Twenty-eighth Sunday after Pentecost
The Parable of the Supper
Luke 14:16-24
From The Explanation of the Gospel of St. Luke
by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria
16-20.
Then said He unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and called
many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were
called, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one accord
began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of
ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.
And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove
them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a
wife, and therefore I cannot come. Because the man who sat at table with Him had said, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God, the Lord teaches him at some length what it means to feast with God, and tells this parable. By a certain man the
Lord means His Father, the Lover of man. Whenever Scripture alludes to
God's power to punish, He is called a panther, a leopard, or a bear
[Hos. 13:7-8]. But whenever it alludes to God's love for man, He is
presented as a man, as is the case here. Since the parable treats of
God's extreme love for man and the divine economy of the Incarnation
which He worked in us, making us sharers of the Flesh of His Son, the
parable calls God a man and this divine economy a great supper. It is a supper because the Lord came in the last days, as it were at the evening of this age. And this supper is great because great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our salvation. [I Tim. 3:16] And he sent his servant at supper time. Who
is this servant? The Son of God, Who assumed the form a servant and
became man, and as a man is said to have been sent forth. Notice how He
did not say "a servant," but instead, using the definite article, the servant [of his.] (1)
Christ
is the One and only Servant Who in His human nature was perfectly
obedient and pleasing to God. For Christ is pleasing to the Father not
only as Son and God, but also as Man. He is the only Sinless One Who
carried out all the counsels and commandments of the Father and
fulfilled all righteousness, and in this sense is said to serve God the
Father. He alone can be called the true Servant of God. He was sent at supper time, that
is, at the appointed and proper time. For there was no other time more
opportune for our salvation than the reign of Caesar Augustus, when
iniquity had reached its peak and it was critical that it be cleansed.
Just as physicians allow a festering and malignant boil to burst and
release all its foul pus, and only then apply the medication, so too it
was necessary that sin first display all its forms, and then the Great
Physician applied His medicine. For this very reason the Lord waited for
the devil to fill the full measure of iniquity, and then the Son of God
took flesh and healed every form of iniquity by every aspect of His
holy life. Therefore He was sent at that hour, that is, at that comely
and opportune season of which David says, Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, 0 Mighty One, in Thy comeliness. (2) Certainly the sword here signifies the Word of God [Heb. 4:12], while the words upon Thy thigh indicate His Nativity in the flesh which was in comeliness, that is, when the time was right and seemly. He was sent to speak to those who had been called. Who are those that were called? Perhaps
this refers to all men. For God has called all to the knowledge of Him,
by means of the order and harmony of visible creation, and by means of
the natural law. But those that were called are
also, more specifically, the children of Israel, who were called
through the law and the prophets. In the first place, then, the Lord was
sent to the sheep of the house of Israel. [Mt. 15:24] The Lord was
saying to all the Jews, Come, for all things are now ready, when He proclaimed the good tidings that the kingdom of heaven is at hand [Mt. 4:17], and among you [Lk. 17:21].
And they all with one accord began to make excuse,
that is, as if at a signal. For all the leaders of the Jews refused to
have Jesus as their King, and thus were found unworthy of the supper,
one because of his love of wealth, and another because of his love of
pleasure. The man who bought a piece of ground and the man who bought
the five yoke of oxen signify those who love wealth, while the man who
married a wife signifies those who love pleasure. Furthermore, the man
who bought a piece of ground signifies the man who cannot accept the
mystery of faith because he is governed by the wisdom of this world. The
piece of ground represents the world and, in general, nature, and the
man who must go and see his piece of ground is
he who sees only nature, and cannot accept what is beyond nature.
Therefore the Pharisee, for example, "sees his piece of ground," that
is, he looks only at the laws of nature and cannot accept that a Virgin
gave birth to God, because that is beyond nature. Because they are
examining this "piece of ground," that is, nature, none of those who
boast in external wisdom have recognized Jesus Who made nature new. The
man who bought five yoke of oxen, and tested them, also represents a man
who loves the material world. He has yoked the five senses of the soul
to the five senses of the body and has made the soul into flesh. For
this reason he is concerned only with the earth and does not desire to
commune of the rational Supper, for as Wisdom says, How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough?
[Eccles. (Wis. of Sirach) 38:25] He who stays behind because of a wife
is a lover of pleasure who has devoted himself to the flesh, the mate of
the soul. By cleaving to the flesh he cannot please God. You may also
understand these things literally. We also fall away from God because of
fields, because of yokes of oxen, because of marriages, when we become
so attached to them that they consume our whole life and we are carried
away even to the point of shedding blood over them. Then there is no
divine thought or word that we can practice, or even comprehend.
21-24.
So that servant came, and declared to his lord these things. Then the
master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into
the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and
the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it
is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said
unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them
to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none
of those men which were called shall taste of my supper. The rulers of the Jews were rejected, and not one of them believed in Christ. And they even boasted of their malice, saying, Have any of the rulers believed on Him?
[Jn. 7:48] Therefore these students of the law and scribes, as the
prophet says, became foolish and fell from grace. But the simple from
among the Jews are likened to the halt, the blind, and the maimed. It is
the foolish of this world, the lowly, who were called. For the
multitude marvelled at the words of grace which proceeded from the mouth
of Jesus, and they rejoiced in His teaching. But after these had come
to Him from the sons of Israel, that is, from the chosen whom God
foreordained for His glory, such as Peter, and the sons of Zebedee, and
the tens of thousands of those Jews who believed, then God's goodness
was poured out also upon the Gentiles. For those who are in the highways and hedges mean
the Gentiles. The Israelites were within the city, inasmuch as they had
received the lawgiving and inherited a civil and moral way of life. But
the Gentiles were strangers to the Covenants, and the lawgiving of
Christ was foreign to them. They were not fellow citizens of the saints,
and did not travel the one true path, but instead followed many
highways of lawlessness and coarseness, and were to be found in the
hedges, that is, in sins. For sin is a great hedge and middle wall which
separates us from God. By highways He signifies the Gentiles' coarse way of life, which led them to so many false beliefs. By hedges He
signifies their life of sins. The master does not command his servant
simply to call all those in the highways and hedges, but to compel them to come in, although each man is free whether to believe or not. But He uses the word compel to
teach us that it is a sign of God's great power that the Gentiles, who
were in such ignorance, came to believe. If the power of the preaching
and the might of the word of truth had not been so great, how could men
who were crazed with idol worship and practiced unspeakable things have
been persuaded all at once to know the true God, and to perfect a
spiritual life? He called this "compulsion" to show the miraculousness
of their change. One might say that the pagan Greeks did not want to
leave their idols and their rich feasting, yet they were compelled to
flee from them by the truth of the Gospel. Also, the power of the
miracles He worked was a strong force that induced them to be converted
to faith in Christ. Every day this Supper is prepared and we are all
invited to the kingdom which God prepared for man even before the
foundation of the world. But we are not worthy of this Supper—some of us
because of useless philosophical musings, others because of love of
material things, and yet others because of pleasures of the flesh. But
God in His love for man freely bestows this kingdom upon other sinners,
upon the blind who have no spiritual vision to perceive the will of God;
or if they can perceive it, upon those who are crippled and unable to
take a step to do the will of God. And in short He grants the kingdom of
heaven to all the poor who have fallen away from the glory above, and
even to the maimed who cannot show forth in themselves a blameless life.
To invite these sinners to the Supper, who are wandering astray in the
streets and broad avenues of sin, the Father sends His Son Who became a
Servant according to the flesh, and Who came not to call the righteous,
but sinners. All these He feasts liberally, instead of the clever, the
rich, and those who indulge the flesh. By the judgments known to Him
alone He sends diseases and dangers upon many, causing them, even
against their will, to renounce this life. Thus He leads them to His
Supper, "compelling" them by means of the dangers. There are many
examples of this. Understood in a simpler way, this parable also teaches
us to show favor to the poor and the crippled rather than to the rich,
just as He exhorted us to do a short while before. [Lk. 14:13-14] It is
for this reason that He tells this parable, to confirm that we must give
hospitality to the poor. And we may also learn from this that we should
be so eager and generous in welcoming our brethren that, even when they
are reluctant, we should compel them to partake of our good things.
This is also good advice for teachers: teach what is necessary, even
when the students are unwilling.
1. The definite article is present in the Greek text, ton doulon autou [the servant of him], but not in the English translation, his servant, because in English the possessive pronoun coming before the noun replaces any articles.
2. Ps. 44:3. The Greek word oraiotetos, rendered here as comeliness, derives from the adjective oraios, which in turn derives from the noun ora, which means "hour." This Greek word for "beautiful," oraios, has a broad range of meanings including, "coming at the right season [ora], seasonable, timely, ripe, at the bloom of youth, beautiful."
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