he was going there. He naturally assumed Jesus would want to support him in this confidence. But, interestingly, Jesus doesn't. The master teacher had a special weapon in his armoury of rhetoric with which to prick the bubble of this kind of religious complacency. We saw him wield it against that lawyer in the last chapter. Here he displays it once again, to devastating effect; a parable with a sting in its tail.
A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests... (Luke 14:16).
This fellow was looking forward to the heavenly banquet secure in the knowledge that he would be there. He's waiting for a conventional reply to his conventional cliche about the blessing of the heavenly feast. And as Jesus begins to tell his story he must feel reassured that that is exactly what he is going to get.
By speaking of a great banquet Jesus is clearly taking up this well-known metaphor of the kingdom of God to which his fellow guest had already referred. The story opens, you will notice, with preparations for the coming feast already well under way. Guests have received their invitations. Jesus' audience would have no trouble decoding this. It is clearly a reference to the preparatory work of the Old Testament prophets who had given preliminary notification of the kingdom's future arrival. As for these guests who had been invited, they (of course) were the Jews, God's chosen people to whom the prophets had addressed their inspired words. No doubt Jesus' audience anticipated that the story was going to go on, through its extended metaphor, to expound the bliss of the kingdom of God, to describe how rich the menu would be, perhaps, or how honoured the guests.
But at this point Jesus' story starts to take a less conventional line.
53
