Yesterday (Saturday) I joined a small group of volunteers to try and tidy up the front garden of one of our older Church members. They are hoping to bring her home after a prolonged spell in hospital. However, the garden, and in particular the path to the front door had become overgrown. Part way through our labours we stopped for a brew and one of our team had kindly brought biscuits, not just any biscuits, but chocolate biscuits.
I watched how people ate their biscuits because according to a study from Oxford University the correct way to eat a chocolate biscuit, according to experts, is to eat it with the chocolate side down. This method allows the chocolate to melt on the tongue, enhancing the flavour experience. The Oxford University study suggests that flipping the biscuit over before eating maximizes the 'oral-somatosensory experience' of the chocolate melting on the tongue. It is recommended to eat chocolate digestives at room temperature and take a substantial bite for maximum enjoyment. (This is a real thing, check it out)
Now you know, and don’t even get me started on the scones
and jam and cream first debate – but just to say we lived in Cornwall for ten
years!
The Gospel reading (RCL) for this Sunday is Luke 14.
1,7-14 and in the first verse we read, ‘One Sabbath, when he went to
dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him
carefully.’
This was a Sabbath, would Jesus break any of the rules,
‘they were watching him closely.’
And he does break their rules by healing someone. However,
our reading skips over this and we pick up the chapter at verse 7, a story
about a wedding.
When our son was married during the Wedding Breakfast the
‘top table' was served last after all the guests had been served. Our daughter
Tabitha picked up this idea and I remember sitting with her as we talked with
the hotel where the reception was going to be held. The lady helping to
organise the Wedding Breakfast was a tad non-plussed when Tabitha asked for the
same, for the top table to be served last.
This was breaking all the rules of normal convention.
And a story it is, or rather a parable, we are told that
in verse 7.
‘Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honour, saying to them…’
(And there
are more meals in Luke than in any of the other Gospels)
And this is a parable about a Wedding Feast. Note that, a wedding feast. This is a recurring motif in the Gospel accounts, principally where Jesus is the Groom and those responding to his call are viewed as the bride, something that finds it fullest expression in Revelation 21.
Be careful to hold all of that in mind as you listen to
this parable.
First off then this isn’t a piece of advice on etiquette, although there is some helpful wisdom here. So what is this parable meant to be telling us.
Remember that those gathered for this meal were watching
Jesus closely to see if he would keep to the rules.
And Jesus was to say on one, occasion, “Do not think
that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish
them but to fulfil them.”
And how he will do this is encapsulated in this parable
about the Wedding Feast and the invited guests jockeying for positions.
Who we might ask are the invited guests. Well, we know
from other parables that these are people from the highways and the byways, the
meek, the lowly, the poor and the outcast. The invited guests are people like
Lazurus, not the one brought back to life, the other one, the beggar who sat
outside the rich man’s house and was ignored. Luke tells this story in chapter
16 of his Gospel.
This is an underlying theme for Luke that begins with
Jesus’ mandate for mission in chapter 4 quoting from a passage in Isaiah that
declared freedom for those imprisoned, sight for the blind, and the year of the
Lord’s favour. From Luke we also have Mary’s song, what we know as the
Magnificat.
A key message of Jesus is that “I have not come to call
those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and
need to repent.”
No, this is a not advice on etiquette but a profound
parable.
This is revealing God’s heart for the least, the last and
the lost.
“I say to you that many will come from the
east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the
subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
And if this is God’s heart position, then surely one
question we need to be asking ourselves when we gather as God’s people is, who
is not here and why?
May the answer to that question never ever be that they
are not here because we deem them unworthy, or of not having enough money, or
wearing the wrong clothes or maybe have served a prison sentence. Everyone bar
exception is welcome to gather around God’s table.
However, there is a curious little incident in one of the
wedding banquet parables told by Matthew that ends with this…
‘But when the king came in to see the guests,
he spotted a man who was not dressed in wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked,
‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But the man was speechless.
Then the king told the servants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the
outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’…
Everyone without exception is welcomed because God loves
us just as we are, but he loves too much to leave us that way.
Going back to the other Lazurus, the one Jesus raised from the dead, on emerging from the tomb Jesus said, ‘take of the grave clothes and let him go free.’ (John 11.44)
Everyone is welcomed, but then we are invited to take off
our grave clothes, our bad habits, our besetting sins, our anger, pride or
whatever, and to put on the garment freely offered by God so that we may enter into
the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb as a son or daughter of the King.
And that is to begin not in some distant future and place
far away, but right here and right now, we are called to live a holy life.
I Peter 1. 15-16, ‘But just as He who called you is
holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, because I am
holy.”
The Easter Orthodox tradition refers to a process of Theosis,
simply put, ‘Jesus came to share our humanity so that we might come to share
his divinity.
As we read in Ephesians 4.13
‘…until we all reach unity in the faith and in
the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the
stature of Christ.’
‘As we mature to the full measure of the stature of
Christ.’
How are you doing on this one?
Certainly spending a few hours cleaning up a garden I
would argue is a Christ like action, although I don’t think we would be too
bothered about which way up Jesus might eat his chocolate biscuit!
So, how can we demonstrate in the week ahead that we are becoming increasingly holy and more Christ like? And how can encourage each other '…until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.’
Listen to this song and allow it to speak deep into your soul and spirit as you ask to become more like Jesus.
https://youtu.be/9eOiEzgy0VY?si=ikpXC06dF_VB1m-b
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