As Jesus slowly made his way toward Jerusalem, teaching from town to town, an unnamed man in an unnamed village asked a startling question: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” I don’t know what prompted the question, but I remember hearing something similar a few months ago. A friend of mine observed, “It looks like Satan is winning; there are so many going to hell.” How many are going to heaven? 144,000? Everyone except the really bad – the Hitler’s of the world? Can anyone be certain of their own eternal fate, much less that of others?
Together these two stories are known as the Banquet Parables, though the first one isn’t technically a parable. Parables are stories with a moral teaching that use fictitious (and unnamed) characters. This first story is more of a hypothetical scene whereby those attending the dinner are asked to picture themselves as the characters in the tale. On the surface, it teaches a simple wisdom of etiquette, that one should not exalt himself in a public situation or risk being shamed. As is often the case with Jesus’ teachings, however, there is a second and more important lesson to be learned.
