What did Jesus' Parable of Great Banquet mean?
‘I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’
Luke records the Parable of the Great Banquet said by Jesus which can be found in the Gospel of Luke 14:15–24. The same parable is recorded by Mattew found in the Gospel of Matthew 12, with drastic differences.
Although both the written records might be highly accurate, the differences that we find are probably due to the following reasons:
- Firstly, the author’s intention and the intended audience for Matthew and Luke to write their respective gospels are totally different. Matthew wrote his gospel clearly to the Jewish audience being the most Jewish of all the disciples. Whereas Luke has written the gospels Luke and Acts to a person called Theophilus who is assumed to hold a high position in society.
- The intention of Matthew to write the gospel is to explain the ruthless reality to Jews and the intention of Luke while writing the Gospel of Luke is to bring Theophilus who he cares about and respects dearly, to come close to Christ.
- Simply put, Luke and Matthew would have written only parts of what Jesus would have spoken with a pinch of their literary style keeping in mind their agenda.
This parable according to Luke takes place when Jesus goes to Pharisee’s house to eat. Jesus had all eyes on him (Matthew 14:1) and seeing it as an opportunity to teach them, Jesus healed a sick person on the Sabbath and asks everyone questions to make them think. Then Jesus starts talking about humbleness and serving others, during which he mentions if you serve others, who are poor, crippled, lame and blind, ‘you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’ (Matthew 14:14).
Catching that exact phrase of Jesus, the person who speaks to Jesus in Matthew 14:15 says that the people attending the banquet in the kingdom of God are blessed (Because they are now giving a banquet for which they intend to be rewarded back in heaven). We need to note here that most of the people in the banquet and the person who spoke to Jesus are Jews. And with their understanding that Jews are the chosen people of God, the person spoke in such a manner. Jesus then says this Parable of Great Banquet to explain about salvation and the chosen people.
The parable goes as follows: A certain man arranges a banquet for lots of invited guests, and when the banquet is ready, he sent his servants to call the invited guests to the banquet and the invited guests give excuses saying that they have other urgent things to take care of.
Hearing this, the master got angry and told his servants to bring the people who are blind, crippled, poor and lame, and even wanted his servants to compel others to come and fill the banquet. And the parable ends with the master saying ‘I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’
Jesus as in most of his parables is speaking in a metaphorical form. And with the surrounding parables, he is majorly focusing on the teaching about the Kingdom of God.
So to bring this parable into perspective, the master is God and the banquet is the kingdom of God and the invited guests to the banquet are the chosen people of God — Jews.
What Jesus is trying to communicate through this parable, to the statement raised by the person in Matthew 14:14 is, it is true that Jews are the ones that are the chosen people of God. But when God sent his Son to them, they rejected him.
As mentioned in the scriptures ‘His own did not receive Him.’ In this scripture, His own stands for Jews. When Jesus came down to this world and went to His chosen people (Jews) they rejected him to be the Messiah. This rejection is the excuse the invited guests made when they are invited to the banquet when it’s ready.
Also, the excuses given by the guests are laughable and not realistic. One person says he wants to see the land he bought, how can anyone buy land without seeing it? And who buys oxen without riding it first, and which married couple do not attend public gatherings?
This shows that even though Jews had all the reasons to believe in the Messiah, they simply chose not to, due to their dependence on worldly things.
In the end, the master of the house invites all that are not even invited to his banquet. With this illustration, Jesus talks about the extended salvation of God, in which salvation is open to all due to the rejection by Jews (Romans 3:23–24).
This is simply a prophecy fulfilled mentioned in Hosea 2:23 “I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people’, You are my people and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
