Priorities: The Second Sunday After Trinity (June 9, 2024)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

In our modern, technological world, distraction is rampant. According to some research, it’s estimated that 2.1 hours of office time are lost on distractions. The average worker finds themselves able to focus on a task for 11 minutes before getting distracted, and it often takes about 25 minutes to return to the task after being distracted. Further, the average IQ is reduced by 10 points due to the constant technological distractions…that’s double the amount of points lost in a study of Cannabis users. While it’s true that we might be more distracted now than we ever have been, what we see this morning is that this has always been a struggle in human beings since the Fall. The fickleness of our brains can prevent us from fully realizing our potential. While in some areas of life, distractions don’t seem too bothersome, the issue is that when we allow them to derail us from accomplishing small things, they have a way of working on us so that they distract us from big things. But today, our propers warn us against giving into lesser distractions so that we might be free to follow our Lord.

Today, in our Gospel lesson, we are given a parable that teaches us a lesson in this regard: we should rightly prioritize ourselves so that we can answer God’s call with urgency. Luke 14 details a sabbath dinner party that Jesus attended in the home of a Pharisee. There are three panels in this story. In the first part, we’re told that a man with epilepsy was present at the party. So Jesus poses the question: is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? He says, “Which of you, having a son or an ox fall into a well on the sabbath, would not pull them out?” Technically, this is work but to let your own child or even a helpless animal flounder in a pit would violate the principle of Sabbath; the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. If you have the power to help someone in a dire situation on the Sabbath, you should do it. So Jesus, who has the power to heal people from their afflictions, can heal on the Sabbath. In the second act of Luke 14, Jesus sees that the Pharisees are angling for seats of honor. So he warns them against this: it’s better to take a lower seat and get called up to a place of higher honor by the host than to take a higher seat and be publicly embarrassed by being asked to take a lower seat. The third panel in St. Luke 14 is what we read this morning: the Parable of the Great Banquet. A Pharisee follows up the warning about unduly taking a seat of honor by proclaiming: “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” This prompts Jesus to tell the parable. A man throws a feast and invites many. He sends his servants to tell those who had been invited “Come; for all is now ready.” But no one shows up because they make excuses: The first man cannot go because he bought a field and has to go see it; The second man excuses himself from the feast because he just bought five yoke of oxen and needs to examine them; The third man does not attend because he just got married. So the jilted host sends his servants out into the streets and lanes of the city where he instructs them to bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame. Even after the marginalized come to the feast, he still has room so he sends out his servants again, this time even further out to the highways and hedges. Meanwhile, the excuse makers who were originally invited lose their invitation. They have been supplanted. A few things to recognize about this. First, is the fact that the offer is open at all. There is no reason that the master of the house has to have a party. Indeed, many times parties have no real agenda. Maybe we organize them around certain occasions, but they are primarily about being with family, friends, fellow parishioners or whomever. What makes parties fun is precisely the non-compulsory aspect of them: they aren’t like a job where you have to clock in and clock out; they’re a time where we get to spend visiting with and enjoying the company of others. To throw a party, then, requires some generosity on the part of the host: it is the opening up of one’s personal space for others. The host provides for the guests with food, drink, and other amenities. But the excuses that are offered by those who decline the invitation in the parable fail to appreciate the generosity of the host; the excuses show a preoccupation with the day-to-day. But these excuses don’t hurt the host, they say far more about those declining. But despite the fact that the invitations are declined does not mean that the party is closed. The host insists that his hospitality continue to be offered and so the invitation is extended two more times: first to the poor and marginalized and then to those in the highways and byways. In context, Jesus is probably talking about the Gospel invitation first to the Jews, many of whom rejected it, and then to the Gentiles. But for those of us reading it today in a largely different context, we can come to appreciate the generosity of the host because it’s such a keen picture of what God’s generosity looks like to us, invited to his table based on no merits of our own. And further, the parable can function as a warning to us because it reminds us not to get so bogged down in day-to-day matters that we miss the urgency of the Gospel.

But how do we accept the invitation? According to today’s Epistle, we accept it whenever we “keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (14:15). Now, it is important to note that the obedience our Lord demands here is in the context of love. When we hear obedience, we often think of acquiescing to an overbearing authority; but that’s not what Jesus or John have in mind. They are not thinking about cold, unfeeling, robotic obedience. This is not the Christian way. Rather, the Scriptures are getting at a kind of relational and imitative obedience that looks to Jesus as our model, whose life gets transposed into our own lives as we grow closer to him. We’ve all heard people say “Do what I say, not what I do” but if you look at the relationship between kids and their parents, you find, for more often, that the kids imitate what the parents do more than what they say. For example, one of the big reasons church attendance has been declining over the past 20 years or so, especially in younger demographics, is because families will often make a compromise with their actions. Maybe they’ll talk about how their faith is important, but then when it comes time to put Johnny in sports so that they have to travel on the weekend and play games on Sunday mornings. Well it should be no surprise, no matter how much lip service is paid to spiritual things, that Johnny is not going to see the point of going to church. He’s imitating his parents. And so what we are called to do is imitate the example of Christ. The goal is not to check things off a to do list, so much as to follow him with every part of who we are—our bodies, hearts, souls, and minds.

The point of a feast is to share love amongst friends. We receive his love simply by the fact that we are invited. He didn’t have to invite us, but he does anyways. But we experience the fullness of his love when we accept that invitation. But it changes us; when we come to the feast, “our cup overfloweth.” The love we receive from God will overflow into our relationships with others so that we become the messengers by which they receive an invitation to the party. Christ laid down his own self for us, and so we are called to emulate him and lay ourselves down for others.

As we navigate a world brimming with distractions, let us not lose sight of the profound invitation extended to us by God. The parable from today's Gospel lesson serves as a poignant reminder that the trivial pursuits of our daily lives can easily sidetrack us from what truly matters. Jesus' teachings urge us to prioritize our spiritual call with urgency, not allowing the mundane to overshadow the divine. Just as the host in the parable extends his generosity despite the rejections, God’s invitation to us remains steadfast, calling us to a feast of love, grace, and community. Accepting this invitation involves more than mere attendance; it demands our active participation in living out His commandments through love and obedience. It is through our actions and imitations of Christ that we truly embrace His invitation. In accepting God’s invitation and prioritizing His call, we find true fulfillment. Our lives become a testament to His love, drawing others into the warmth of His embrace. So, as we leave here today, let us commit to shedding the distractions that hinder our spiritual journey and embrace the feast that God has lovingly prepared for us. May we live in a way that honors His invitation and inspires others to join in the celebration of His eternal banquet.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.