--sometimes an unsavory task--and one that no doubt will generate criticism. But it's also the Jesus way.
___"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick," Jesus said. "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
___Jesus draws upon his image as the Great Physician. Except for preventive care--which would have been unknown in first century Israel--physicians spend their time caring for the sick, not the healthy.
___Jesus says he's not interesting in preaching to the choir. He wants to devote his time and energy where it will do the most good.
___That's a radical thought we seldom hear expressed today. When's the last time you heard a pastor say, "I desire to serve a church most needy of spiritual help, a community most needy of divine intervention"? When's the last time you heard a veteran Sunday School teacher say, "I want to volunteer to teach the most difficult class in the church, to help those most in need of understanding the Bible"? Or when's the last time you heard a Christian family say, "We want to invest our family in one of the neediest areas of our city, where our very presence will challenge the darkness of sin and despair"?
___When questions like these arise, it's time for most of us to take off the WWJD bracelets and throw them in the trash. To claim we are doing what Jesus would do rings hollow.
___Guess who's coming to dinner
___The focal passage from Luke 14 is sandwiched between two banquet stories. In the first, Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee, where he is being grilled by his critics. In the second, which is part of the first event, Jesus tells a parable about a great banquet.
___When you give a banquet or luncheon, Jesus says, don't invite all the people you already know who will seek to repay you. Instead, invite the lame, the crippled, the poor, the blind--who cannot repay you. In so doing, you will be repaid in divine blessings, he suggests.
___Have you ever been to a banquet for the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? I must confess that despite being raised in the church and working for Baptists 18 years, I've never seen or heard of any such event.
___Well, maybe Jesus was using this story as a symbolic illustration rather than a literal command, we might argue. Could be, but if there's anything symbolic about the story it's probably the kind of food to be served at the banquet rather than the guest list. Jesus is talking about spiritual food as well as physical food.
___We have a rich supply of spiritual nourishment, and we keep inviting the same spiritual people to partake of it. Jesus is urging us to match the supply with the demand.
___It has been said that the 11 a.m. Sunday worship time is the most segregated hour in American life every week. Though our culture is increasingly diverse racially, our churches are not.
___This has a profound implications in Texas, where the mixtures of Anglos, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians is growing richer by the day. By the time my elementary-age children are adults, Texas will no longer have a majority ethnic group.
___While it is true that people of like backgrounds and interests tend to congregate together, we all bear a responsibility to make certain the gospel is shared with all people.
___The challenge is to make sure our guest list matches God's guest list.
___Where's the beef?
___Imagine an educational banquet given in the style used by Mission Waco. But instead of assigning people to represent nations, assign them to represent different segments of our Texas population: suburban families, inner-city families, immigrants, single adults, senior adults, youth, children, the wealthy, the poor, the middle-class, Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans, Anglos.
___And instead of serving physical food, imagine serving spiritual food. How much access to spiritual food, and to what kind of spiritual food, would each group have? Would some groups be feasting on the word of God while others have only a morsel of understanding?
___Once we understand who's hungry, we'll know who to invite to the banquet.
For thought and discussion
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