When my husband and I designed and built our house 15 years ago, we deliberately made it a place that made it easy for hosting large groups of people. I have a large extended family, most of whom live close by and hospitality is one of the things that I value the most both at home and in church.  We have routinely hosted Thanksgiving and Easter dinners or birthday celebrations for up to 25 people. But Christmas only once! Never again! Although I confess, that sometime, either on the day before a planned event, or the morning of, I question my sanity! 😉

Hospitality now is not governed by strict rules of protocol anymore, although there may be some unwritten rules. But in the ancient world in which Jesus lived, banquet hospitality carried themes such as honour and shame.

Before I go any further, let’s listen to the parable about a banquet. Jesus is at a banquet with some Pharisees, and he tells them two stories about banquets. This is the second one, I’ll touch on the first one a bit later. It’s written in Luke 14: 15-24:

¹⁵ One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” ¹⁶ Then Jesus^[d] said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. ⁷ At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is ready now.’ ¹⁸ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ ¹⁹ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ ²⁰ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ ²¹ So the slave returned and reported this to his master.

Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ ²² And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ ²³ Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. ²⁴ For I tell you,^[e] none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’ ”

In the world in which this was parable was written, it was customary to send a servant or slave at the appropriate time to escort your guests to the banquet. For the invited guests to refuse to come at that point would bring a great deal of shame to the host.

They are all pretty flimsy excuses aren’t they…

• One had to go check out the land he bought… as if he   wouldn’t have checked it out beforehand.
• One bought five oxen… had he really bought them unseen?
• One had just gotten married… well marriages were for cementing ties between families… it would have been a big deal.

The point is, none of these ‘reasons’ are good excuses for causing shame to the host. The host, understandably, acts with anger and commands his servant/slave to go and invite the ‘less worthy’ to the banquet. This parable demonstrates once again how the writer of Luke speaks of the Kingdom of God… how the last shall be first… Jesus refers to this in the first story he tells the Pharisees… he tells them that when they go to a banquet to not take the highest seat, lest someone of ‘higher’ ranking be a guest and he have to move to a lower place. Rather, a person should take a lower seat and wait to be invited up to the higher seat by the host. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Luke continually portrays the realm of God as upsetting the hierarchical world in which Jesus lived.

In the parable that Raynauld just read, the host tells the servant to go out into the streets and lanes of the town to and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ A couple of things struck me about this section of the parable: “Who are the poor, the crippled etc. in our day that we would not invite to the banquet… the banquet being a metaphor for the kingdom of God. Because it is always easier to recognize exclusion in scripture than to recognize it in ourselves, let’s think about: Who do we exclude, by intention or lack of intentional welcome? Who do we not invite? Two things popped into my head! One, do we ever invite the clients at the Food Bank to church? To hear the Good News of Jesus Christ? We are shy about doing that aren’t we? I am. The other thing that popped into my head is that today is the International Day Against Homophobia. In 1988, the United Church made a decision to invite ALL of God’s children to the banquet.  Sexual orientation would no longer be a barrier to full participation in the life of the church. That caused some a great deal of consternation in some parts of the church, and a great deal of joy in others. Upsetting the status quo does that.

And then, in the final section, when the banquet hall is still not filled, he further commands his slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. And then there’s that troubling word: compel. You can only compel those who are of ‘lesser’ status than you… those who have less power than you… I don’t think there would be much hospitality experienced by those who are compelled to be there… all to satisfy the ego needs of the host whose banquet table was empty.

But… but… one of the reasons I love scripture is that there is always something new to discover. The host, in inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame etc. was also bringing shame to himself, by including these outcasts at his table. So he was separating himself from his peers… from his community… from his place in society. That’s huge! We all want to belong… or at least I do… and at the same time, we want to stand out and be known for something, which sometimes means going against your community norms.

That tension between belonging and risking exclusion is not just ancient. I felt it yesterday morning as I headed to the Christian Fellowship breakfast. I had been invited, and RSVP’d yes, then looked up their website. It’s a pretty conservative organization, a worldwide organization. with all male leadership. I wrestled internally about whether to wear my rainbow collar, that tug between wanting to belong and wanting to stand up for what I believe Jesus calls us to be and do. Ultimately, I decided to wear it; since I always do when I’ve been invited anywhere because I’m the minister. I was warmly welcomed, even though the only woman pastor. 😉 I had a great discussion with one of the facilitators, who was from Ghana, about the challenges of aging congregations.

When I told him I had recently been to Kenya and preached there, we both got excited and enthusiastic about how churches in Africa are filled with young people who are excited about their faith and how it is integrated into their everyday lives. We had a fun, quite profound team icebreaker activity, using marshmallows and spaghetti. We prayed for one another. A banquet, both literally and figuratively was set before me.

Parables are full of paradox… especially this one… it doesn’t tell a neat little story, tied up with a bow and hands it to you as a life lesson. It leaves us with questions. One of the questions it leaves me with is this: Who is the God figure in this parable? Perhaps that is why this parable refuses to settle neatly. Because the kingdom of God is not neat. It unsettles our assumptions about who belongs, who is welcome, who gets excluded, and even what hospitality itself means. And yet, somehow, the invitation keeps going out. Again and again, God keeps setting the table, making room, and calling people in.

Thanks be to God for the challenge and the opportunity of being God’s people. Amen.

Luke 14:15–24
May 17, 2026 – SJ
Parables Series