Won't You Be My Neighbor?
A Glutton
If you've read the gospel of Luke - have you noticed just how often Jesus is depicted as eating?
It's everywhere - there are 19 meals in Luke, 13 of which are unique to this gospel.
In fact, Robert Karris, a Christian author and professor, puts it like this:
“At just about every point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is either coming from a meal, going to a meal, or at a meal.”
Now there's a guy worth following, right?
In fact, this was such a theme in Christ's ministry in Luke that we see his critics in the gospel calling him a glutton (Luke 7:34).
Just gotta say - on this note - how great of news is this? I don't know for you, but for me that means that there's an area of Christlikeness I didn't know I had already mastered. You know, as believers we pray things like, "Lord make me more like you," - and somehow there's Cinnabites at Sonic, right there in the bag when it shows up. It's amazing.
Now, I know what you're thinking, "This guys just a master at interpreting the Bible. Right into year two of seminary - and it's just doing wonders for him."
Well buckle up.
Extending the Invitation
Last week we saw how Jesus had invited us to the party of His kingdom and what keeps people from it. Today, we’re going to see how he uses us to extend that invitation to others.
Let's look at where we left off:
“Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “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.”
We talked about how tough a statement that was. Compared to how committed you are to Jesus, every other relationship—even your most intimate ones—should look like hate.
Can you honestly say that compared to your commitment to Jesus, your commitment to your friends, family, and desires for your life look like hate?
Today, Jesus is going to give us a picture of what that looks like in action.
A Warning
Now, let me give you a warning. Last week I told you right from the beginning that I was going to be transparent with you - and today is no different.
Today is going to be difficult for some of you - maybe for all of us. Today may challenge you and me at some pretty fundamental levels. You might find that by the end of our time together today that you're thinking something like,
"I.. may need to rethink my approach to life..."
And that's not a scary thing - that's an amazing thing.
Because Jesus’s message today also has the power to set you free onto a journey which is going bring you so much more joy and purpose into your life than what you are currently experiencing.
You might be thinking, "okay - these are some pretty big claims here" - yep. They certainly are. But they're certainly not anything out of the wheelhouse of Christ, are they?
Restoring joy? Again - something that's pretty characteristic of His entire ministry, right?
But let me ask you something, a real question. It's a question that I've thought and asked myself many, many, times in my life.
Do you ever wonder, sometimes, if anything about your life matters? And I mean really matters? Question like, ‘Am I making any real difference?’ Or, ‘Has anything that I've been doing have any eternal significance?’
Are you tired of feeling like you just get up every day, trying to make ends meet? Or maybe your day is you get up, go to work, come home, watch a little TV, maybe distract yourself with some hobbies, and then just look forward to vacation at some point?
Maybe you hop online and look at vacations you'd like to go on - and that's where it ends. You go to dinner, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, watch a little TV...
And really it just becomes the same year after year - rinse and repeat.
Eventually that question comes back, "Am I making any real difference?" I'll tell you - I've been there before. For years this question haunted me: "Has anything that I've been doing had any real, eternal, kingdom growing significance?"
Here's the truth: those are pretty normal questions to have.
God created you, me - everyone that you've met - He created us with the ability to see our life in terms of eternity. King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God has "set eternity in the human heart."
In other words, in every one of us is a God-given awareness that there is “something more” than this transient world. And with that awareness of eternity comes a hope that we can one day find a fulfillment that's not afforded by the “vanity” in this world.
As the seasons come and go, and the years pass, and this is a real question, does anything of this world truly satisfy? Or is just "rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat." Is it, as King Solomon says, all vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:2)?
God has “set eternity in the human heart.”
And praise God that we have that divinely implanted awareness that the soul lives forever, and praise God that our lives, as followers of Christ, we get to measure them in terms of eternity. How amazing is that? Really - how amazing is that?
And praise God that we get examples of godly men focusing on eternity - living with their perspective looking toward eternity. Just look at King David. He looked for his satisfaction in the time to come. He said, "And I—in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness" (Psalm 17:15). To David, full satisfaction would come on the day when he awoke (in the next life) both beholding God’s face (fellowship with Him) and being like Him (1 John 3:2).
Again - that question: "Am I making any real difference?" "Has anything that I've been doing had any real, eternal, significance?"
And today, Jesus is going to show us how to do just that: To live in a way in which our perspective is focused on eternity. On real satisfaction that will one day come.
But here’s the thing: Living in a way, with that eternal perspective may not look like you expect. And what Jesus teaches here in our text today - well, it might surprise you because, and hear me on this, it’s both less glamorous and more rewarding than might you expect.
Again, the context: Jesus is at this Pharisee's meal on Sabbath. He's at this banquet, this party. He walks in - into this "trap" of healing a man with dropsy (or edema, swelling of the limbs), thereby working on the Sabbath. He heals Him anyway, cites their own law back to them, to which they don't have a response. And last week, we skipped over (intentionally) a few verses here Luke 14:12-14. See, before the group of people and Jesus go to sit at the table, and before Jesus tells the parable of the Great Banquet: Jesus looks around and notices that the Pharisee throwing the party has only invited his other rich, popular, pharisee, lawyer, and business friends to be at the party.
Now, Jesus wasn’t himself rich, of course, but He was pretty well-known. Changing water into the best wine that anyone has tasted will do that to one's reputation. Or, as noted in Luke 9, using only five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 men (women and children excluded from that total number). I mean - that's the guest to come to a banquet, right? Wine, bread, fish. Done.
Let's read, starting in Luke 14:12:
“He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.””
What Jesus is really saying
Can we stop there and address something real quick?
Wouldn't that be awkward?
Let's take a step back and just look at the events as they've unfolded in this story:
You have Jesus in your home for a banquet - He heals a man right in front of all of you, and knowing your thoughts about the law (again - I just think it's always awesome when Jesus responds to people's thoughts in Scripture), but He responds to your thoughts and says, "If your donkey or son fell in a well on the Sabbath, you'd get them out, too." And then He says, "Hey - by the way - when you have a banquet or a party - don't invite all these people right here. Let's be real - the only reason you invited these people anyway is because you hope that they'll invite you back to their parties.
Why aren't you inviting the people who don't have anything that you're interested in? Why aren't you inviting the people who can't invite you to their parties, because they don't really even own houses?"
See - here's the point - what Jesus was telling them in those days, was basically economic suicide. Parties like this, in those days, that's where business was done. Those were the places in those days that you heard things like:
Can I pick your brain for a second?
You crushed it this quarter! But we need to keep working on ideas how we can move the needle.
Hey man, I've got an idea that will scale - anyone have the bandwidth to get it done?
Jokes aside, parties in those days were actually pretty great economic decisions, because you would invite someone to your banquet/party, then they would feel obligated to invite you back to theirs - where you could get to know all of their rich, popular friends, and their network, and new people for you to do business with.
For Jesus to suggest that instead of all of that, you invite the crippled, the poor, the lame, the blind. For Him to suggest that you spend your resources on those who couldn't pay you back, on those who weren't able to really add any financial benefit into your life - it would seem like He was telling you to commit financial suicide.
And who talks like this? Probably somebody whose kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36); somebody who knows that 1,000 years on this earth are like yesterday when it is gone (Psalm 90:4); somebody who knows that our life is but a mist that appears and in a moment vanishes away (James 4:14); who knows that he who saves his life now will lose it later, and he who loses it now in love will save it later (Mark 8:35); and who knows that there will be a resurrection unto eternal life, a resurrection of the just to live with God a million millennia of eons, if indeed He was our God on this earth.
Jesus is the man!
No man ever spoke like Him. And as the people who call him Lord, we ought not to be like any other people.
Nothing is different today
But here's the question:
Has it really changed at all today? How many people operate under the philosophy of, "I'm only going to invest my life in things that can, in turn, add value to my life."
Well, like we talked about last week, did Jesus invite only the people that could add value to His life to His banquet?
No.
When Jesus compelled people to come to His banquet, when He told the servant to bring them in from the highways and byways, He told him to bring the crippled, the blind, the lame, the poor, the moral degenerates, the highway people, the outcasts, the pariahs, the hedge-people.
And so you don't have to keep hearing that list, or try to remember it: I'll summarize all of those in one word: us.
Christ invited us. People that couldn't repay Him. And thank God He did, right?
How radical.
How radical His words must have seemed to the Pharisee as He challenged him on who to invite to the banquet, and how radical Christ's words are today.
But hear me on this: Jesus' words are radical because our sin is radical.
And I don't know about you, but man - that should fundamentally reorient how you approach the party of your life.
So today, we're going to look at two questions from this text that we're going to consider today.
Question 1
If your life was depicted as a banquet…
If your life was depicted as a banquet, or as a party, who are you inviting? Who are the guests?
Let's say that we could choose to sit here and depict your entire life, and we could just portray it right here in front of you - and we did it in terms of a banquet, dinner, or party.
Who is the party for?
Is your life a series of highly calculated relationships - highly calculated decisions, made in the assumption that one day these relationships and these decisions will someday also return value to your life?
Is your life a party of those who couldn't necessarily pay you back?
Are you using your talent, your skills, your gifts, your financial blessings - your resources that have been given to you to bless those who may not be able to pay you back - at least not in this life?
Earlier I mentioned a question that I had asked myself many times. ‘Am I making any real difference?’ Or, ‘Has anything that I've been doing had any eternal significance?’
I had asked myself this question a lot in my previous roles at the different companies I worked for. "Am I making any real difference?" And to be completely up front with you - I didn't feel like I was. Again - for years I felt that way. Day after day, year after year, rinse and repeat.
The question that I wish I had asked myself back then was this:
"For whose benefit do I see my career?"
Even if you're happy in your job or in your career, I think that this is an excellent question to ask ourselves. In preparing for today, I heard a pastor who shared three primary ways that you can answer this question, and I'd like to share those with you as well.
Question 1: Do I see my job/career as a way of serving others, or to enrich myself?
The first way - ask yourself this, do I primarily see my job/career as a way of serving others, or to enrich myself? Something that I think the Church (capital C Church) could/should teach more often is that our gifts and talents are given to us to glorify God and to serve others.
“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:”
Now - there's obviously nothing wrong with having our career or a job to get money from it. We need to support our families, provide food, shelter, and all of that. That's all wonderful. What I'm talking about is at its core, our talents and the things that we do - let those be instruments by which God can bless others.
Martin Luther - "father" of the Reformation, German theologian and priest, lived from the late 1400's to the early-to-mid 1500's. He puts it like this:
“When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And he does give us our daily bread. How does he do this though? He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread and the person who prepared our meal.”
He goes on to say…
“God could easily give you grain and fruit without our plowing and planting, but he does not want to do so. God milks the cows to the vocation of the milkmaids.”
Martin Luther's talking here about how God so often accomplishes His good works. Psalm 111:2, how God uses men and women as the means through which He provides for our basic daily needs. And in our day and age it's so much more than a farmer and a baker to get bread to your table, right?
You also have the:
Truck Driver
Factory workers in the food processing plant
Warehouse workers
Wholesale distributors
Truck Drivers again
Stockers at the grocery store
The lady at the check out counter who rings it all up
The person who bags it
Everyone in that line is important in that process of you getting your everything bagel with cream cheese each morning.
And like Luther said, God could absolutely answer that prayer miraculously - like we see by Him providing the Israelites with manna in Exodus 16. You could walk outside each morning - bam* - everything bagel. Which would be sweet, right? Except for the dew I guess. You know, I'm going to stop analyzing it.
Typically - though - God typically provides for our basic needs through the skills, talents, and careers of others.
The point is this: Whatever your job is, you should see it as a gifting by God to meet the needs of others, and we should see our jobs as gifts by God to bless others.
Because I'll tell you - pining away for years with thoughts like, "I'm not making a real difference - in anything." That's a recipe for developing a bitter heart. And it's turning a blind eye to the gifting(s) that God has given to you as a possible means through which He may be meeting the needs of others.
Question 2: Are there ways your job (or skills/talents) can benefit someone less fortunate?
Now before we get into this - I'm not standing here meaning that you need to quit your job, start a non-profit, and nothing else. No more profit." You can honor God and make a profit.
But think about this: is there an aspect of your career that you could use to bless others?
What comes to mind:
I remember as a child when my dad went to Jamaica (not the touristy part), to volunteer his skills/abilities/time and provide dental work to kids and families who didn't have the means to see a dentist.
Or lawyers who dedicate a portion of their cases to be pro bono.
There's a jewelry maker that also comes to mind whom, through their talents and skills, also run a company that helps employ people transitioning out of homelessness by stamping messages on keys - called Giving Keys.
Or the chef/cook who donates their time cooking and feeding the homeless.
I know another dentist who donated some of their skills and time by working at a prison - providing dental care for inmates.
When I worked as a project manager at a pretty large software development company, we had a program that non-profits could apply, and if accepted we would design logos, websites, and software - completely free.
None of these things are financially profitable, are they?
And beyond that - there is truly so much poverty in our world, that the skills that you have could transform communities. If you have thoughts of "climbing the ladder" at where you work - guaranteed you have skills that could dramatically impact someone in poverty.
But I believe this - and I'll say it time and time again - I believe that the skills and the resources that are needed to end most poverty, and most hunger - is already in the Church. God gave them to us, and is telling us how to use them - and I'm not referring solely to financial aspects. This is time, talent, skills, knowledge, etc.
So again: Are there ways that you might be able to leverage your skills/talents/resources to minister and serve those who are less fortunate than us?
Question 3: How can you leverage your job for the Great Commission?
During those years that I kept wondering about if what I was doing even mattered - I kept coming back to the Church. To God's calling for all of us, the Great Commission. I just - for the life of me - didn't know how to even start going about it.
Like one day I'd be eating some Alphabet Soup, I'd look down and the letters would all be rearranged to say, "You need to leave your job, make a portfolio, move to Tennessee, work at a church for years, and then one day become a pastor."
Nope. All it ever said was "asdjwepfioj" total gibberish. Total garbage.
But how many of us have thought that our calling as to how we're supposed to fulfill the Great Commission is going to just hit us like a bolt of lightning?
In fact, one day when I was positive that I needed to be working in the church, I called a family friend.
Before my second senior year at Texas Tech (my victory lap) I was interning as a graphic designer in Las Vegas, I worked at a church called Central Christian Church (now it’s called Central Church). I specifically interned there because a close family friend, Jud Wilhite is the Senior Pastor of the church, and during a family trip to Las Vegas, he offered an internship to me. Well, several years after that internship, we had kept in touch somewhat, but I had realized that I needed to be working in the church. That was just all that was in my mind. Day after day. “I shouldn’t be here, I should be in the church.” Eventually this grew to naively thinking that I was supposed to just be a Senior Pastor - just like that. So one day I called up Jud, and told him the great news. “Hey Jud, (and long story short here) I think I’m supposed to be a senior pastor. What do you think?” And his response, while incredibly wise, was actually the last thing that I wanted to hear in that moment. After telling me he thought it was great that I wanted to serve Christ in that way, and that I wanted to spend my life working in the church, he said, “I do have a question for you though.” “Sure thing, what is it?”
“What are you doing, right now, to share God with others in your own ministry at work?”
The one question I didn't want to be asked.
Yet there it was. And I didn’t have a great answer. But it was that one sentence - in just one sentence, it was a challenge that changed my entire thought process. And he was right, I remember thinking, “What am I doing to share Christ with others?” The answer was nothing.
But the great thing now, years later, is that I get to ask it of you as well. "What're you doing now, to share God with others in your own ministry?"
Because I'll tell you: the call to leverage your life, your job/talents/resources, for the spread of the Gospel is included in the call to follow Jesus Christ.
“And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.””
When you accepted Christ's invitation to follow Him - it's accepting a call to spread the gospel.
That has to mean something in light of the parable of the Great Banquet.
If you've sat there at work or at home like I have, thinking "I just need to find God's call for my life" - it's not lost.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
If you're waiting around for a voice - you've got a verse.
"...not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."
There it is. You have the call. God intends to use us as His children to bring those who are lost to Jesus. You don't know who might by in your life, that God intends to use you as a means of starting that first conversation. Planting that seed that one day grows into a faith in Christ. And I'll tell you first hand - one of the absolute hardest things about being a pastor - actually just a Christian in general, is not always getting to see the results of our efforts - in this lifetime.
Here's a perspective that I wish I would have had as a young Christian. I've talked to some of you about this who have told me, and I love this - "I'm so results oriented that God protects me from seeing the results of my work." What a perspective. Really. It's so easy to let it go to our head, "I did that!"
But if my chief complaint in witnessing to others is that I wished I could see them come to Christ right there - what an amazing complaint to have. That's surely a blessing.
Be willing to be the key that God uses in someone else's life.
So that's question 1 for today from our parable: "If your life was depicted as a banquet - who are you inviting?"
Question 2: Are you including outsiders at your dinner table?
Here's question 2, and it's way more literal than the first one: "Are you including outsiders at your dinner table?"
There's a woman named Rosaria Butterfield, who's now a Christian author. She talks about coming to faith in one of her books, specifically after she wrote a scathing article about Christians. She said that for months she received just tons of letters, and she just separated them into two piles - "Hate" and "Love." People that would write her saying, "thanks for your words - totally agree with what you had to say about Christians" - that went to the love pile. Letters that said, "you're a disgusting human being - how dare you write something like that!" right on over to the hate pile.
Well one day she received a letter from a pastor of a small church named Kent Smith. She said that it was obvious that he disagreed with her article, but he spoke with such kindness and tenderness to me in the letter. He actually invited me to dinner at his house with he and his wife. She said, "I stared at that letter for what was probably five or six minutes and I couldn't figure out what pile to put it in." Well eventually she just put it in the drawer. Every two or three days she'd revisit the letter, "What pile does this belong to?" She told one of her friends about it, and they suggested: "take him up on his offer. Why don't you go to dinner at his house with he and his wife? Plus it'll be a good opportunity for you to sort of study them - a first-hand account of these crazy, Bible-believing Christians. You never know, you might even get another article out of it." So she did. She took him up on his offer. On a Sunday night. And then again on the next Sunday night. And then again on the next Sunday night. For 2 years she went to dinner at his house almost every Sunday night. Now to make a long story short - here's a summary of what she said, "Because of their kindness, tenderness, and love toward me - I came to faith in Christ." She said: “There were so many people coming to the Smith house that it was as if the front door didn’t actually exist.”
She then went on to point out that in today’s climate, this is the main way people will have to be reached, through our hospitality and kindness. Our homes might just be one of the most important tools that God has given us for the spread of the Gospel. And it’s the primary way Scripture tells us to reach out to people! It's how Jesus time and time again reached out to people. Like my little joke at the beginning of our time together today about Jesus constantly eating with people in the book of Luke.
Maybe there was a reason.
Here's a quote that from Rosaria that I'd like to share with you:
“Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom... My prayer is that this book will help you let God use your home, apartment, dorm room, front yard, community gymnasium, or garden for the purpose of making strangers into neighbors and neighbors into family.”
Now here's this, and get ready for this:
In the book she provides a typical overview of what the typical Butterfield Family's week looks like:
Sunday — worship and fellowship, which includes a fellowship
meal for church family at the Butterfield’s house for ten to thirty
people on Sunday nights
Monday — sometimes delivers a meal to a neighbor in need
Tuesday — dinner, informal conversation, and prayer at
Butterfield home with neighbors and church friends
Wednesday — prayer meeting at church; errands, such as
dropping off a gift to a neighbor in jail
Thursday — prayer walk in the evening with neighbors; Thursday
is regular “neighbor night”
Friday — regular Costco run with an offer to pick up items for
neighbors; optional meal and fellowship with neighbors
Saturday — optional meal and prayer with church members and
neighbors
And can you believe that I've let the words leave my mouth, "I'm pretty busy these days..."
Ha. Okay.
Notice the words about that schedule - that's a typical week. Not a busy week.
And I'll be honest - that's not my family's schedule right now. I don't if that will ever be a schedule that my family holds to exactly like that - but that doesn't change the fact that all of those things are things that just about any of us can do.
You don't have to have a great home to go on a walk around the neighborhood, and when you see a neighbor strike up a conversation and say, "If there's anything that I could be praying for for you, I'd love to do that." That's free - and it probably takes a 5 minute conversation.
And at the core of it, it just takes believing that God wants us to include those that we don't know in our rhythms of life.
So many people think, "I don't know the Bible well enough to possibly convince anyone to follow Christ."
I wonder how many times all it would take is an invitation to dinner at your house. Or to stop in their driveway once a week to say hi and ask how you could pray for them. Maybe all it takes is being there with a meal at their home when they're sick.
How many times do we make it so complicated, when really the way to reach the people right around us, is by being a good neighbor?
And believe me - I understand how easy it is and how comfortable it is to enjoy a meal at your home in fellowship with your friends. With your church friends even. But here's another question: why not also include the single mother down the street who's struggling to put food on the table? Why not include that neighbor around the corner who is going through a hard time, and even though they're not sure what all this prayer stuff is even doing or if God is even real - why not invite them into a home where they can experience the love and joy of knowing Christ firsthand? Where's the orphan? Where's the abused?
Let's make it harder - where's the ex-prisoner around the dinner table?
And look - I completely understand the fear of talking to someone you don't know about their faith, much less opening your home or schedule/time to them. If you had only met me in 2014-2017, right out of college. Shy, nervous. I sat in small groups during that time almost always silent during the lesson out of fear that I might say the wrong thing.
But let me encourage you with this: The question isn't "what if a stranger is mean, or what if they reject what I have to say, or what if I'm not smart enough to talk to them? What if they're dangerous? You don't know every single person that exists - and you're telling me to have hospitality?" The question for me shifted to, "What's going to happen to me, how dangerous will it be for me if I don't open up? If I don't have that conversation? How rejected will other people feel if I don't open up and be vulnerable? If I don't talk to them?"
I've had hard conversations. I've had tough discussions with family members. But I've also had amazing, life-giving, and life-changing discussions with people because I've made a conscious effort to stop letting fear hold me back allowing God to use me to be an instrument through which He may be wanting to impact someone else's life.
But his is what it means to follow Jesus! What do you think growing in Christlikeness means? What do you think sanctification really is? To get busy in church? Memorize some verses? Clean yourself up a little morally and stop using dirty words?
Christ didn't go through the torture and death that He did so that He could save you, sanitize you, and put you right up there on the shelf; He saved you to send you into service and to spread the gospel to all and anyone that will listen.
Last week I talked about how we are a church of action - from our mission statement to our values. All actions. After this service go out there and read them.
This is the heartbeat of the Church - action into serving others the other 167 hours of the week that you're not here, be that at work, or at home. As we strive to be more like Christ day after day, look at who He told us to invite to the table. Build relationships, invest your time into others that may not be able to pay you back, and allow for God to use you, your skills, your talents, your job, your resources - to grow the Kingdom, and to spread the Gospel to all nations.