Are You Too Busy? Here's the Antidote

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Luke 14:16–20 ESV 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.’” CONSIDER Are you too busy?  Year's ago an old preacher spoke these wry words into my soul.  "If the devil can't make you bad, he will make you busy."  It rings true, doesn't it? Isn't that the story of today's text?  The invited guests were too busy.  I'm imagining myself getting this gracious invitation to such a marvelous banquet. I might say something like, "I'm fifty-eight days in to an eighty-nine-day marathon (a.k.a. the Gospels series) and I've got to keep pressing on. Please excuse me."  Many of the guests, now including me, are effectively turning in our regrets with the same excuse: "I'm too busy."  But let's dig a little deeper under this excuse. It's not the field or the oxen or the new wife or the thirty-one remaining chapters of the Gospels that's the problem, is it? There are fifty more of those pressing matters all around us all the time and they are all the same. The "I'm too busy" with a fill-in-the-blank reason all have one thing in common just under the surface. It's the other way we say, "I'm too busy." You know what it is. "I don't have time."  And that's actually the lie. We all have time. And we all have exactly the same amount of time. The issue is not too much to do and not enough time. The issue is priority. Here is what we are really saying to Jesus, the master and host of the great banquet: "You are not my priority." And the sooner we have the audacity to say that to his face is the sooner we can amend our way.  This is an awakening text. It's a Wake-Up Call story.  We all have a lot of important and essential (and good) things to do—including managing our stuff (fields), tending to our work (oxen), and caring for our families (spouse). And the point of the story is not to say stuff, work, and family is not important. The point of the story is to say if you miss the banquet, none of that will have mattered. The point of the story is to declare and demonstrate an absolute, all-out, singular priority that pervades and persists through every iota of every aspect of our whole lives. It sounds like this: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33).  It's another way of saying, "Jesus, I belong to you."  It's not choosing Jesus over your family. It's bringing them to the great banquet with you. It's not choosing Jesus over your work. It's bringing your employees to the great banquet with you. Jesus is not ranked as one among many things. He is placed at the very center of all things. It's not God first, family second, work third. It's making Jesus priority in my family and Jesus priority in my work and Jesus priority in my wealth and Jesus priority in my health and my leisure and every other possible category in life.  Everybody is invited to the banquet. They just don't know it yet. Go to the banquet. And take as many people as you can with you.  Here's the twist in the story. While we may be the landowner or the employer or the spouse in this story, we are meant to play another character in the story—any guesses?  One more bit—this is why you are always in a hurry. You've lost the priority, and soon you will lose the plot. Slow down.   PRAY Lord Jesus. Lord of the Great Banquet. Not only will I be there at the banquet, I am going to become one of your servants who delivers your invitations and who gives my time in the midst of my everyday life to making sure your house is full for the party. By your grace, we will make heaven crowded. And I'm going to slow down. I promise. It will be for your glory, for others' gain, and for my good—and in your name, Jesus, amen.