In Luke 14, Jesus tells two stories about banquets while he is attending one—and then heals someone to boot. My sermon looked at the first parable; the second one comes next Sunday.
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Have you ever noticed that Jesus went to a lot of parties?
Throughout the gospels, as much as there are stories about Jesus preaching and teaching, helping and healing, we also find him at dinners and gatherings with all kinds of people, rich and poor. And as much as the gospels portray a divide between Jesus and the religious elite, he spent a fair amount of time eating and drinking with them, as our passage today shows. They may not have agreed on much, but they ate dinner together.
Our passage this morning is tells the first half of the story. We read about Jesus going to dinner, healing a man, and then telling a parable about a banquet. The part we will get to next week is he told another parable about a different banquet—all of it while he was at a banquet, as though he looked around the room and said, “This reminds me of a parable . . .”
Actually, what appears to have caused the parables was a man who sat down in front of Jesus at the dinner. He was ill. Our translation says he had “an abnormal swelling of the body,” which leaves lots of room for imagination. In the old King James Version, it was translated as dropsy, which, as a kid I thought sounded like he kept falling over. Today, we would say he had edema—a general swelling that comes from the body holding too much water. The odd thing about the condition is it makes the person suffering from it insatiably thirsty: they want what they already have dangerously too much of.
The man was a walking parable.
Luke says Jesus literally embraced the man, restored him to health, and then released him. The word translated as release carries the sense of being freed from imprisonment. I have a feeling the whole process took longer than the sentence Luke uses to describe it. However it happened, when the man walked away, Jesus looked at the room and saw others who were craving more of the very things that were destroying them, whether it was money or power or influence, and he told the parable we read about people trying to jump the seating chart to get to the head table because he was watching it happen in real time.
Jesus said, when you are at a wedding feast, don’t start by looking for your name at the head table, or sitting at what you think is the best table just because you think you’re seated with the important people. Don’t put the host in the position of having to say, “You realize this banquet is not about you, right?” and then walks you past everyone to the table in the back of the room. Instead, sit at the back and if they want you to move up they will find you. It’s nice to be noticed, but the ones who crave importance will be destroyed by their appetites and the ones who are content with themselves will feel nourished.
I got to go to a big banquet last Thursday night. Some folks in Ginger’s church invited us to attend the gala for the Women and Family Life Center in Guilford, which does amazing work in towns from North Haven to Middlefield to Old Saybrook. It was at the Woodwinds in Branford, which has a huge L-shaped ballroom, and it was packed. When we got there, we went up to a table and told them our names and they gave us a program with our table number on it. We were at Table 5.
Since I was already thinking about this passage, I noticed the feeling I had when they told me the table number. Because it was a low number, I could hear myself thinking, “That’s pretty good: the fifth most important table.” However they assigned seats, the only reason we were in the room was we were invited by someone who was on the board of the organization. It had absolutely nothing to do with me.
We found our table and it was just one away from the dance floor, which Ginger loved. We could see and hear the speakers easily. It was nice to be up front. But here’s the thing: the dinner was a buffet, and the tables with the food were at the back of either side of the L-shaped room, which meant when they started calling people to get food, they started with the tables closest to the buffet—the ones in the back.
We may have been close to the dance floor, but we had to wait to eat. No table in the room had all the advantages.
Jesus was in a room full of invited guests. The fact that they were there meant they mattered to the host in some way, yet some were determined to feel more important. Like the man with edema, they craved what they already had to the point that it did damage to their reputation and their relationship with the host.
And that makes me wonder what Jesus said to the man who was swollen when he embraced him.
I understand Jesus lived in a pre-medical society that looked at disease processes differently that we do. Or maybe I should say that the other way around. We live in a time informed by science that has taught us to think about diseases differently than they did in Jesus’ day. In some ways, we are relearning things they knew well—that many illnesses are not just physiological but are also psychological and spiritual. It’s all wrapped up together. Anxiety, depression, extreme anger, greed, and grief all have physical effects on us, as do joy and patience and kindness.
We live in a culture of craving. A great deal of the messaging that bombards us keeps saying that there is no such thing as enough. Whatever we have, we need to get more. Whatever we crave will not be satisfied unless we keep craving it. As a country, we are a lot like the swollen man, craving what we know will eat us alive.
Yesterday morning at Bible Study, we talked about using our sacred imaginations, which means giving ourselves room to fill in the gaps in the stories we read, to flesh out the details. As I think about Jesus embracing the man, I picture him looking in his eyes and repeating the words Jesus heard at his own baptism—“You are my beloved child in whom I delight”—and then letting the guy go his way.
Whatever he said let the man feel like he could stop craving. He was healed of his hunger.
I invite you to put yourself in the story this morning. Close your eyes and picture yourself at the feast with Jesus—picture yourself as the man swollen and thirsty. Now imagine Jesus embracing you, pulling you close and saying, “You are my beloved child in whom I delight.” Let those words sink in. Stand there for a moment, wrapped in the arms of love.
I know the story says Jesus released him but remember nothing can separate us from the love of God. You are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. Now let yourself feel the release that comes with those words. Find healing from your hunger.
One more thing: we don’t have a seating chart at coffee hour. Amen.
Peace,
Milton