…for what it's worth

Luke 14 seems to be about caring for the poor, crippled, lame and blind, positioning yourself rightly before God, and more generally, living the truly God-centered life. It’s diverse, so this’ll be a long post.

It begins with Jesus more or less trouncing the Pharisees on the issue of doing good on the Sabbath. It says they were “watching him carefully”. A guy with “dropsy” (my study notes say it’s probably a form of edema) comes up, and Jesus asks the Pharisees if it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Then he heals the guy, and asks them if any of them wouldn’t pull their son or ox out of a well if it fell in on the Sabbath. They don’t say anything.

The point (cheating a bit by looking at Matthew 12:12): It’s lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Do all the good you want on the Sabbath. And given what’s contained in the following passages, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s even a duty of God’s people to do good to those in distress, even on the Sabbath.

Next it says that when Jesus saw the guests jockeying for the places of highest honor at the table, he tells them they’ve got it backwards: They should be choosing for themselves the places of least honor at the table. The reason for this is that if you choose the high positions, somebody more distinguished may come along and embarrass you be displacing you. If you choose the low places, however, your host will come and move you up higher, exalting you in front of all the guests.

The point: This parable isn’t simple about where to sit at dinner time. Jesus means us to induce a general principle from this. Specifically, the first shall be last and the last, first. God’s economy is an inverted economy. It’s not the most talented, most powerful, most charismatic or most prominent who are exalted, but rather the weak (Mark 9:35, 1 Corinthians 1:27) and the humble (James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5). Paul bears witness to this fact about the Kingdom of God by boasting only in his weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9). Remember, God does everything he does so that he will be exalted, not you. Those he will exalt will be those who best display his own strength, power, wisdom…etc. – the weak and the humble.

Right after saying this, Jesus turns to the guy who invited him and tells him that he shouldn’t invite friends to banquets, but rather the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind because they can’t repay him. Verse 14: “…and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” This sounds just like Matthew 6:1,4: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven … And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

The point: How many people do I know that act like this? Not very many… I know I want to be recognized for my super-awesomeness, but there are two problems with this. The first is that it’s not my super-awesomeness to begin with (1 Corinthians 4:7), so I’m stealing God’s glory, and he doesn’t take kindly to that kind of behavior. The second thing is that I’m actually cheating myself out of maximal reward. Matthew 6:2, 5 and 16 all say that people who do things that look righteous so that others will see have already gotten everything they’re going to get. It’s short-lived and puny – a ridiculous mismanagement of our resources.
Compare that to Luke 12:33-34:

33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.
34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Moneybags that do not grow old! Treasure in the heavens that does not fail!
Besides the fact that it lasts forever, (and even a single chicken wing that last forever is better than a hundred meals that only last as long as they’re fresh or we eat them), it’s also superior to earthly treasure in it’s abundance:
Matthew 19:29: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”

Excellent… A hundredfold the chicken wings, they’re eternal, and would you like eternal life with that?
EDIT: I realize the treasure in Heaven isn’t chicken wings but probably rather closer fellowship with Jesus… That’s not my point here.

We’re even told why we want to give away our stuff in this life – because where our treasure is, there our hearts are also, and we know that God looks past external appearances and into our hearts:
Luke 16:15: “And he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God…’”

At this point in the conversation, Jesus’ host and the rest of the guests were apparently feeling pretty uncomfortable. I imagine an awkward silence after Jesus tells the host he should have invited completely different guests, and then in verse 15 someone shouts out a common saying of the time to break the awkwardness, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Jesus, a master of discourse, plays off this, and tells them just what sort of people will be eating that bread. He tells them a parable that illustrates his last point about inviting the poor, crippled, lame and blind, where a King does just that, after the original guests were too busy with other things to come to the feast. He ends with, “For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.” Ouch.

A crowd of people had followed Jesus to the party, and he addresses them now. Nobody is off the hook.

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…”

The point: Don’t sterilize this with happy-clappy Christian excuses. If you go to church and yet your life looks just like the lives of those who don’t believe Jesus is God, you are being addressed here. If, however, you realize you’re screwed up beyond human intervention and are willing to throw yourself upon divine mercy, go back and read that parable about the people invited to the feast (Luke 14:16-24). You could be one of those poor, crippled, lame and blind that were invited when the original guests rejected their invitations.

Jesus then essentially tells them to count the cost, and make the best decision.

The chapter ends with another of Jesus’ intensely uncomfortable challenges:

33 “…So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
34 Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

The final point: Don’t play games with repentance and salvation. If you know you’re sinful, waste no time. Throw yourself on the only one who can save you. Don’t assume you’re ok simply because other “Christians” look like you. You answer to Jesus.