Father Stephen De Young: So it continues, “On that very day,” St. Luke is again tying this to what we just read.

On that very day some Pharisees came, saying to Him, “Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill You.”

Do you think they’re really concerned for Jesus’s safety? “Oh, no, something bad might happen to Jesus. We better warn him.” No.

They just want him to go away. They just want him to go away. So this is their new attempt. “Herod’s out to kill you, you know, he killed St John the Baptist. Now he wants to kill you.”

And He said to them, “Go, tell that fox,”

So once again, Jesus being really unchristlike by saying these mean things about Herod.

“Go, tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.’ Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.”

There’s a couple of pieces here. First, you notice he tells the Pharisees to go tell Herod about all the miracles Jesus is doing. So there’s a certain irony there, right? “Oh, you’re concerned. Thank you. Well, go tell him about all the wonderful things I’m doing.” As if the Pharisees would do that, right? Sort of making the point that the Pharisees are ignoring all of the things that Jesus is doing. Now notice, he’s going to do that today and tomorrow and the third day, He’s going to be perfected. Right? What did they say? Herod is trying to kill you. And Jesus is saying, “I know.”

And more than that, he’s saying he’s going to succeed. He’s going to succeed. This is a veiled reference to his resurrection, with a less veiled reference to his death. He says, “I’m going to journey today, tomorrow, and the day following cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.” Where are the Pharisees from? Where’s their headquarters? Jerusalem. So if he says that every prophet dies in Jerusalem, who’s killing the prophets? The Pharisees.

So, he not only says, “Yeah, I know Herod’s trying to kill me.” He not only says, “Yeah, I know I’m going to die,” and makes a prophecy of his resurrection. But he says, “Actually, it’s not Herod who’s going to kill me. Don’t try and clear yourselves, it’s going to be you, just like all the prophets God sent to you in the past.” And it’s in this context, then, that He says:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!”

Just to clarify in case the previous reference was too subtle, right? Everyone who God sends to them, why is God sending them there?

Interlocutor: So they’ll repent?

Fr. Stephen: So they’ll repent. So they’ll find salvation. And how do they respond to God’s kindness and God’s warning. By murdering the messengers. And now God himself is on his way, and guess what they’re going to do to him, too?

How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!

Now notice St. Luke’s verbiage here carefully, “How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing”

Notice he specifies the children of Jerusalem. He doesn’t say the people. He says the children of Jerusalem. As opposed to who? As opposed to the leaders. Herod, the Pharisees, the chief priests. He wanted to gather them together as a hen gathers for chicks. Meaning, who’s the real father of these children? Who do these children really belong to? They really belong to God. They’re really God’s people. But these others have taken them captive.

This is, remember, in the prophets when they were condemning the Israelites sacrificing their children to Moloch? Remember, God doesn’t come and say, “This is terrible. You’re killing babies.” I mean, it was terrible and they were killing babies. But that’s not what he says. He says, you’re doing this to my children. That’s what made it especially grievous. He said, “These aren’t your children. These are my children that you’re doing this to.” Now, notice “you were not willing”. So this isn’t just a condemnation of the Pharisees. The people have chosen the Pharisees and Herod, the chief priest, rather than God himself.

This goes all the way back to Saul. Remember, in First Samuel, “We want a king like the other nations.” God said Samuel to say, “But you have God ruling over you.” “No, we want a king like the other nations,” all the way down to today. And they keep getting what they ask for. And you think they’d realize once they got it that it wasn’t what they really wanted, right? Herod was not the king they wanted, or shouldn’t have been. But they choose him, and they kill Jesus. They choose the Pharisees, they kill Jesus, they choose the chief priests, and they kill Jesus.

“See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’”

So what’s he referring to here, this is a prophecy of what’s going to happen in 70 AD, right? To the leaders. The leaders who are ruling over this household, these children now. But I tell you what, your house is going to be desolate. Because what did the chief priests have left once the temple was destroyed? What did Herod have left once the Romans destroyed Jerusalem after the Bar Kokhba rebellion? These things that you think you have, that you think are yours are going to be taken away from you.

And this reference, “You will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed see you comes in the name of the Lord,’” is referring to what? It’s referring to his second coming.

No, it’s not referring to Palm Sunday in this case. It’s referring to the Last Judgment. He’s saying, he’s predicting, “I’m coming now. Healing, working miracles, offering forgiveness of sins. Nothing but blessings, and you’re not going to receive me now.” Palm Sunday, it looked like they might, but it took about two days before they wanted his blood. He’s saying, “You’re going to receive me when I come in judgment. You’re not going to receive me now. You’re going to receive me then.”

Now it happened, as He went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath, that they watched Him closely.

Okay, so this is not hospitality. They invite them over, and it’s not because the Pharisees are coming around. It’s not because they had a meeting and they said, “You know, Jesus makes some valid points, in his criticisms of us, we should try and do better.” It was not so they could have a discussion with Him. “We don’t really understand what he’s saying. We need Him to clarify a few things.” They invite Him over, give him some bread to eat, and they’ll sit there, watch Him. Watch him, waiting for something.

And behold, there was a certain man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus, answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

Now, notice how St. Luke prefaces that: “He answered.” Did they say anything?

Once again, as we’ve talked about before, St. Luke doesn’t just come out and tell us that Christ is God and Christ is man, right? But he shows us Christ doing human things and Christ doing things only God can do, like know the thoughts of people’s hearts. So, it’s the Sabbath, He’s eating, as soon as this fellow comes in, as we saw just recently, he knows what they’re all thinking as they’re sitting there watching. They’re all sitting there thinking, “Is he going to heal that guy on the Sabbath?” Is he going to do it again? And so, before they could even say anything, Jesus heads them off at the pass. He just throws the question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? What’s your opinion? You have all these opinions about what is and isn’t lawful. Please, Pharisees, wise men, render me your opinion as to whether it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath.”

But they kept silent.

They kept silent. They’re not dumb. They’re wicked, but they’re not dumb, right? So they know, “Well, okay, if we say yes, then he’s going to say, then how come you’ve been criticizing me for doing it? If we say no, we’re going to have to find some way to justify that. We still haven’t figured it out from the last time he did this, how to argue that it’s bad.” So they just sit there, “Mmmm, I don’t know.”

Then He answered them, saying, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” And they could not answer Him regarding these things.

This seems pretty repetitious of what we just saw. But the point here is there’s a transition here, right? Because they say absolutely nothing in this entire exchange, okay? So this is not them coming after Jesus and Jesus responding and silencing them. This is Jesus pressing this issue upon them. Why? And why is that here? Jesus has been saying a lot of bad things about the Pharisees, right? Well, not bad things, but not so nice things. Unpleasant things. Negative things, including talking about them being shut out of the kingdom and weeping and gnashing of teeth, right? Calling them sons of hell and that sort of thing, which you don’t generally say in polite company, right?

But the point is here, Jesus isn’t saying to the Pharisees “buzz off”. They want him to go away, as we just saw. They want Jesus to go away. He doesn’t want them to go away. He wants them to change. He wants them to repent. He wants them to come to really understand the law. He wants them to come to really understand who he is. So, Jesus here is showing us an example. This isn’t just the commandment love your enemies. This is Jesus loving his enemies. It’s tough love, right? It’s not, “Hey, let’s all be friends,” giving the Pharisees a big hug. It’s tough love, but it’s love. It’s love.

Interlocutor: [Inaudible]

We don’t know, they’re not named, but we know from the Gospel of John that there were people from the party of the Pharisees who did, and of course, St. Paul eventually becomes a follower of Christ.

But so, Jesus, as bad as they are, as much as he points it out to them how wicked they are and how they stand in the way of judgment, is clarifying why he’s doing that. He just doesn’t condemn people to condemn them. He condemns people to try to bring them to repentance.

Interlocutor: He’s turning it up, to straight offence, right?

Fr. Stephen: See, we often think that if we don’t hate someone, we love them, right? We come to confession and we say, “I don’t hate anybody. I don’t have anything against anybody.” Right? But the point is, in many cases, casual indifference is worse than hate. At least if I hate you, I care. At least if I’m angry with you, I care about you. I’ve said this in marriage counseling. I say, do you two still fight? They say, “Yeah, we fight all the time.” I say, “That’s good. That’s perfect. That means you still have a marriage. You both still care. If you said to me, ‘No, I live upstairs, she lives downstairs, we never talk.’ That’s where there’s a problem, because you don’t care anymore. You’re done.”

So, casual indifference can be worse. Can be worse. This is why St. James makes the point in his epistle, “He who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” Not he who does bad, sins. We all know that. But if there’s something you could do good and you don’t do it, you’ve sinned. If there’s someone who needs help and you don’t help them, you’ve sinned. You don’t have to go and punch them, right? If you see them struggling, if you see them suffering and you do nothing and you just don’t care, that in itself is sin.

And so, what Christ here is doing is he’s modeling for us love of our enemies, which isn’t just not hating people, it’s actually loving them. So when we examine ourselves in terms of repentance and confession, this has to be part of what we examine. Not just, “Do I have anything against anybody?” but, “Who are the people who I’m ignoring? Who are the people I don’t care about? Who are the people who, frankly, who I work with or who I see every day, who I run into, who I may not even remember their name, who I don’t know if they’re struggling or not, because if I’m honest, I just don’t care.”

What Christ is showing us and commands us, is that we actively show love and concern for the people around us and their well-being, particularly their spiritual well-being. And that doesn’t mean just being nice and quote-unquote “supportive” all the time, which is another lie of our modern culture, which is, if someone is your friend, they just support whatever you do and whatever choice you make, no matter how bad, right? That’s not love either. Love is concern for someone’s well-being, particularly their spiritual well-being. And so Christ is saying these things, these sometimes very harsh, very negative things, because he is concerned for the souls of these Pharisees, and he doesn’t want to see them shut out of that door in the darkness. He wants to see them at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

Now he continues:

So He told a parable to those who were invited,

So this is, again, same setting. He’s still at this Pharisee’s house, right? Wasn’t just him, apparently, who was invited over. They invited a whole bunch of their friends over.

So He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noted how they chose the best places,

Everybody comes in. They’re all trying to jockey. “I want to sit here next to the host, or Jesus is the guest of honor, so I want to go over there, sit next to him, I want to get the spot closest to the table where the food is so I can keep loading up.” Everybody’s trying to get the best spot, they’re all jockeying for position. So he says to them:

“When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place.”

So you get invited to this wedding and you think, “Man, the groom and I are best friends. The bride and I are best friends. I’m going to go sit next to him at the head table, right?” So you sit down, you got your food from the buffet, you’re getting ready to eat. Tap on the shoulder. “Yeah, the best man was going to sit here. Can you go over there? Your table’s back on the other side of the room.” So you got to take the walk of shame, right, carrying your plate, everybody’s looking at you, “I guess I’m not his best friend after all.” That’s what Jesus is saying.

But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.

So you go and sit in the back corner of the wedding reception, and then the groom or the bride, sees you back there and says, “Hey, come on up here. What are you doing way back there?” And then you get to walk in front of everybody and come up front, right? This is a parable, right? He’s telling the story to illustrate something.

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

So he’s not just talking about, “Here’s some good party etiquette. If you want to avoid embarrassment at your next dinner party, here’s what to do.” But this is again, this is giving you an example, because it’s not just at this dinner party he’s at that people do this. Remember what we had just a little bit ago? “Will only a few be saved?”

These are people, these are Pharisees who have held themselves in high esteem, shall we say, who are very impressed with themselves, right? The pride cometh before the fall. He’s making the point, those of you who are proud and arrogant, there’s nowhere to go but down. Remember the commandment in that story when he was asked about are only a few saved? Strive. Is someone who already thinks he’s at the top striving? No, he thinks he’s arrived. He thinks he’s arrived. And so he is very soon to find out he’s wrong. He’s very soon to find out he’s wrong.

Whereas the person who, at least in his mind, thinks they’re at the bottom, regardless of where they actually are, person at the bottom, are they striving? Yeah. You can’t be complacent when you’re at the bottom of the heap, because there’s nowhere else to go. They’re working, they’re struggling, they’re fighting. This is what Christ is really aiming at. In terms of how we look at ourselves, He was just talking about repentance, right? This is how we find repentance, by looking at ourselves and realizing, “I’m at the bottom, I have a lot of work to do, I got a lot of work to do. I’m nowhere near the top.”

And so we continue to struggle, right? Those are the people who, on the Day of Judgment, are going to be surprised by the reward they receive. They’re going to be surprised by the reward they receive. The folks who think they’ve arrived are also going to be surprised on the Day of Judgment, by the reward they don’t receive, that they think they deserve.

That’s what Christ is aiming at here, he’s aiming at a spiritual principle.

Then He also said to him who invited Him, “When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid.”

Now, this is counterintuitive, right? For example, when I sent out wedding invitations, here was my strategy. I tried to figure out who had enough money to spend on a good gift, but probably wouldn’t actually come to the reception so I wouldn’t have to feed them. Because then you got the best of both worlds, right? You get the gift, you don’t have to feed them, maximize… That’s the logic. And so this is the logic there, too, right? I’m going to invite my rich neighbors to my dinner party in hopes that when they throw a dinner party, they’ll invite me over to their house, and they lay out a spread. That makes sense.

Well, Jesus is saying, “Don’t do that. Don’t invite those people, because if you invite those people, you know it’s going to happen. They’re going to invite you back and repay you.” Wait, what? Yeah, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Right? I throw these dinner parties for 20 people so that I can then get 20 invitations to other dinner parties that I don’t have to pay for, right? That’s the whole plan, Jesus.

“But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

So here he makes it even more clear that he’s been talking about the Day of Judgment. He says you should be inviting all these people who can’t repay you. Again, pause. Wait, what? You’re saying I should loan the people to the money with bad credit? What? That doesn’t make sense.

The point being, that God is the one who gives the reward to those of us who aren’t rewarded in this life. Because the Pharisees, again, He’s not just talking about dinner parties, the Pharisees, as we heard in his previous diatribe against the Pharisees go and do everything they do in public. They go out and pray in public. They do big, long, eloquent prayers so everyone will hear them and see them praying and see how spiritual they are. They wear the big tassels on their robes, the whole shebang. Everything they do, they want to be seen. They go and tithe and they’re walking in, “Look at me, I’m tithing!” Because they want credit.

And Jesus says, okay, you can have credit. That $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, right? Or you could do good for those who can’t repay you. And then it’ll be God who repays you. That will be God who repays you. So if someone tries to thank you for something, if someone tries to honor you for something, if someone tries to give you credit for something, you should get angry at them. You should tell them to knock it off because they’re stealing your reward in heaven.

That’s the kind of attitude Jesus is saying we should have. We should not only not seek credit for things, we should try to avoid getting credit for things. We should do good. We should follow Christ. We should love people. We should do what Christ would have us do. And we should do everything within our power to make sure that no one knows we’re doing it. Because it’s then that we’re really doing it for Christ. It’s then that we’re doing it for the Lord and not for some other reason.

To give you an example from the lives of the saints, something that’s played out in our Christmas traditions. That whole Santa Claus coming down the chimney with gifts thing is based on an actual incident, St. Nicholas. There was in Myra, in Lycia, of which he was the bishop, there was a man who had a family who was very poor, and though he was poor, he was too proud to accept charity from anyone. He wouldn’t take any money from anyone that he didn’t earn. And so, at one point, Saint Nicholas, in the middle of the night, dropped a bag of coins down his chimney so he wouldn’t know who did it. It would just appear there in his house in the morning. He couldn’t refuse it because it’s sitting there, right? He didn’t know who did it. This is an example of doing good. Doing good and not trying to get credit. St. Nicholas didn’t show up with a giant check and a news crew to say, “Look, I’m helping the poor. Look at what my diocese does for the poor!” Quite the opposite.

Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things,

So, we’re still at this dinner party. We’re still talking about the dinner party, one of those who’s at the table said to him:

“Blessed is he who shall eat [e]bread in the kingdom of God!”

Well, he’s sort of following, right? He’s saying, “Yeah, I want to be one of those people who’s in there at the feast, not outside the door, I want to be one of those people who’s in the kingdom, I want to be on the inside.”

Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 

“So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’

“And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’  Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”

So we have yet another, this is our third in a row, right? We’re at a dinner party. So Jesus is telling stories about dinner parties to illustrate these things. So we have the dinner party. Invitations go out. Got little RSVP card in there. Everybody RSVP’s “no”. They’ve all got a different excuse. Bought some land, got to go survey it. Just got married on our honeymoon. Just bought a bunch of oxen, got to get them whipped into shape, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

None of them want to show up. So, you notice he sent the servant out to get who? The same group Jesus was just talking about, that they should invite, the blind, the lame… So he says, well, okay, those people don’t want to come. Go get these people. There’s still room. Well, hey, go beat the bushes. People walking down the road, I don’t care, right? Fill the place up. See these three stages, what this metaphor is about. Remember, Christ is on his way into Jerusalem where they kill the prophets, right? Who are the first people who got invited to the kingdom? The Jews. The Israelites. They were the first ones invited, right? Brought them to the land, right? Invited them to the kingdom. And how did they respond? “We’re all busy, we’ve all got other stuff to do. We’ve got other priorities. I’ll hit ‘no’ on the RSVP card.”

So then what happens? Christ has come. Who’s following Christ? Those people who got the first invitation? No, it’s all the sinners, the sick coming to healing, right? All the ne’er-do-wells. So Christ is coming to them and they’re coming into the kingdom ahead of the Pharisees. And then where’s the gospel going next? The gospel of the kingdom, where’s it going next? Out into the highways, out into the world. People from all different nations, the Gentiles, until the place is filled up.

But that first group, what does he avow? That first group, they’re no longer invited right? Now, why are they no longer invited? Because when the invitation came, they rejected it. Remember what he said? “Strive to enter through the narrow gate. Because when the gate is closed, it’s too late.” This man says to him, blessed is he who he eats bread in the kingdom of God. I want to be one of those people who’s in there. What’s he saying? Act now. You’ve got the invitation in front of you right now, as Jesus is sitting there speaking to them.

As St. Paul is going to say later, “today is the day of salvation.” Not tomorrow, not when you get to it. “Well, once I’ve got my mortgage paid off and this is that sorted out and my career is healthy, then I’ll worry about this whole God thing. Then I’ll start going back to church. Then I’ll start thinking about this stuff. When I get the cancer diagnosis, then I’ll start thinking about what’s going to happen when I die.”

Not somewhere down the road, today. You’ve got the invitation in front of you today. You need to respond today. And you need to be sure you respond the right way. Because if you don’t, you’re going to end up shut out.

There are going to be other people inside who, frankly, you think you’re better then, but they’re going to be on the inside and you’re going to be on the outside looking in. And so he refocuses. You want to be one of those people, you need to strive. You can respond now.

And so this has the same pertinence for the reader of Luke’s Gospel when he wrote it years later, as you’re reading this, as you’re reading about Christ, if you’re a farmer in Galatia somewhere, and you’re reading this about Jesus. The invitation’s in front of you today. The door isn’t going to be open forever. If you want to be in, you need to come in now. You need to start striving now. You need to start working now. That same invitation carries through all the way to us today as we read it.

Notice here there’s nobody who has arrived. There are people who think they’ve arrived, as Jesus said, they’re in deep trouble because they’re in for some bad news. There’s no one who’s arrived. We’re either striving, we’re either following Christ or we’re not. And we need to respond now, and begin striving now, before it’s too late, before that end comes. So this is the end of the dinner party in St. Luke’s Gospel. And, time-wise, this is probably a good place for us to finish for tonight. So, we will, Lord willing, pick up next week with chapter 14, verse 25 here. So thank you, everybody.