The Great Banquet
Read the parable
- Luke 14:15-24 Primary account
Context
Still at the Pharisee's sabbath dinner, a guest exclaimed, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God" — a pious commonplace. Jesus answered with this parable. By custom a great supper was announced in advance and a servant sent at the hour to summon the accepted guests, so the last-minute excuses (a field, five yoke of oxen, a new wife) are transparent, insulting evasions of an invitation already accepted.
Meaning
The blessedness of the kingdom feast is real — but the shocking point is who ends up enjoying it. The respectable invitees excuse themselves for possessions and relationships, ordinary good things made into refusals of God. The host's anger turns to astonishing grace: the poor, maimed, halt, and blind are brought in from the streets, and the servant is sent to the highways and hedges to "compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." The parable warns the religiously comfortable that their place can be forfeited by polite refusal, and it previews the gospel's embrace of the outcast and, ultimately, the Gentiles.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.