¹⁷ At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ ¹⁸ “But they all alike began to make excuses.”
                                                                                                -Luke 14:17-18
Yesterday we talked about how in the ancient world you would alert your guest list well in advance of the gathering and then set about preparing the feast based on the number of yes’s you’d received.
 
But sometimes you RSVP yes….but when the time actually comes it feels like a lot of work to get up and get going.
 
That’s what happens here in this parable: the guests who had previously said they’d love to be there all found reasons to bow out.  We’ll talk in a little more detail about their specific excuses tomorrow.
 
But for today, there’s a law of inertia that would be good for us to name because it has profound spiritual and social implications: an object at rest tends to stay at rest.  Put another way, it’s always easier not to go.

It’s always easier not to go to someone’s house when they’ve invited you. It’s always easier not to go to church. It’s always easier not to go to a small group. It’s always easier not to sign up for the mission trip or check out the seminar.
 
It’s always easier to not get up a little earlier to exercise or to spend some time in Scripture and prayer. It’s always easier to not make a meal for someone who just got out of the hospital. It’s always easier to not make the phone call to check in on someone. It’s always easier to not ask someone to get together. It’s always easier to not go meet the new person in the neighborhood or at church.
 
It’s always easier not to repent and turn to God. It’s always easier to not deal with your own sin or repair a broken relationship.
 
It’s always easier not to go. But one of Jesus’s last commands before he left this planet had, at its core, a “GO! “…go and make disciples of all nations…”  If we’re following Jesus, there is a “go” that needs to be at work in our lives somewhere, somehow.
 
Where in your life are you settling for not going because it’s easier not to go? What are you missing out on? What might help you to get up and get going today?