Old King Cole

"Old King Cole"
Luke 14:15-24


Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.

We know from the rest of this nursery rhyme that the King got his pipe and bowl, that the fiddlers came at once, and they all had a jolly time celebrating with their musical instruments.  Some of the last lines of the rhyme read:

Oh there’s none so rare
As can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

What would have happened if the three fiddlers did not show up to make jolly with their King we do not know.  It’s not part of the rhyme’s tale.  We do know that it put the King in rare form to celebrate a little with a handful of his subjects.  We think of kings, regally going about their kingly business.  Rarely do we imagine them playing flute solos with a fiddle trio as a back up.  But certainly, even kings must get tired of all the hubbub of being king, and just desire to cut loose a little.

When Hirohito was Emperor of Japan, he took crowded working days in stride.  On occasion, he even met them with a wry sense of humor.  Grand Chamberlain Sukemasa Irie, a long-time adviser of the Emperor, recalled such an incident.
One day was so chaotic that when we brought the Emperor down to the main ceremonial hall to meet some dignitaries, it turned out that we had got the time mixed up, and nobody was there.  We, the responsible officials, were terribly embarrassed.  But the Emperor simply stood there a moment, bowed politely to the empty hall, and then said to us quietly, “Most interesting and pleasant.  It’s a shame we don’t have more ceremonies like it.”  And with that he walked spryly back to his office.

There are times when even little interludes like that can be more important than all the hectic push and pull of our everyday lives.  We lose our perspective about things of real value if we allow our everyday clamor to work its way into a position of prominence.  When we don’t give ourselves enough time out, we miss the opportunity to put some distance between ourselves and what we are doing in our lives.  When we lose that distance, we start making bad decisions that have long term effect.  We start taking ourselves and what we do too  seriously.  We forget that an important part of what God styled into the creation is the need for gaining that kind of distance through sabbath times of celebration.

It’s such an important part of God’s intentions, in the parable in Luke 14, as well throughout the Bible, the kingdom of God is described as a feast.  It’s like a banquet.  The kingdom of God is a big celebration, akin to a marriage dinner.  In fact, the version of this parable in Luke starts out a little bit differently in Matthew’s gospel:  “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son” (Matthew 22:2).

Isn’t it interesting that of all the parables that Jesus told about the kingdom of God, they mostly had to do with celebrations:  a woman who celebrated after finding her lost coin; a man who celebrated after his prodigal son returned; a man who celebrated after having found his lost sheep.

Isn’t it also interesting that Jesus did not compare the kingdom of God to all the busy-ness of everyday living.  It’s the little surprises, the little interludes, the celebrative events that are separate from the ongoing churning out of our days.  These are what the kingdom of God is like.

How easily we get caught up in the river current of daily living so that we, like the three who made excuses in the parable, forego or even refuse such interludes of celebration.  In Jesus’ parable, the three excuses used for not coming to the feast sound, on first hearing, like acceptable excuses.  But all of them will be found wanting in the end.

The first person said he had bought a field and had to go look at it.  How many of you have bought something without looking at it first?  Especially a piece of property?  This excuse is starting off bad and going down hill from there:

“I just signed a contract and now I have to go read the contract over to see what it says.”
“I just hired an employee, and now I have to go meet her to see if she’s competent.”
“I’m just getting ready to go preach a sermon, but I got it off the internet and I’m need to read it to see if it’s any good.”

Are you getting a sense of how lame these excuses sound for not going to the feast?  They just sound lame, and way beyond common sense.

The second guest made the excuse that he had a new cow he had bought and wanted to go look at it.  Whenever we have something new, whatever it is, it can be very captivating.  Our time and attention easily get sucked away.  We let things hold an attraction over our time and lives, but we miss out.  The captivation can cause us to lose sight of other more important times of celebration.

Senator Paul Tsongas stunned Washington when he announced he wouldn’t run for reelection because he was suffering from cancer.  The disease was caught early and the prognosis was good.  He could have run again.  But he decided to quit politics after spending a weekend at home in Lowell, Massachusetts.  With him were his wife and their three daughters who at that time ranged in ages from three to ten.

“One night my children went to sleep with my arms around them,” recalled Tsongas, “and I realized that for seven years this might rarely happen again.  I used to walk my kids to school and think about reelection.  Now I walk my kids to school and think about them.  My life is richer.”  He began to savor and celebrate that which he hardly gave notice to before.  He was constantly going out to look at the “cows he bought” so to speak, rather than celebrating life with his family.  Tsongas added, “Someone sent me this quote, ‘No one on his deathbed ever says he wished he had spent more time on his business.’”

Yet, all the new cows, mooing for our attention, no matter what they might be for us, can cause us to pass up some invitations of infinitely greater importance.

The third guest used the excuse that he had just gotten married.  He wanted to stay home with his new bride.  Now this claim seems to be an understandable one.  Remember, though, that each of the guests had already accepted the first invitation to the celebration.  Why didn’t this guest just turn the invitation down in the first place?  That’s the way things happened.  A first invitation would have been sent out about the feast.  At that invitation you accept or decline.  Then the second invitation would go out when the feast was ready, and those who accepted the first invitation would come to the feast.

So all three of these guests had received and accepted the first invitation.  Then the excuses at the second invitation.  All the excuses have a shred of acceptability to them.  But by making them, the guests have reneged on their prior commitment to come.  In the end, their excuses were found wanting, no matter how high sounding they may be.

The issue is that by making their excuses, they are all making the fallacious assumption that their trivial business at hand was more important than the celebrative feast to which they had been invited.  They were taking their busy-ness and their lives too seriously.  By doing so they were totally missing one of the main intentions of God for his people in the point of this parable:  life as kingdom people is primarily celebration.

We think of our reformer forerunners in the church as stoic party poopers.  But when they were penning such things as the Shorter and Larger Catechism, teaching the young about the basics of the faith, what was the first question in both catechism’s?  Anyone know?  The question is, “What is the chief end of man?”  Anyone know what the young people learned as the answer to that question?  “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and ENJOY Him forever.”

How many of you are enjoying God?  Enjoying your relationship with God?  Enjoying your time spent with God?  And enjoying life because of God?  Maybe the claims and excuses of busy-ness, of the new, and of the seemingly good are being allowed to grow too thickly around the simple and pure enjoyment we are to have in playing fiddle with God.

Those who eventually made it into the banquet were the ones who had no worldly obligations to get in the way.  They were the outcasts, the dispossessed.  It was the property owners who were first invited.  It was the ones who owned nothing but their lives who made it into the celebration.  They were the ones who so desperately needed something to celebrate.  They were the ones who needed some enjoyment in life.  The others, who had everything in the world to celebrate about--land, cattle, a good wife--were the ones who refused.  Odd isn’t it?

There was a young art student whose teacher put him to the task of painting a sunset.  He sat on the brow of a hill, trying to capture on canvas the glory that filled the western horizon.  But he spent too much time working on one detail.  The teacher came along and said, “Look, the sun is almost down, and you are spending your time putting a roof on a barn.”

We have been given the invitation and the possibility of putting the bright celebration of God into the picture of our lives.  But are we too busy concentrating on minor things that ultimately don’t matter in terms of the larger picture?  And then it’s too late.  The sun’s gone down.  The doors to the feast are closed.

God wants us to celebrate.  And God will, regardless of whether we accept the invitation or not.  God will find someone to celebrate with; someone who wishes to take advantage of and celebrate the opportunities to be with and enjoy God.  Someone who would love to fiddle while God piped.