'They all with one consent began to make excuse.
--LUKE xiv. 18.
Jesus Christ was at a feast in a Pharisee's house. It was a strange
place for Him--and His words at the table were also strange. For He
first rebuked the guests, and then the host; telling the former to
take the lower rooms, and bidding the latter widen his hospitality
to those that could not recompense him. It was a sharp saying; and
one of the other guests turned the edge of it by laying hold of our
Lord's final words: 'Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection
of the just,' and saying, no doubt in a pious tone and with a devout
shake of the head, 'Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the
Kingdom of God.' It was a very proper thing to say, but there was a
ring of conventional, commonplace piety about it, which struck
unpleasantly on Christ's ear. He answers the speaker with that
strange story of the great feast that nobody would come to, as if He
had said, 'You pretend to think that it is a blessed thing to eat
bread in the Kingdom of God, Why! You will not eat bread when it is
offered to you.'
I dare say you all know enough of the parable to make it unnecessary
for me to go over it. A great feast is prepared; invitations, more
or less general, are sent out at first, everything is ready; and,
behold, there is a table, and nobody to sit at it. A strange
experience for a hospitable man! And so he sends his servants to
beat up the unwilling guests, and, one after another, with more or
less politeness, refuses to come.
I need not follow the story further. In the latter part of the
parable our Lord shadows the transference of the blessings of the
Kingdom to the Gentiles, outcasts as the Jews thought them, skulking
in the hedges and tramping on the highways. In the first part He
foreshadows the failure of His own preaching amongst His own people.
But Jews and Englishmen are very much alike. The way in which these
invited guests treated the invitation to this feast is being
repeated, day by day, by thousands of men round us; and by some of
ourselves. 'They all, with one consent, began to make excuse.'
I. The first thing that I would desire you to notice is the
strangely unanimous refusal.
The guests' conduct in the story is such as life and reality would
afford no example of. No set of people, asked to a great banquet,
would behave as these people in the parable do. Then, is the
introduction of such an unnatural trait as this a fault in the
construction of narrative? No! Rather it is a beauty, for the very
point of the story is the utter unnaturalness of the conduct
described, and the contrast that is presented between the way in
which men regard the lower blessings from which these people are
represented as turning, and in which they regard the loftier
blessings that are offered. Nobody would turn his hack upon such a
banquet if he had the chance of going to it. What, then, shall we
say of those who, by platoons and regiments, turn their backs upon
this higher offer? The very preposterous unnaturalness of the
conduct, if the parable were a true story, points to the deep
meaning that lies behind it: that in that higher region the
unnatural is the universal, or all but universal.
And, indeed, it is so. One would almost venture to say that there is
a kind of law according to which the more valuable a thing is the
less men care to have it; or, if you like to put it into more
scientific language, the attraction of an object is in the inverse
ratio to its worth. Small things, transitory things, material
things, everybody grasps at; and the number of graspers steadily
decreases as you go up the scale in preciousness, until, when you
reach the highest of all, there are the fewest that want them. Is
there anything lower than good that merely gratifies the body? Is
there anything that the most of men want more? Are there many things
lower in the scale than money? Are there many things that pull more
strongly? Is not truth better than wealth? Are there more pursuers
of it than there are of the former? For one man who is eager to
know, and counts his life well spent, in following knowledge
'Like a sinking star,
Beyond the furthest bounds of human thought,'
there are a hundred who think it rightly expended in the pursuit
after the wealth that perishes. Is not goodness higher than truth,
and are not the men that are content to devote themselves to
becoming wise more numerous than those that are content to devote
themselves to becoming pure? And, topmost of all, is there anything
to be compared with the gifts that are held out to us in that great
Saviour and in His message? And is there anything that the mass of
men pass by with more unanimous refusal than the offered feast which
the great King of humanity has provided for His subjects? What is
offered for each of us, pressed upon us, in the gift of Jesus
Christ? Help, guidance, companionship, restfulness of heart, power
of obedience, victory over self, control of passions, supremacy over
circumstances, tranquillity deep and genuine, death abolished,
Heaven opened, measureless hopes following upon perfect fruition,
here and hereafter. These things are all gathered into, and their
various sparkles absorbed in, the one steady light of that one great
encyclopaediacal word--Salvation. These gifts are going begging,
lying at our doors, offered to every one of us, pressed upon all on
the simple condition of taking Christ for Saviour and King. And what
do we do with them? 'They all, with one consent, began to make
excuse.'
One hears of barbarous people that have no use for the gold that
abounds in their country, and do not think it half as valuable as
glass beads. That is how men estimate the true and the trumpery
treasures which Christ and the world offer. I declare it seems to me
that, calmly looking at men's nature, and their duration, and then
thinking of the aims of the most of them, we should not be very far
wrong if we said an epidemic of insanity sits upon the world. For
surely to turn away from the gold and to hug the glass beads is very
little short of madness. 'This their way is their folly, and their
posterity approve their sayings.'
And now notice that this refusal may be, and often in fact is,
accompanied with lip recognition of the preciousness of the
neglected things. That Pharisee who put up the pillow of his pious
sentiment--a piece of cant, because he did not feel what he was
saying--to deaden the cannon-ball of Christ's word, is only a
pattern of a good many of us who think that to say, 'Blessed is he
that eateth bread in the Kingdom of God,' with the proper unctuous
roll of the voice, is pretty nearly as good as to take the bread
that is offered to us. There are no more difficult people to get at
than the people, of whom I am sure I have some specimens before me
now, who bow their heads in assent to the word of the Gospel, and by
bowing them escape its impact, and let it whistle harmlessly over.
You that believe every word that I or my brethren preach, and never
dream of letting it affect your conduct--if there be degrees in that
lunatic asylum of the world, surely you are candidates for the
highest place.