(Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 1831.)
TEXT: LUKE xiv. 18-20. “And they all with one consent began to make excuse; … I pray thee have me excused.”
WE need no more than these few words to recall to us the whole parable from which they are taken. From the different accounts of this parable in the gospels we must conclude that the Saviour often repeated it. Its substance is that an invitation was issued to a great supper, and the guests at first promised to appear; but when the appointed hour was come, and they were required to present themselves, one made a pretext of this, and another of that piece of business, and said, “I pray thee have me excused.”
The first thing to be noticed about this parable is the frequent occasion which the Saviour had to repeat it. He lived, as we know, entirely among His own people, saying that He had come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Them He did not cease to call to Himself, and proclaimed to them that the kingdom of God had come nigh to them, that they might enter it, and to that end might gather around Him; He told them He would take care of them, protect them against all danger, and conduct them safely into that blessed kingdom of God. And there were many who gave ear to His first invitation. Where His voice was heard, men gathered around Him by hundreds and thousands, and their eagerness to hear the words of wisdom from His lips seemed more and more to increase, as if they could never have enough. But when they were required to take a decisive step, to show that they wished really to take their place in this kingdom of God, such as He represented it to them; when He, for that purpose, gave them clearer indications of the nature of that supper to which they were invited,—then they drew back and turned away.
That which led me to take these words as the subject of our meditation to-day was my having occasion to remember our recent harvest-thanksgiving. For this was my thought. It is bad, no doubt very bad, if a man invites himself to the enjoyment only of earthly comforts and possessions, forget ting the word, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee;” but far worse if a man in this short and fleeting earthly life misses hearing the divine invitation, and so little heeds this significant warning voice, that when the message comes to him, Come, for all things are ready, he brings forward this or that as an excuse. The higher the position of him who invites us into his society, even for fleeting moments, which are therefore all the more memorable; the less would we venture to offer an excuse, even when we ought to do so on account of some duty that hindered us. But when those who bring to us the invitation to the great feast receive so often the answer, “I pray thee have me excused”; when we are still constantly hearing this around us, and note the consequences; what a crowd of sorrowful reflections must stir the hearts of those who have themselves accepted this divine invitation, and who know the glory and beauty of the feast! To what class, then, do we belong? I can only ask in order to give an answer which all take for granted. We who meet here to remember Him who has called us into the kingdom of God, to nourish and strengthen ourselves with His words, certainly present ourselves as those who have not only heard but accepted His invitation; otherwise we should not be here at all. Whether there may not be here and there among us individuals who are in the position of saying, “I pray thee have me excused,” is another question which may remain for the present undecided. But if we have indeed given ear to the invitation of the Lord, then we are all without exception what He called His disciples from the beginning, His servants; sent by Him, as He was sent by the Father, to invite men in the Father’s name and in His. And this duty of inviting men into the kingdom of God is a work which may be done well and skilfully, or quite otherwise. Many a one who is called to this great work is urgent with souls, and constrains even those to heed and accept his invitation who, perhaps, if they had been addressed and called on in a different way, would only have said, “I pray thee have me excused.” And if it is an experience too frequent to be disregarded, that still excuses are constantly being made, not only by those to whom the gospel is brought as something new from afar; but not less, and in various ways, by those who live among us and are familiar with the name of the Lord and His Word: we may depend on it that there has been something amiss in the manner of the invitation. Let us therefore consider these two points as they stand connected here: how it is that so many refuse the divine invitation, and then some of the mistakes into which we may fall in conveying that invitation to them.
I. In hearing of the invitation of the Lord to this great feast, which is meant to figure to us the kingdom of God, we think first, and quite rightly, of the universal call that comes in the name of the Saviour to all men without distinction, to turn their backs on the transitory things with which, unhappily, most people are taken up, and to enter on a higher life by turning to eternal things. This is the great, all-embracing invitation which had certainly been issued before in, as it were, a preliminary way, and often repeated; but that all things were ready for the enjoyment of this life in God could not be announced to the race of men till the fulness of the time had come, and the Son of God had appeared on earth. And even now among ourselves we distinguish between that preparatory news of all being invited, as we make it known from their youth up to those who grow up among us, and that decisive and urgent invitation, which we delay until, having made them acquainted with the Saviour, we count them capable of distinguishing for themselves what is mean and what is noble, what is perishable and what is divine in human nature. What is it then that hinders so many, even if they do not flatly and openly refuse this invitation, from accepting it as it is meant? If we adapt the call which we address to them to the sympathy with the spiritual life which Christ imparts to us, there would not easily be found among us any one who would utterly and once for all excuse himself, entirely renouncing his portion in the blessed life to which we are invited from above; and if he did, we should take no notice of it, but again and again renew the invitation. But many excuse themselves for the present, and would like to put off to an indefinite time. And why is this? Why do they think that they could not be ready yet, and could not resolve to comply with the divine invitation? With many it is certainly nothing but the indolence and inertia so natural to men. They prefer to go on in the way that they have hitherto followed; and if any kind of change is to be effected with them or in them, they do not care to calculate on what is unknown and uncertain, and would rather have everything happen to them without their needing to take any resolution or exert their own will in the matter. With others again the predominant feeling is a love for their present manner of life and for the things they possess and enjoy, in proportion to the satisfaction they find in them; and what keeps them back from obeying the call into the kingdom of God is the idea that in doing so they must give up everything in which they have found pleasure; that the kind of work which has easily and comfortably sufficed them must be set in the background, or be entirely abandoned; and for what? Only, in the first place, to enter on a hard and painful struggle. But if we ask what kind of enjoyment it is which a man must renounce in order to comply with God’s invitation, is it anything but what the apostle meant when, speaking to the Christians in Rome of their former life, he said, “What fruit had ye then in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of these things is death.” It is only the pleasure that is steeped in sin, only the work that ministers to selfish passions that must be given up; for these cannot but deaden the capacity for true life; and then shall the fruit be unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For let it be remembered that we cannot say of any kind of work in which it is worth while for a human being to occupy his time in this world, that it will be repudiated or held in contempt in the kingdom of God. That kingdom is wide enough to give scope for every right exercise of the human faculties.