Discernment in a Day of Distraction

A reading from the gospel according to Luke, chapter 14, beginning at verse 16.

Luke 14 · chapter mention

But he said to him, A man once gave a great banquet and invited many, and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, Come, for everything is now ready.

But they all alike began to make excuses.

The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it.

Please have me excused.

And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them.

Please have me excused.

And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

So the servant came and reported these things to his master.

Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.

And the servant said, Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.

And the master said to the servant, Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled.

For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Sometimes an invitation to a party comes at exactly the right moment when it can get you out of doing something that you didn't really want to do in the first place.

So maybe it's Friday afternoon and you've come home after a long week at work and you know that your house needs tidying and cleaning, but then a friend calls and says, Hey, would you like to go out for dinner tonight?

You say, Absolutely.

House cleaning will have to wait until tomorrow.

If the choice is between scrubbing toilets or enjoying a meal with friends, that's not much of a choice, is it?

And if the choice is between drudgery or fun, well, we know what we would select.

Which is why the first thing that I need to flag today is that in the parable of invitation that Jesus tells in our gospel, you have to see that none of the excuse makers chose not to go to the party in order that they could go and do something they didn't really want to do in the first place.

I do not hear them saying things like, Yeah, the party sounds like fun.

Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to pass, I have to go home and file my taxes.

Nor are any of them saying, gee, I really wish I could make it, but you see, there's this closet I've been meaning to clean out and organize for a couple of years, and I just have to get after it.

No, the choices they're making are not between unpleasantries and enjoyable things.

They're not fools, they're not gonna miss out on a party in order to go and do something that wasn't really enjoyable.

And so instead, they must be choosing to pass on the party because they perceive that something else in the moment is going to make them feel good, maybe even feel better than they would feel if they went to the banquet.

They refuse the invitation because there is something that they think will provide fulfillment and gratification, even more so than the kind of fulfillment or gratification that they could find at the banquet table.

And in that way, this parable speaks powerfully to us today.

For we are daily beset by all sorts of things that promise to make us feel good in the moment, by dopamine hits, by novelties, by experiences, by purchasing and acquiring, by romance, in short, by the very things that Jesus does put into the mouth of the excuse makers in this parable.

And I guess that tells us that nothing in this world ever actually changes.

It's tempting to beg on technology as causing this problem where we run around chasing what feels good in the moment.

And maybe technology has made it more frictionless for us to acquire some of those things, but the essential problem was exactly the same in Jesus' day.

And all you need to do to see that is listen to the excuses that are made.

So you've got a guy who says, Hey, I bought a field.

Maybe today we would say, Hey, I just bought a place up north.

I'm going to spend some time there.

And we would say, of course, he's got a cabin on a lake.

Why wouldn't he spend some time there?

Not that we should limit this excuse to real estate.

Think of this as the pursuit of recreation, of living for the weekend, as we put it.

The way that our minds can become obsessively focused on those kinds of pastimes that we find to be so fun that they drive and dictate our behavior.

Or think about this as the way that purchasing something causes us a little bit of instant gratification.

There is a thrill you get when you see the Amazon package on your doorstep, and when it's there, what do you want to do?

You want to open it up, you want to see it.

This is why unboxing videos are a thing.

And this is what this first excuse maker is saying.

I've bought something, I've acquired it.

It's only natural that now I would want to go and see it.

Or think about the man with the five-yoke of oxen.

I mean, what do you need that many oxen for in the first place?

Well, the answer is simple: you can do more with them.

And so this man represents that kind of drive and hustle that can take over our lives, in which work becomes the be-all and end all, the measure of who I am, and in which the driving forces are always more, bigger, better, more efficient, more productive, faster.

If you are wondering why sometimes it's very hard to sit and do nothing nowadays, might it be because we have been programmed to think that we always have to be doing something that's productive, that's measurable, quantifiable.

And so this man stands in for us when we say, Look, I've got a career to build, I've got a name for myself that I want to make, I've got to keep at it, I've got to hustle, I can't stand to be distracted by other things.

So I'm sorry, but the party's going to have to wait.

And in an age of dating apps and swiping right or swiping left, the third excuse maker hardly needs to be modernized at all.

We know what it looks like when someone pursues a relationship, when someone is looking for that special person to the exclusion of everything else in life.

So the choices here that those who were invited to the banquet are presented with.

Nor are the choices that they take inherently evil or bad in and of themselves.

If you think about it, all three of these are gifts from God.

It was God, after all, who established and instituted marriage and pronounced the words very good upon it.

And even before Adam and Eve fell into sin, God had given them work to do, so highly does he think of our endeavors.

And as for rest and recreation and delight, well, this is the God who instituted for his Old Testament people a Sabbath, a day of rest for this very purpose, that they could simply delight in all the gifts that God gave them.

In other words, the excuse makers in this parable, they aren't saying things like, Hey, I'm cutting out on the party so that I can go set up a panzai scheme with which I can fleece my neighbors for all they're worth.

This is not the choice between an unhealthy but sinisterly fun option, like spooning sugar straight from the bag, versus the healthy option that's just not nearly as exciting like eating a plate of vegetables.

No, from their perspective, this is more like the choice between ice cream and cake.

They've got all of these good gifts of God set out before them.

How are they going to discern which one to choose when they all seem so tantalizingly good?

And at the end of the day, will they have enough sense to choose the God who gave the gifts over the glittering enjoyment that the gifts themselves promise?

See, in this parable, what the excuse makers lack is discernment.

Discernment enough to recognize that living for what feels good or what seems to promise instant gratification and fulfillment, that's not a sufficient structure for ordering your life.

If you pursue it, you wind up trapped in subjectivity.

That is, trapped by the subjective experience you have in whatever it is you are doing in the moment.

And that puts you under the burden of following your emotions.

The way I think about it is like this: that in our heart, it's like there's this meter that has a needle.

And it's always pointing somewhere.

And so sometimes, depending on where we are, what we're doing, that needle points to one side that says, Hey, this is really good, I like this, I enjoy this, this makes me happy.

Of course, at other times, the needle's maybe in the middle saying, Meh, it's not great, but it's not that bad.

And then, of course, there is those times when the needle points and says, This is really unpleasant.

Stay away from this as much as you possibly can.

Somebody who lives subjectively is focused on this needle under the mistaken assumption that it is going to give them a bearing towards truth or towards the right direction in which they should live their life.

And you can hardly blame them for that when this is the message that our world pours upon us day after day after day.

It says, Do what makes you feel good.

We say, I just want you to be happy.

We drive people to live their life trapped by following where the needle is pointing.

But if that's the way that you live, then I think at least three things are going to happen.

First of all, you're never going to be able to enjoy anything in life.

Because instead of being focused on the thing that's in front of you, you're going to be focused on the needle in your heart.

You're going to be asking the question, how does this make me feel?

Is it enjoyable?

And you're going to be haunted by the thought that you might have been able to make a different choice that would have been even better.

You'll be haunted by the thought that you're missing out on something that could have moved the needle even more towards the good side.

Second, nothing in life is going to be able to satisfy you for long.

Because the nature of life in this world is very repetitive, and things that repeat soon lose their edge.

So that the man who today gets a big dopamine hit off of having five yoke of oxen and a 20-acre field tomorrow is going to need 10 yoke of oxen and a 40-acre field to get the same feeling.

He's going to always be searching for something new, something better, something more.

Third and worst of all, you will expect that God is supposed to operate in this same way.

That God's role in your universe evidently is to arrange circumstances so that you feel good in the moment.

And in fact, this is the way you approach Him.

You say, God, your job is to wave the wand, make things the way I want them to be so that I'll be happy.

So why aren't you doing it?

Why aren't you doing it now?

Which is a very exploitative way to treat anybody and especially the Lord.

So I call this the tyranny of subjectivity because somebody who lives in this way winds up trapped underneath its rule and sway.

Not only are they trapped into pursuing things that will ultimately fail them and let them down in the end, but even worse, it keeps them from winding up with the greater good that their God offers to them.

After all, the master in this parable is not going to force anybody to come and sit at his banquet table.

He will send his compelling message out to highway and hedge.

But for those who are too busy in their distractive, subjectively ordered lives chasing after those things that they think will make them feel good.

Well, of them, the master of the banquet simply says, none of them shall taste all the good things that I have set before them.

So what then does a discerning life look like when this invitation of God comes to us?

Well, according to the parameters of this parable, it would look like hearing that invitation from the perspective of a beggar, of someone who is described as poor, crippled, blind, or lame.

Think about how that invitation lands to the beggar.

To the person who's been standing on a street corner eating leftovers and scraps and sleeping on park benches or underneath a highway.

The beggar could hardly believe his ears when this invitation comes.

He says, What?

You mean me?

You want me to come to your table?

You mean that I can leave the highway underpass and come and dine with you?

That's almost too good to be true.

And what I am telling you today is that even the very best gifts of God in this life are no more than sleeping on park benches or underneath highways compared to God Himself.

And his invitation to come and sit at the table with him.

That doesn't mean that they're bad.

It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy them here and now.

It just means that in relation to God, they don't compare in the least.

And the invitation your God extends to you is still this message to come.

Come to me.

Come and be with me.

Maybe we can grasp that in the moments when life isn't going so well.

When you feel like you are a failure.

When it seems like your life is tangled up in a bunch of messes and you don't know how to get out of them.

When your friends have turned on you and you feel isolated and alone.

In such moments, a gracious word from God comes like that sweet relief to a beggar's ears.

You say, Really, God, you mean me?

Even though you know me as I am with all my failures, all my sins, all my shortcomings, and you know.

You know what your Lord says?

He says, Yes, I mean you.

I don't take you as you should have been, but as you are.

And I call you to myself and give you all these gifts: forgiveness, grace, peace, joy, even eventually eternal rest and endless bliss.

My friends, if we can grasp how wonderful this invitation our God extends to us is, from those moments when life isn't going well, then extrapolate from that that even in the times when you have life by the horns, when things are going exactly the way you want them to, when you are finding triumph after triumph in this life, well, even though it might not feel that way, you can believe it in the moment that still what your God has in store for you is better, is more.

And so your ear can be discerning enough to hear his invitation and not say, thanks, but no thanks.

God, I've got plenty of other things to follow after right now.

But instead to say, whatever good I have is just the smallest little testimony to the goodness of my good God.

And so when he calls, I will come running towards him, knowing that what he has for me is ever so much better and so much more than what I could find or get out of this life on my own.

And hey, let's not forget that Jesus compares this invitation to the invitation to a party.

He says, Look, I'm gonna be the host.

I'm picking up the tab.

I will be at the table with you, I will feed you, I will serve you, I will gather you together, I'll bring you together with others so that together you can rejoice in all these gifts that are yours in me.

That's not so bad now, after all, is it?

Of course not.

Actually, our God, He is what our hearts desire more than anything else.

So stop trying to fulfill those desires in the wrong places.

And when your God extends his gospel call to you, open up your ears, listen, hear, come, haste it, see, and you will know the goodness of your God.