An Instruction for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday: An Explanation of the Day’s Gospel—“A Certain Man Made a Great Supper and Invited Many”

Beloved brethren! Today the Gospel (Lk 14:16–24) will tell us of an unknown man who gave a great banquet to which many guests were invited. Then the Gospel presents a strange circumstance: those who participated in the dinner table were not the people who had originally been invited to it, but completely different ones. The luxurious banquet was given in the evening and was therefore called “a Great Supper”. Evening we call the last hours of the day before the coming of night.

The account of the Great Supper is a vivid parable by which our Lord Jesus Christ portrayed the Kingdom of God, prepared by the Heavenly Father “from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34) for His chosen ones, and also portrayed the manner in which the gospel about this Kingdom was received by mankind called to it.

Death lies before all of us without exception; all of us must pass through the gates of death into eternity and remain in eternity forever. Earthly life is the vestibule to eternity. It is like a narrow and suffocating antechamber before magnificent and spacious halls. In eternity God’s Kingdom is prepared for us; outside it – infinite woe, misery that will never cease – weeping and wailing that will never be comforted and never cease. If tomorrow, a week, a month ahead, an event were to occur that should decide our earthly destiny either for good or for harm to us, would we not take all measures, all efforts, all precautions to direct the event toward a favorable outcome for us? Let us then direct attention to our destiny in eternity. Let us cast off the sleep of despondency and forgetfulness in which we are plunged; let us cast off the blindness, cast off the self-deception that presents man’s life on earth as endless. Let us believe the surest truth. Let us believe that all of us face inevitable death. As certainly as it is true that we shall die, so necessarily must we care for our destiny in the land beyond the grave. With this purpose, let us examine the parable of our Lord of the “Great Supper”.

Who is the founder of the supper? The Holy Gospel calls him “a certain man”, that is, an unknown, undefined man. Clearly: this is God. He replaced Himself in the parable with His image – a man. But as men have forgotten God, have lost the true knowledge of Him, the correct understanding of Him, God, naming Himself a man, at the same time named Himself an unknown man: “a certain man gave a great banquet, and invited many”. The large number of invited guests signifies that all mankind, without any exception, is destined by God for eternal bliss. Brethren! All of us – we are called! No one is forgotten! No one has either reason or right to abandon himself to lamentation and despondency.

When the time of the desired feast came, the Founder of the banquet sends a Servant to announce to the invited guests. Both the time of the feast and the solitary figure of the Servant have profound significance. In the Greek text of the Gospel written by Saint Luke, before the word “Servant” is placed the definite article, which, by the property of this language, gives the word “Servant” special, distinct meaning. Here by the Servant of God, preeminently and exclusively, the Lord Jesus Christ named Himself. He, equal to the Father and the Spirit in Godhead, by His manhood is the sole, true Servant of God. He alone fully and perfectly fulfilled God’s will and is pure from all sin. Other holy men – saints relatively (Rom 4:2); human holiness is the least, to the extent possible for man, sinfulness. The sole Servant of God is presented in the parable as the sole agent of human salvation; prophets, apostles, and church teachers were only servants, instruments of the Word: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being” (Jn 1:3). The time of the invitation of the guests is evening. This means: our Lord Jesus Christ came down to earth in the last hours of the life of the visible world. Eighteen centuries have passed since this most blessed event; the life of the world has not yet ended: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet 3:8). God’s evening continues, is extended, so that all the invited guests might have time to gather at His Supper, so that not one of the chosen might be deprived of it.

Thus the parable depicts God’s providence concerning men; let us now look at the depiction of men’s behavior in relation to God. All the invited guests, as if by agreement, excused themselves and refused to come to the supper. What is this conspiracy, what is this unanimity in opposition to God? This is the action of the fall, common to all; this is evidence of goodwill toward one’s state of fall, voluntary remaining in it; this is a sign of the soul’s being mortified by sin, unable and unwilling to wake from death’s sleep, nor even to the call of the Son of God. As the reason for their unwillingness to come to the supper, the invited guests put forth their earthly concerns. One ascribed such importance to scholarly, official, and capricious occupations that he considered it allowable to neglect God; another devoted himself to family cares and forgot God; yet another was swept away by passions, sank into crude fleshly pleasures and became completely alien to God. It is not only an obvious sin that deprives us of our spiritual treasure; every earthly occupation, every earthly position deprives us of it, when the soul is wholly drawn and fixed upon them.

The invited guests refused to participate in the supper. The Founder sends the same Servant to gather in the city streets and alleys, on the roads and crossroads, the maimed, the poor, the lame, the blind, and, having persuaded them, to bring them to the supper.

The Gospel calls by the invited guests the Jews, as previously invited through the law and prophets to Christianity; the homeless poor and cripples wandering in streets and alleys, strangers toiling on the road or stopped at a crossroads to choose a path, signify the pagans remaining outside the house, outside the Church, outside knowledge of God; the enumerated bodily defects of them are to be understood as relating to the soul. The invited Jews refused decisively; following them, the called pagans barely agreed to come to the supper: many centuries, countless sacrifices and whole rivers of blood were needed for God’s Word to persuade them to accept Christianity.

The invited in the midst of Christendom should be recognized as the glorious, the rich, the learned, the prosperous in this world: the advantages given them by God over others, the facility connected with these advantages for knowledge of God and worship of God, express, without doubt, God’s calling to salvation and the highest bliss. Alas! A sight worthy of weeping! The invited remain, like stones, inattentive to the One Calling. It seems that only those struck by calamities, illnesses, poverty, deprivations – only the maimed and poor in the civil sense are capable of obeying God: it is the ignorant in the wisdom of the world who obey God, the weak, the lowborn, the despised in the world (1 Cor 1:27). And these despised of the world must, under the guidance of God’s Word, with His mighty aid, endure the most fierce struggle with their fall, forcefully subdue themselves to God, forcefully provide themselves with salvation. Very truly does the parable depict that the poor, blind, lame and crippled the wonderful Servant had to persuade and convince to come to the supper. We have become close with and have loved our fall: it is hard to part with it. Our own nature has become incapable of good, and without the Saviour it cannot do any true, whole good: “Apart from me you can do nothing” – He said – (Jn 15:5). Our own good is defiled by an admixture of evil. It cannot help but be so: its source – the nature of fallen humanity – constitutes a mixture of good and evil and constantly produces from itself action corresponding to itself.

The Lord concluded the parable with a terrible judgment. He, foreseeing with His all-seeing eye the present and future inattention of men toward Him, said: “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Lk 14:24). The merciful God calls all to salvation, but very few obey Him. All of us belong to the number of the called by the unspeakable love of God for us, but very few of us are included in the number of the chosen, because inclusion in the number of the chosen is left to our own free will. Amen.

Commentary of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria