01.16. Chapter 5. The Great Supper
Chapter 5.
The Great Supper Or, the Kingdom for the Hungry. On hearing the table-talk of Jesus at the Sabbath-day feast in the Pharisee’s house, one of the guests took occasion, from the reference to the resurrection of the just, to make the pious reflection: "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Whereupon Jesus proceeded to speak the following parable, for the benefit of His fellow-guest, and all the rest who were present:— A certain man made a great supper,[1] and bade many: and sent his servant at supper time, to say to them that were bidden. Come, for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent[2] began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought afield, and must needs go to 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. And the servant returned, and reported to his master 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, what you commanded has been done, 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 tell you, That none of those men, the invited, shall taste of my supper.—Luk 14:16-24.
[1]
[2]
[1] Jer 23:36 But it is easy to see that the parable serves a wider purpose than merely to hold up the mirror to spurious self-deceiving piety, and show it its own worthlessness. There are elements in the parable not required for that purpose, but serving admirably another, viz. the defence of the speaker’s conduct in frequenting ofttimes very different company from that in which He found Himself. In that part of the parabolic representation which relates to the invitation of the poor from the streets and lanes, and of the poorer still from the highways and hedges, Jesus but describes His own conduct in preaching the Gospel to the publicans and sinners, and indirectly vindicates the policy by its success; saying in effect: "Ye wise and prudent, holy and respectable ones, despise the kingdom I preach; I invite therefore the outcasts to participate in its joys, and I am justified by their prompt response to my invitations."
Viewed didactically these two uses of censure and self-defence coalesce in one lesson. The parable teaches that the kingdom of heaven is not for the full, but for the hungry. In concrete pictorial form it declares that God filleth the hungry with good things, and sendeth the rich empty away. In conveying this lesson it sets forth another most important doctrine concerning the kingdom as a kingdom of grace. Indeed we cannot over-estimate the present parable as a contribution to the illustration of the gracious aspect of the kingdom. It is, in that point of view, full of most significant features. Everything is significant of grace: the selection of a feast as the emblem of the blessings promised, the behaviour of the first invited, the character of those invited in the second and third place, and the avowed motive of the repeated invitations—the desire to have the house filled. How easy to read off from these indications the truths that the kingdom is a free gift of Divine grace; that therefore it is despised by those who are full, and valued by those that are empty; that being for the needy it is offered to all the needy alike—to the most needy, most urgently—a catholic boon for the sinful suffering race of mankind! Undoubtedly we shall not err in our interpretation of this parable, if before all things we regard it as designed to exhibit the spirit of the kingdom which Christ preached, with its policy of unconventional worldwide charity, gainsaid of men, but justified by history.
We begin our study of the parable by considering first the account which it gives of the behaviour of the men first invited to the feast. Now what strikes one at the first glance in that behaviour is its unnaturalness or improbability. Invited to what is described as a great feast on some important occasion, instead of regarding the invitation as a great honour, and making every endeavour so to arrange their affairs that nothing may occur to prevent them from being present at the entertainment, all lightly esteem the privilege, and begin with one consent to invent excuses for absenting themselves. It is not usual with men invited to feasts so to act; the very feast at which the parable was spoken suffices to show how far such behaviour diverges from ordinary practice. Those who had been invited to sup with "one of the chief Pharisees" appear all to have presented themselves punctually at the supper hour, and they show the value they put on the honour conferred on them by striving eagerly to obtain the best places" at the table. It is no fault in the parable, however, that its representation at this point violates natural probability; the fault rather lies with those who act as represented. The story is invented to suit the facts; and if, as a mere story of natural life, it seems highly improbable, it is because men’s conduct in regard to the Divine kingdom is not according to right reason. And, in passing, we may take occasion to note the contrast between those parables which apologise for Christ’s conduct as the sinner’s friend, and this parable which describes the conduct of many in reference to the kingdom. What perfect naturalness characterises the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son! The shepherd, the housewife, and the father act exactly as we should expect; we should feel surprised if they acted otherwise. Here, on the contrary, our surprise is awakened by the behaviour depicted, and we are conscious of the need of effort to overcome distaste for the parabolic representation because it violates the law of probability. The difference is due to this, that Christ’s conduct was in accordance with right reason, and that of those who despised the kingdom of heaven was not. However strange Christ’s behaviour might appear to contemporaries, it was characterised by ’sweet reasonableness,’ and therefore it was easy to find parallels thereto in ordinary life, the naturalness of which would be recognised by every one. On the other hand, however common it might be for men to treat the Divine kingdom as the parable represents, such conduct was inherently unreasonable, and therefore it was difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to find a parallel to it in natural life, or to make a parabolic representation of it which should not appear highly improbable.[1]
[1] Professor Calderwood (’The Parables of our Lord,’ p. 102), remarking on the unusual character of the occurrences narrated in this parable, speaks of the expedients for supplying guests in place of those first invited as even more strange than the refusal of the latter. They are not so, however. Lightfoot and Schöttgen quote the Talmud in proof that the poor and wanderers were often invited. This being understood, it will at once be seen that it is no part of an expositor’s duty to set himself to invent hypotheses for the purpose of removing, or at least alleviating, the aspect of improbability presented by the behaviour of those first invited to the feast; or to waste time in trying to account for conduct which, like the origin of sin, is really unaccountable. The unanimous refusal of the guests to come to the feast is, indeed, hard to explain on any conceivable hypothesis. The hypothesis, for example, of a double invitation, one a good while before the feast day, and another when the festive hour was at hand, will not avail for the purpose. Whether such double invitations were customary or not, is a point on which it is difficult to arrive at a certain conclusion, and concerning which, accordingly, interpreters are divided in opinion. A double invitation is certainly implied in the parable. The guests were first bidden, and then the message was sent at supper-time: "Come, for all things are now ready." This representation is in accordance with the facts of Jewish history. The Jewish people were first invited by the prophets to participation in the blessings of the kingdom, and then when the hour of fulfilment came, and the kingdom was at hand, Jesus, as God’s servant, appeared, and cried, "Come to the feast long promised, and now ready." But it would be a mistake to imagine that the double invitation is meant to bring the conduct of the invited within the limits of natural probability. It is not fitted to do this, however we conceive of the two invitations, whether with some we regard the second invitation as rendered necessary by the first being indefinite, not fixing the time,[1] or, with others, as owing its origin to the dilatoriness of the guests, and being merely a reminder of a befinite invitation previously given.[2] It is enough to say that no custom could live which could have such utter failure to insure the end aimed at as its natural, or even as a possible, result. The result is a reductio ad absurdum of the method supposed to be adopted to insure attendance. The custom of issuing two invitations could only have prevailed, because on the whole it was found to work well; that is, because it usually issued in those invited to feasts presenting themselves duly at the festive hour. If so, then how came it to pass in this instance, that none of the invited rendered themselves at the feast chamber, but with one consent begged off from the engagement? However the strange fact is to be accounted for, no supposed customary double invitation will suffice to explain it; so that the question as to the actual existence of such a custom possesses only an antiquarian interest. For the discussion of such a question we do not profess either special competency or great inclination; therefore we content ourselves with expressing the opinion that it has not been proved that it was usual to send a message at the last moment,[3] and that a second message is represented as being sent, for a special reason. That reason may be, as already hinted, to make the parabolic representation correspond more exactly with the history of Israel, or it may be, as Godet suggests, to bring out the indisposition of the intended guests. The hour pre-announced, and well known to all, had arrived, and no guests had made their appearance. Therefore a second invitation is sent that no one might have it in his power to plead forgetfulness, and that it might be made apparent that the true cause of absence was indifference. With this view it accords that none of the guests does plead either ignorance or forgetfulness, as they all certainly would if they honestly could, for either plea would have been a stronger one than any of those actually advanced.
[1] So Goebel.
[2] So Meyer and Hofmann.
[3] Goebel quotes Rosenmüller in proof of the custom of double invitations, and Trench, after Grotius, refers to Est 5:1 to Est 6:14. Thomson, ’Land and Book,’ states, that a friend at whose house he was invited to dine, sent a message when the feast was ready. To the question, is this customary, he replies, "not among common people, or in cities whose manners are influenced by the West, but in Lebanon it still prevails. If a Sheik, Beg, or Emir invites, he always sends a servant to call you at the proper time." The custom he represents as confined to the wealthy (ν.p. 125).
Proceeding now to consider these excuses, we observe that they are all of the nature of pretexts, not one of them being a valid reason for non-attendance at the feast. The engagements with which the guests were preoccupied were all in themselves lawful and reasonable, but it could easily have been arranged, had the parties been so minded, that they should not come into collision with the previous engagement to attend the feast Even the marriage itself, the most urgent affair, could have been adjusted to the feast, and would have been by one who was in the humour. The pleas, one and all, indicate indifference. The state of mind of those who advanced them was this. They were aware that they were under invitation to a feast They cherished no disrespect to him from whom the invitation came, and had no desire to insult him by sending a blunt refusal to accept his hospitality. On the contrary they were pleased to have that hospitality in their offer, and probably at the moment of receiving the invitation their intention was to be present at the feast. But the feast did not appear, to their minds, an affair of urgent or supreme importance. So they went on their several ways after receiving the invitation as if nothing had happened, forming new engagements, without even recalling to their thoughts the prospective feast, or asking themselves whether the engagement already made, and those which they were making from day to day, were compatible. And so it happened that when the feast-day came, one found himself in possession of a newly-purchased piece of land which he greatly desired to see, another had just bought five yoke of oxen whose qualities he wished to ascertain by trial, and a third had just got married to a wife whom it would be altogether unseemly to leave so soon after. We are to assume that the facts were as stated. It is not necessary, in order to convict the intended guests of indifference, to suspect them of inventing excuses. Granting the truth of their respective allegations, it is evident that these are insufficient reasons for not going to the feast. Can the visit to the newly-bought land and the trial of the oxen not stand over till to-morrow, and what bride would object to her husband leaving her for a few hours to attend a feast in the house of one whom he held in honour, and whose favour it was important to secure? Manifestly, those who advance such pleas have no real desire to attend the feast Out of their own mouth they are condemned. Indifference is their common sin, and it is the sufficient explanation of their common behaviour. No need to seek for any other explanation. There may have been forgetfulness as well as indifference; but it was forgetfulness caused by indifference. Men do not forget what they are very much interested in. No wonder the host was angry when the excuses of his guests were reported to him by his servant. The men whom he invited had trifled with him. In spite of civil phrases and flimsy pretexts, that was the manifest state of the case.
Just such as these intended guests in the parable were the hearers of Jesus, and all like-minded, in their relation to the kingdom of God. They were solemn triflers in the matter of religion. They were under invitation to enter the kingdom, and they did not assume the attitude of men who avowedly cared nothing for it. On the contrary, they were pleased to think that its privileges were theirs in offer, and even gave themselves credit for setting a high value on them.[1] But in truth they did not. The kingdom of God had not, by any means, the first place in their esteem. And so it came to pass that when Jesus came and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom, and expounded to them its true nature, they turned a deaf ear to His message, and refused to accept His invitations, on grounds not less flimsy than those advanced by the men in the parable. The indifferent guests of the parable represent the sentimental guest of the Sabbath feast, and he, in turn, was a type of his generation, a fair sample of a large class of men who put right sentiment in place of right action; who said to God, "I go, Sir, and went not;" who talked much about the kingdom of heaven, yet cared little for it; who were very religious, yet very worldly; a class of which too many specimens exist in every age.
[1] Bleek assumes the first invited guests to have accepted the invitation. This, so far as the Jewish nation is concerned, is practically correct. They had accepted God’s invitation in the letter, but not in the spirit.
While altogether insufficient as excuses, these reasons for absence are very instructive as to the causes of indifference to the Divine kingdom. The samples supplied do not by any means exhaust the list of possible causes; they are only three out of many, and these such as are most suitable to be mentioned in a parable or popular story. They do not even, as some interpreters seem to think, indicate exhaustively the classes of causes of indifference. Worldly possessions, business occupations, social ties, are certainly very prevalent sources of religious indifference, but they do not account for all the ungodliness that is in the world. It may be questioned, indeed, whether they were the chief causes of the lukewarmness in reference to the kingdom, of Christ’s immediate hearers. At all events it is certain that there were other influences at work in producing the widespread unbelief with which Jewish society regarded Jesus and His teaching. The instructiveness of the excuses specified in the parable is to be found not in the exhaustiveness of the list, but in the suggestion of a general idea embracing all the various kinds of influence by which human hearts are rendered indifferent to the chief end and good of life. That general idea is preoccupation of mind.[1] Whatever preoccupies or fills the mind prevents the hunger which is necessary to the appreciation of God’s feast of grace. Among the things which fill the mind and heart are worldly goods, cares about food and raiment and business, social relationships and enjoyments. But there are preoccupations of a more spiritual kind by which even the nobler natures innocent of vulgar worldliness are kept aloof from the kingdom; preconceived opinions, philosophical or religious prejudices, pride of virtue. These fill the minds of many, and deaden the hunger of the soul for God’s kingdom and righteousness. These influences were powerfully at work among the contemporaries of Jesus, producing apathy or dislike towards Himself and His teaching. He indicated His knowledge of the fact when he uttered the familiar words, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent." The words point to a very different sort of preoccupation from any named in the parable—the preoccupation of the wisdom of the world. The wise men of Judaea in those days had their minds filled with cut and dry notions and theories about all things human and Divine; with a fixed idea about God, a fixed interpretation of every important Scripture text, a fixed theory as to the notes of the true Messiah, the nature of the kingdom and its righteousness. Hence when Christ came to them with a different set of ideas on all these topics He found among them no hunger or receptivity. He came teaching that God is a Father, and His doctrine met with no acceptance, because the public mind was preoccupied with the conception of God merely as the High and Lofty One, living above the world. He came preaching a righteousness which springs out of faith in God’s grace, and manifests itself in devoted love to Him who proclaims and embodies Divine grace. What chance was there of such views finding entrance into the hearts of men who conceived of righteousness as consisting in punctilious observance of a multitude of petty rules concerning matters of no ethical or intrinsic importance? He came offering to his contemporaries, in His own Person, a meek, lowly, suffering Messiah, a man of sorrows and tenderest human sympathies; and He was welcomed only by a few ’babes,’ ignorant, obscure, sinful persons of no social consequence, because the minds of the ’wise and understanding’ were preoccupied with an entirely different Messianic ideal, that of a conquering Christ who sought and received honour from the world, and made all things serve His ambition. In a word, Jesus came offering to men these supremely valuable boons: a Divine Father, a Kingdom of Grace, a Christ who was the sinner’s Friend, and a righteousness possible even for the most depraved, nay, in which precisely they might make the greatest attainment; and He found no appetite for these benefits, no eagerness to come to the feast which He had spread, because with reference to all the topics on which He discoursed men’s minds were full of thoughts and beliefs of a wholly diverse character, wherewith they were perfectly satisfied. Hence, in order to find disciples, He was obliged to seek them elsewhere than among those whom He described as the wise and knowing: hot in Jerusalem, the seat of legal lore and Pharisaic influence, but in northern Galilee, where life was simpler; not among the doctors of the law, but among the mob who knew not the law; not among the elders who by long study had matured a system of opinions which had become part of themselves, but among the young who had not had time to build up a system, and whose minds were empty, open, and receptive; not among the well-conducted who made a point of observing all conventional moral proprieties, and prided themselves on an orderly and blameless life, but among the social and moral outcasts who were glad to hear that God was merciful, and that there was hope in Him even for the guiltiest Galilean rustics, illiterate laics, open-hearted youths, penitent "publicans and sinners"—these were the likely classes to yield converts to a doctrine like that taught by Jesus. Therefore He addressed Himself chiefly to such, and was by many of them made welcome. And so it came to pass that the intellectually and morally empty and hungry were filled with the good things of the kingdom, while the rich in reputation for wisdom and sanctity turned away in indifference or disdain.
[1] The parable no more binds us down to the precise forms of preoccupation specified than it binds us to understand the poor invited in the second place as the literally poor, as Keim very prosaically does, so finding traces of Ebionitism in the parable. The poor represent all who from any cause are empty, and need filling with the good things of the kingdom. The poor in the literal sense are referred to only in so far as their circumstances exempt them from many of the causes of self-satisfaction to which the rich are exposed.
It is this state of matters, Christ’s activity and success among those of least account and poor in wisdom and sanctity, that is depicted in the second half of our parable. The people in the streets and lanes who were invited in the second place are those in Judaea who, in the ways indicated, were hungry for such a feast as Jesus invited them to; those from the highways and hedges invited in the third place were all within or without Palestine—Jews, Samaritans, and Pagans, who were needier still, and might be glad to come to the feast, could they only be brought to believe that it was meant for the like of them. It is at this point that the gracious aspect of the parable becomes most conspicuous, and it is that aspect which must now engage our attention. Our exposition will consist in pointing out how every turn of the story and every phrase serves the purpose of accentuating the grace of the kingdom. The first point to be noted in this view is the selection of the needy and hungry to be the recipients of benefit. To the citation of this as an index of grace it may be objected that such parties are invited only in the second place. The invitation of them is an after-thought, a device forced upon the host by the refusal of those first invited, and which he will rather have recourse to than let all the precious dishes he has prepared be lost. On the surface this is indeed the state of the case, and the fact with regard to Christ’s own action was somewhat analogous. We may say that He turned His attention to the publicans and sinners because He found, and knew instinctively beforehand that He would find, little acceptance with those who were socially and morally in repute. And when we look to the action of the apostles in after days, more particularly of Paul, we find the same line of procedure reappearing. Paul’s habit was to offer the gospel to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile. But the method of procedure does not in either case derogate from the grace of the procedure, so far as those to whom the gospel was preached in the second place is concerned. For when we come to inquire why Christ met with so poor a response among the wise and the righteous, we discover that the real cause lay in the gracious nature of His gospel. The gracious attitude of Jesus to publicans and sinners was not produced by the indifference of other classes. The grace went before the indifference, and was its cause, not its effect. Jesus came from the first preaching a God who was the Father of men, not the patron of favourites, and a kingdom into which the most depraved might find admittance on repentance; and the Scribes and Pharisees did not love such a doctrine—it was too humane, too catholic, too revolutionary, too vulgar in its sympathies for their taste; and so Jesus, who had the lower classes in His heart from the first, was forced by the disdain of the higher orders to turn His attention more and more exclusively to them. Similar observations apply to the case of Paul. He preached first to the Jews, because that appeared the natural order of procedure. But he preached a gospel avowedly universal in its destination, and offering to all, to Jews and Greeks alike, a righteousness not of works but of faith, that is of grace. And it was because His gospel was catholic and gracious that the Jews rejected it, and compelled him to turn away from them and address himself to the Gentiles. The truth just stated, viz. that it was the gracious character of the gospel of the kingdom which caused the unbelief of those to whom it was first preached, does not come out in the parable. The parable depicts facts, it does not set forth the rationale of the facts; hence the defect that the second and third invitations appear as after-thoughts, and the motive appears to be not so much love to the invited as a dislike of waste, as if the host had said to himself, "As the food has been prepared, it had better be eaten than thrown away."
Most significant as indexes of the grace of the kingdom are the two phrases, "yet there is room," and "that my house may be filled." These two words indeed might be singled out as worthy to be the mottoes of the kingdom, interpretative of its genius, bearing witness to the vastness of its charity, and its desire to communicate its blessings to the greatest possible number. Doubtless it is easy here also by plausible reasoning to rob these mottoes of their significance. It may be said of the former of the two that it is merely the word of a servant. And so indeed it is; but it were a pertinent counter-remark that it is the word of a servant who has his master’s confidence, is intimately acquainted with his disposition, and fully sympathises with it. But without pressing these considerations, there is enough in the mere fact reported by the servant to indicate the gracious mind of his lord. There is still room in the guest-chamber even after all the poor and suffering of the city have been invited, and have, as we are to assume, responded to the invitation. What a great chamber that must be! What a great feast must have been prepared, and what a magnanimous man he must be who has it in his heart to prepare such a feast! The report of the servant is a sure witness to the riches of God’s grace, to the boundlessness of Divine liberality, the immeasurable dimensions of redeeming love: it is put into the servant’s mouth by Jesus for that end, not merely to supply the motive for the next turn in the story, in which the host commands his servant to go forth to the highways and hedges to invite those found there to fill up the still vacant places. Only a greathearted man indeed would issue such an order; any other would be content if his house were fairly well filled. "That my house may be filled," is the speech of one animated by the very enthusiasm of hospitality. But this expression, too, may seem liable to cavil, as a motto expressive of grace. It may be pointed out that the sequel seems to imply that the host’s chief reason for wishing his house filled, even if it should be with vagrants and vagabonds from the highways and hedges, is to spite the first invited and exclude them from the feast by cramming the house, in case any of them should repent his declinature, and after all desire to be present. And without doubt this is how the story runs; such is the natural import of the concluding part of the host’s speech—"for I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper." But what then? After all, the revenge proposed is the revenge of magnanimity, not of meanness and malice. If so minded the host can easily exclude the first invited without bringing in any more guests. The method of revenge is that of one who has pleasure in hospitality for its own sake, and loves to exercise it as widely as possible. It may even be suspected of being the revenge of one who is not quite in earnest in his declared purpose, and who would make room even for the first bidden if they came humbly acknowledging their offence and seeking admission. We may legitimately hesitate before taking this word spoken in anger as the last word on the subject. Christ’s word, as an aside from the parable, it certainly is not;[1] to regard it as His is to invest it with much too serious and deliberate a character. It is a word put by Him into the mouth of the host very fitly, as a word spoken in anger. But it is not a word endorsed by Him as the whole truth on the subject of Israel’s future. It is important to bear this in mind in order to the maintenance of harmony between the teaching of Christ and that of Paul. For Paul does not treat it as unbelieving Israel’s final doom that she shall not taste of God’s supper. He refuses to believe that Israel’s election is absolutely cancelled, that her inheritance is finally forfeited. He does represent the evangelisation of the Gentiles as taking place to spite Israel. But he believes that the spite is the spite of love changing its method of working towards its old end, the blessing of the covenant people; casting them out and putting the heathen in their room in order to provoke them to jealousy, and so bring them to another mind, and induce them at length to value mercies previously despised.[2] The whole passage is very instructive in its bearing on the subject of election. This Pauline doctrine, the fruit of a noble patriotism which hoped against hope for fellow-countrymen, must be kept in view in interpreting the present parable, if we would not make the Master and the apostle contradict each other The parable certainly contains no hint of the Pauline doctrine, and that is one piece of evidence that this parable has not been, as some think, remodelled by Luke to bring it into closer correspondence with Paulinism. If, as certain critics imagine, the invitation to the vagrants was added by Luke to the original parable, in order to represent the call of the Gentiles,[3] why did he stop short here in his alterations? Why not go further in accordance with the irenical tendency ascribed to him, and give such a turn to the last word of the host as to make it contain the idea not of final exclusion, which seems to be hinted, but of provocation to repentance? We see no reason to doubt the originality of this feature of our parable. We cannot certainly regard the universalism latent in it as a good reason for such doubt. That Christ’s teaching was in spirit universalistic is admitted; universalism was also immanent in His conduct, for His behaviour towards publicans and sinners could be explained only on principles equally applicable to all mankind, irrespective of racial or other distinctions. The religion of one who acted as Jesus did could only be a religion for humanity. Why should it seem surprising if one whose whole bearing said, "I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to my sympathies," should occasionally speak words universalistic in scope? And if in any department of Christ’s teaching such words are to be looked for it is in His parables, wherein truth is at once revealed and hidden. We should not expect to find in the recorded sayings of the founder of our faith any such explicit statement as this: My gospel is for the Gentiles (except, indeed, in private instructions to His disciples before He left the world), because it was meet that the purpose of grace towards the outlying nations should remain a "mystery hid in God," till the drama of the Redeemer’s earthly life was complete, and the materials for the gospel were fully supplied. But we are not surprised to find mystic hints of the universal destination of the gospel in such words as these: "Ye are the salt of the earth," "Ye are the light of the world," "The field is the world;" or in parables of grace like this, telling of invitations to the great feast addressed even to homeless, characterless vagrants whose food was what they could pick up, beg, or steal, and whose couch was beneath the hedge on the highway.
[1] The
[2] Vide Rom 11:11-14.
[3] So Hilgenfeld, ’Einleitung.’
Yet another index of the grace of the kingdom may be found in the direction given to the servant with reference to these vagrants, to "compel them to come in." What insight into the secret thoughts, what sympathy with the miseries of the abject class, is revealed in these words! True, as it stands in the parable, the direction seems to have reference rather to the exigencies of the host than to the circumstances of the intended guests. It seems to mean: Be urgent with them and bring them quickly, for time passes, and the feast is getting out of season; take no refusal, for I wish my house filled, so that there may be no room for the men whom I first invited. But higher motives are implied, though not expressed, or capable of expression, in the parable. The beauty of the parable is, that while moving in a lower moral plane, it constantly suggests to our thoughts a higher one in which the motives are of a purely benevolent character. The speaker of the parable lives up in the higher region, though for the sake of His hearers He comes down in the parable to the lower. It is due to the unearthly charity that dwells in His bosom that mention is made of vagrants at all as possible objects of hospitality. Nothing but such charity was capable of the audacity necessary to the bare conception of such a thought. And the same charity which could conceive the idea is revealed in the injunction, "compel them to come in." The speaker knows full well that the difficulty with the parties now to be invited will be to get them to believe that such a felicity can possibly be meant for the like of them, accustomed to misery and to the neglect of their more favoured fellow-mortals. Jesus recognises the naturalness and the excusableness of scepticism in such circumstances, and the need of compulsion to overcome doubt. He can enter into their minds and understand just how they feel. "We are hungry, and would gladly be fed, even with the plainest fare, how much more be partakers of so grand an entertainment! But such bliss cannot be in store for such wretches as we are: you trifle with us, you mock our misery." Christ knew that such thoughts would certainly pass through the minds of persons situated as described. Yes, He knew that there would always be many so situated that it would be natural and excusable in them to hear with incredulity the good news which He brought from God to the world; men accustomed to misery and to hard treatment from their fellows, or so profoundly sensible of their own demerit that they could hardly believe in God’s love, at least in so far as it concerned themselves. And He had pity on such, and He would have all possible means employed to overcome their mistrust, and lead them from incredulity to faith. "Compel them to come in," is the word He gives forth with reference to such. Indifference He will not compel, but will rather treat with dignified reserve. But the incredulity of men who would gladly avail themselves of God’s grace if they durst, He will compel. What hope there is in this sympathy of Christ with human hopelessness! And alas, what need of the humane compulsion He mercifully enjoins! How many now live even in Christian lands whose hard lot, whose experience of inhumanity at the hands of fellow-mortals—sometimes even of men calling themselves Christians—is such as to make God’s love almost incredible! How many are in danger of being driven on to deeper degrees of guilt by the thought that they have already sinned so heinously as to be beyond the reach of mercy! Nay, who does not need compulsions to faith? For is it not one of our chief hindrances to hearty faith in Divine grace that God’s love, as declared in the gospel, is so unlike anything we see in this world as to be incredible? Behold what manner of love is this, that the most high God should care for sinful and miserable men; care even for those who have rebelled against Him! Behold what manner of love is this, that God should give His Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish! We need help, we need even compulsion, to receive this truth, and to convert the wonder of incredulity into the wonder of faith; and Christ’s word in this parable assures us that all who need such compulsion, have in Him a sympathetic Friend who will not fail to help them in their infirmities.