Sabbath Banquet (Luke 14: 1-24)

Hear ye! Hear ye! I present to you the Good News according to Caesar Augustus, he who stopped a full-blown Roman civil war and is therefore the bringer of peace and Savior of the world. He is the son of the divine Julius Caesar, and the one who provides bread and sustenance to the people.

The good news is this:

Order will be maintained. The rich will keep their wealth. The powerful will keep their power. No one will take it away from them. It is Caesar who saves people from the turmoil of anarchy, revolution, and warfare.

Thus we celebrate the birthday of the divine Caesar and adopt that date as the beginning of the new year, for his birthday has been for the whole world the beginning of the Good News.

This was the message proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire. This was why people gathered together for banquets in Caesar’s name. Every formal banquet was a celebration of Rome and of Caesar.

The banquet was one tool Rome used to reinforce this message; and the message couldn’t be any clearer:

All glory belongs to Caesar!

There were those who tried to challenge this message; people who presented their own, alternative vision of how society should be.

They were quickly met with the might of the Roman army. Would-be revolutionaries were crucified, and crosses lined the roads leading into and out of major cities as a reminder that Rome would not tolerate anyone who dared to challenge the Good News of Caesar.

Stability and order were key aspects of Caesar’s good news. Therefore, the divisions between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, were enforced. There would be no rocking the boat. Everyone would be kept in their place, whether it was a high place or a low place. That kept society stable. That kept the peace. It was a world of inequality, but that’s how it was. Fate, or the gods, had destined a few to greatness, and the rest to lives of servitude and poverty.

It was for the good of society.

Within the Roman Empire was a small group of Jews. The Jews had a vision of society that contrasted with the vision put forth by Caesar. According to the Jewish vision of society, people in poverty were provided with a way out of their poverty. According to the Jewish vision, everyone was to be given a chance at a better life, of escaping poverty.

The primary way this was achieved was through the Sabbath. Leviticus 25 describes how the Sabbath was a day off, a day of rest, for the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor, the master and the slave.

Yes, even slaves had rights in this alternative vision.

The Sabbath was a reminder to those in charge that every person was human, that every person was equal in the eyes of God, that no person was inherently better than another.

But the sabbath wasn’t just measured in days. It was also measured in years. Every seventh year was a sabbath year, for the land. You can work your land for six years, but the seventh year was to be a year of rest for your land.

And then the biggest sabbath of all: after seven of these seven-year periods – in other words, after 49 years – the year after that, the 50^th year, would be a year of jubilee. And in the year of jubilee, all debts would be forgiven. All slaves would be set free. All land would be returned to its original owner, even if that original owner had lost the land due to debt.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And so the laws of the sabbath were about freedom and liberation. The laws of the sabbath made sure that the rich didn’t become too rich over the years at the expense of the poor. The gap between rich and poor, powerful and weak could only grow so much, because at the year of Jubilee, all of society gets a reboot. Debts are forgiven. Captives are liberated. The people are made free once again.

That’s what the Sabbath is all about: freedom, liberation, and equality.

The banquet in today’s scripture story took place on the Sabbath.

Before he arrived at the banquet, Jesus had been teaching in the local synagogue when a crippled woman appeared before him. When he saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

Jesus saw “setting people free” perfectly in line with keeping the Sabbath.

But the leader of the synagogue was “indignant.” The leader of the synagogue proclaimed, “There are six days on which work ought to be done! Come be healed on one of those days, not on the Sabbath!”

The leader of the synagogue (who was appointed to his position by Rome) was worried about what Rome would do if all this “freedom and liberation” stuff got out of hand. So the very same Sabbath laws that Jesus used to justify healing and setting people free, this leader used to squash healing and setting people free.

Later, at the banquet, the meal was interrupted by a man with terrible swelling in his body. Remembering his earlier encounter with the crippled woman, Jesus said to the Pharisees at the banquet: “What do you think: is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?”

But they were silent.

Jesus healed the man and sent him on his way. Then he said to his fellow banquet guests: “If your child or ox falls into a well and is trapped, wouldn’t you immediately work to free your child or your ox, even on a Sabbath day?”

Again, they were silent.

Their silence is interesting. What do you make of it?

Here’s what I think.

I think the Pharisees at the banquet were stuck. They were stuck between the Jewish vision of how things should be, and Caesar’s vision of how things should be. According to the Jewish vision of society, the religious view, the Sabbath is made for freedom and liberation. So of course a person who is trapped, enslaved, captive, can and should be set free on the Sabbath.

On the other hand, as men of power and influence, they benefitted greatly from Caesar’s vision of society. They may not have been willing to admit it, but the Roman emphasis on keeping people in their place, keeping the poor poor, keeping those at the bottom of society at the bottom, benefitted them greatly. The greater the distance between them and those at the bottom of society, the greater they appeared in the eyes of men.

And they liked appearing great. Who wouldn’t?

So. Instead of using the Sabbath to liberate people, they used the Sabbath as justification to keep people captive. The Sabbath provided a great excuse to do nothing.

That is not what the Sabbath is for. The Sabbath was for liberation and freedom and equality for all people. Jesus knew that. The Pharisees knew it, too, but it was for them an inconvenient truth which they chose to ignore.

After healing the man with dropsy, Jesus used the post-meal symposium to educate the Pharisees on their misplaced desire for greatness.

He said: “When you came into the triclinium and chose your place at the banquet table, you all looked for the place of highest honor. This is, of course, a Roman meal and that is the Roman way.

“But the religious way is different. When you are invited to a banquet, do not seek the place of highest honor. Seek the lowest place. Then, quite possibly, the host will come to you and say, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ But if you choose the highest place, the host may very well come to you and make you move down lower, and you will be disgraced.

In the Roman world, those who seek the highest place for themselves often find it. But in God’s kingdom, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Then Jesus said to the host: “When you sent out invitations, you invited people whose presence would add to your greatness; people who you now expect to pay you back in some way.

“That’s how the Romans do things.

“But were you to dwell in God’s kingdom, you would invite those who cannot pay you back. You would invite the poor. You would invite the crippled, like that woman in the synagogue earlier today, or the man who interrupted our meal here. They cannot repay you. In Caesar’s kingdom, they can do nothing for you. But in God’s kingdom, you would be blessed.”

One of the guests then said, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” He was thinking of God’s kingdom as some far-off future kingdom, not a present reality. In response, Jesus told a parable about a great kingdom banquet set not in some future time, but in a very real, present setting.

The point? You should be living now as those who belong to the kingdom of God. For the Pharisees, the present is all about Caesar’s kingdom and their place in it, but right now, today, they should be focusing instead on God’s kingdom.

For Jesus, the kingdom is fully present now. This means that those who have been burdened by society find release. Now. Those who are captive find freedom. Now. Those who are oppressed are set free. Now.

Jesus’s views are clearly subversive. That’s how he knew that a cross was in his future. Rome doesn’t tolerate views like his.

We who today gather with Christ around the banquet table are called to be just as subversive. We are called to seek the same freedom and liberation for all of God’s people. We are called to challenge a society that still keeps people in their place, a society that denies certain groups of people the opportunity to find a better life.

Which is why many who gather around the Lord’s Table on Sunday morning then go out and challenge the rules of society. They leave this table and push for a higher minimum wage. They leave this table and advocate for equal pay for equal work. They leave this table and fight for greater assistance to low income families. They leave this table and call upon their leaders to reform our immigration policies. They leave this table and demand that voting rights be protected. They leave this table and demand justice in our courts and our prisons. They leave this table and cry out for less money on warfare, and more money on education. They leave this table and expose the injustice of a society that cares more about the survival of corporations than it does the survival of working class families.

In short, they leave this table determined to live out their prayer that God’s name is hallowed on earth as it is in heaven, that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, and that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is the prayer we pray every week when we gather around the banquet table. Every week we pray that the Sabbath vision of God’s kingdom – a vision of liberation and freedom and equality – may become realities for all people in our society… and we commit ourselves to the task as we follow our Lord Jesus Christ.