Luke 14 — Liberation and Inclusion Translation

Vélez Johnson, Brandon C.

¹ On one Shabbat,^a when Jesus was going to the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees to eat a meal, they were watching him carefully. ² He came upon someone right in front of him who was suffering from severe swelling due to fluid retention.

³ Jesus responded to the Torah experts and Pharisees by saying, “Is it right to heal on Shabbat or not?” ⁴ But they stayed silent. Jesus took hold of the person, restored him, and set him free.^b ⁵ Then he said to them, “Which of you, if a son or an ox were to fall into a well on a day of Shabbat, would not immediately pull him up?” ⁶ They couldn’t argue with that.

⁷ Noticing how the guests were picking the foremost spots for themselves, Jesus told them a parable. He told them, ⁸ “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, don’t seat yourself in the foremost spot.^c Otherwise, someone may have been invited who is more highly esteemed than you, ⁹ and the one who invited both you and that person will tell you, ‘Give them this spot.’ Then, you’ll have to move to the last place^d in humiliation. ¹⁰ Instead, when you’re invited, go recline^e at the last place. That way, when the one who invited you comes, they will tell you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then, the honor will be yours in front of everyone reclining at the table with you. ¹¹ You see, everyone who lifts themself will be humbled, and whoever humbles themself will be lifted up.”

¹² Then, specifically to the one who had invited him, Jesus said, “When you host a meal or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or family members^f or relatives or wealthy neighbors, so they might also return the invitation, and it might be repaid for you. ¹³ Instead, when you throw a feast, invite people experiencing poverty, people with severe physical disabilities,^g people who are unable to walk,^h and people who are blind. ¹⁴ Since they have nothing to repay you with, you will still have reason for gratitudeⁱ because your repayment will be at the rising up^j of the those aligned with the Path.”^k

¹⁵ But when one of the guests^l heard these things, he told Jesus, “Everyone^m who eats bread in the Reign of God has reason for gratitude!”

¹⁶ But Jesus told him, “Someone was hosting a banquet and invited many people. ¹⁷ At the time of the banquet, he sent a person who was enslaved to him to tell the people who had been invited, ‘Come, because it’s ready now.’ ¹⁸ Yet one after another, they all excused themselves. The first one told them, ‘I bought a field, and I need to go out and see it. Please, excuse me.’ ¹⁹ Another said, ‘I bought five pairs of oxen, and I’m going to examine them. Please, excuse me.’ ²⁰ Yet another said, ‘I took a wife, and that’s why I can’t come.’ ²¹ The enslaved person went back to deliver these messages to their master. Then, furious, the owner of the house told the person who was enslaved to him, ‘Go out right away into the streets and back alleys of the city, and bring in people who are experiencing poverty, who have severe physical disabilities, who are unable to walk, and who are blind.’ⁿ ²² Soon, the enslaved person said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still space.’ ²³ The master told the enslaved person, ‘Go out to the highways and boundary lines,^o and bring in the people there, so my house will be filled.’

²⁴ “You see, I’m telling you all^p that none of those men^q who were invited will taste my banquet!”^r

²⁵ Large crowds were walking with him. Turning to them, Jesus said, ²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not abandon loyalty to^s their own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even their very self,^t they cannot be my student. ²⁷ Anyone who does not carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my student.

²⁸ After all, which of you, wanting to build a tower, wouldn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see whether they have enough to complete it? ²⁹ That way it keeps everyone who sees it from mocking them for laying the foundation and not being able to finish it, ³⁰ saying, ‘This person started building and couldn’t finish it!’ ³¹ Or what king who goes to confront another king in battle would not sit down first and consider whether he is able to oppose with 10,000 the one coming against him with 20,000? ³² If it’s certain he can’t, then while the other is still at a distance, he will send an emissary to request terms for peace. ³³ Similarly, then, anyone among you who doesn’t release their claim on^u all they have cannot be my student.

³⁴ So then, salt is helpful,^v but if that salt were ruined through carelessness,^w how would it be restored? ³⁵ It’s neither useful for the soil nor the manure pile; it will be thrown out. Whoever has ears should listen!”

Footnotes

a This is traditionally ‘Sabbath.’ It’s from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which means ‘rest’ and was used to refer to the seventh day of the week as a designated day for resting (See Exodus 20:8–11). Spelling and pronouncing it ‘Sabbath’ instead of Shabbat just needlessly distances it from the Jewish origin. It’s not an accident that this story directly follows Jesus promising rest for those who carry his yoke. See the book Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann for more insight into the significance of Shabbat in the Bible.
b Or “let him go.” Most translations lean toward the more neutral meaning of dismissal, but the context strongly suggests the liberation sense. The condition would have carried significant social and religious stigma, and releasing him from the burden of it would have been more powerful than the already significant physical aspect of it. Additionally, the same word is used in Luke 13:12 as Jesus tells the woman, “You’ve been freed from your debilitation.”
c The tables in these settings were U-shaped, with the host sitting at the center of the bend of the table. The seats closest to that position were the “foremost spots,” reserved for the most important guests.
d The spots at the ends of the table, farthest from the host, were the least honored and given to the guests that were deemed least important.
e The tables were low to the ground, and people reclined on cushions during meals, not sat in chairs as modern Westerners do.
f The word adelphos literally means ‘brother’ or ‘sibling.’ It was also frequently used to refer to ‘cousin’ or ‘relative,’ and even for members of the same ideological or ethnic group.
g The word anapeiros is rare (appearing only two times in the Bible, both in this chapter) and refers to severe permanent physical disability, potentially including loss of or inability to use a limb.
h The disability here is limited ability to walk, from as mild as a permanent limp to complete inability to use the legs. The context warrants the more severe understanding here.
i Traditionally, ‘blessed.’ There is not one English word that covers what is being described here. There is a sense of satisfaction or contentedness but also receiving something that meets a need. Sometimes it’s translated ‘happy’ to capture the mental/emotional component, and historically it was translated ‘blessed’ to capture the endowment aspect of it, of receiving something as a gift from God. It is about receiving something that inspires or is worthy of gratitude.
j This word, anastasis, is the same word traditionally translated as ‘resurrection.’ It can mean something as simple as standing up from lying or sitting. It can also mean to stand up as a public figure entering their role in public view, like a prophet.
k This word is dikaios, traditionally ‘righteous.’ The word is related to ‘just’ or ‘straight’ or ‘aligned’ and it usually refers to being aligned with Torah and justice, the path of the Lord. In this case, it is referring directly to alignment with God or the path traced out by Torah and lived out by Jesus.
l Literally it refers to one of the people “eating together.”
m The response sounds like it could be an excited statement of inclusion, but the point is that it is a deflection, intentionally pushing against Jesus’ focus on emphasizing the inclusion of the marginalized. By reacting to Jesus’ statement of particularity with a universalizing ‘everyone,’ the speaker dismisses Jesus’ challenge without engaging it, in the same way that responding to ‘Black lives matter’ with ‘All lives matter’ acknowledges the form of the claim while evading its meaning and power.
n Notice the parallel with verse 13.
o The “boundary lines” were places travelers and people without homes camped. It would have been the place to find foreigners passing through and the most destitute in the land.
p The word ‘you’ here is plural, indicating it’s being addressed to the dinner guests with Jesus rather than as part of the parable itself.
q The word aner is specifically the word for men, not people broadly. It is occasionally used in a non-gender-specific way to refer to ‘individuals.’ This context is explicitly referring to men with power.
r Existing English translations include this verse as the final line of the parable, spoken by the host; however, several major commentaries note that Jesus as the speaker is either the most likely intention of the text or at least a strong possibility, including NICNT (Joel B. Green), Hermeneia (François Bovon), and Word Biblical Commentary (John Nolland), among others. Several features of the Greek strongly suggest that Jesus is now speaking directly to his fellow dinner guests instead. The phrase “I’m telling you” (lego humin) is a formula Jesus uses throughout Luke twenty-one times, and it is almost never placed in a parable character’s mouth. The plural “you” (humin) also does not fit the scene inside the parable, where the host speaks only to a single enslaved person. Luke often ends parables with Jesus stepping out of the story to give a concluding word (for example, 10:36–37; 15:7; 15:10; 18:14). The one exception is the Parable of the Minas (19:26–27), where Luke intentionally blends the king’s speech with a concluding principle because the king continues speaking in the following verse, marking it as structurally unusual. Taken together, these factors indicate that v. 24 is Jesus addressing the people around him, highlighting that the kind of wealth that lets someone casually refuse a peer’s banquet implies a deeper problem: such wealth can only be gained or maintained by exploiting others or, at the very least, by benefiting from systems that exploit and by withholding resources that could lift others up. In contrast to both the slaveholder in the parable and the person hosting Jesus, Jesus’ own banquet will specifically include the marginalized and oppressed and not the ultra-wealthy, who will choose to exclude themselves.
s Traditionally, ‘hate.’ ‘Abandon loyalty’ renders the Greek verb misein, which can include both active hostility and, in many Semitic contexts, the withdrawal or reversal of loyalty. In kinship settings this verb regularly signals a reordering of allegiance rather than emotional hatred. The Septuagint uses misein in this comparative way in Genesis 29:30–31 and Deuteronomy 21:15–17, where hated family members are those given diminished status or lower priority. Matthew’s parallel (“loves father or mother more than me,” Matt 10:37) confirms that the issue is competing claims of loyalty, not commanded animosity. See BDAG, 653–54, on the sense of miseo as “disfavor” or “love less,” and Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 565–66, for the kinship and allegiance dynamics at work in Luke 14:26.
t This is the word psuche, with the root idea of “breath.” It points to the breath, the respiration, that makes someone a living person. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, it is what is used to translate nephesh, or ‘living being.’ From there it takes on two closely linked meanings: 1, Physical life — when a verse is talking about someone’s body staying alive or being in danger, like “whoever wants to secure their psuche will surrender it” (Luke 9:24); 2, Inner self and identity — in many places psuche means the deep core of who you are, including your feelings, thoughts, priorities, values, motivation, and sense of self. That’s why Jesus asks, “how does it benefit a person to gain the whole world but injure or destroy their psuche?” (Luke 9:35). The word is about more than staying alive; it’s about losing your identity and integrity of character. Psuche is the living person, seen from the angle of both survival and identity.
u The verb apotasso literally means “to take formal leave of” someone or something. In many places that simply looks like saying goodbye, such as in Mark 6:46. However, the same word can indicate formally declaring a hard separation, as it does here.
v Traditionally, ‘good.’ Like the word ‘good’ in English, the word kalos in Greek has a number of uses, though in the Bible, they are typically about something along the lines of being honorable, admirable, beautiful, or something that is in healthy or undamaged condition.
w The Greek word moraino is the verb form of moros, where English ‘moron’ comes from. It carries a sense of shortsightedness or negligence. The word doesn’t actually have anything to do with flavor or preservative properties of salt. The nature of the carelessness isn’t made explicit, but the context implies losing its identity or qualities in some way. Unlike modern salt with industrial refinement properties, the salt of this period contained impurities, other minerals mixed in with the salt. If salt was carelessly exposed to moisture, the salt would dissolve and leave behind only the impurities, which would basically be sand.

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