Today’s passage: Luke 14:1-24
Helpful thoughts:
- When the Pharisees ate together in these settings, they would only invite their equals or people who would elevate their status. There was a reason for Jesus and a man with “dropsy” to be invited on this particular day, and it wasn’t benevolence.
- “They were watching him carefully” because they they wanted to catch Jesus touching the unclean man and healing on the Sabbath.
- Jesus “took” the man and healed him. Jesus left no doubt in his compassion. He didn’t secretly touch the man on the shoulder or heal from a distance (Which he surely could have done). He grabbed the man up with vigor and lovingly healed him as the Pharisees watched in silence in order to protect their own selves.
- The unclean man didn’t make Jesus unclean. Jesus made this man clean.
- When one of the Pharisees declared, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”, he was actively disagreeing with Jesus and defending the honor of the Pharisees’ way of life.
- Jesus’ response makes clear that if the Pharisees lived for the honor they were receiving in their banquets and among men, it was all the honor they would ever receive.
Questions to consider:
- What should the church look like? What “kinds” of people should we be excited to serve and to see coming? How might our varying levels of excitement be an indicator of our own struggle to be respecters of persons?
- In a culture where helping “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” can enhance our reputation, how can we know we are growing in the application of Jesus’ teaching?
- When the invitees chose not to come to the banquet, who was the master upset with? What role did the servant play? What was the servant responsible to do? Who was to be held responsible for the response to the invitation? How should this inform our evangelism still today in the “highways and hedges”?