It's August. There haven't been any holidays lately so you decide to have a dinner party
which group of people to invite?
You think through your friends and imagine possible conversations built upon common points of interest.
Guess who's not coming to dinner?
How many of us would enjoy having Jesus as a dinner guest? Let's face it given all I know about him I'd be very very intimidated by his actual presence. I might long to know him I may even want to feed him and support his ministry but oh to have him in my home, unnerving my guests? I don't know.
Now of course maybe my friends wouldn't mind Jesus healing on the sabbath right in front of their eyes. Maybe they wouldn't become uneasy when he says peculiar things about dyiing about being about his Father's business - Maybe we are so used to cocktail party talk that we would simply smile gently and nod once in a while as he tells incomprehensible stories about what?!
What did he mean when he told the Pharisee host next time invite the lost, the least, the last? What does it mean that we should choose the lowest seat at the banquet. Could you imagine the humiliation of being asked to move? Perhaps that's why wedding banquet these days have those elaborate seating charts and name place cards.
I have often turned to Father Robert Farrar Capon whenever I am trying to understand one of Jesus' parables. So I pulled Parables of Grace from my bookcase and found two points very interesting very helpful.
If you do not know these works (Parables of the Kingdom, Parables of Grace and Parables of Judgment) I would warn you - as would Father Capon himself that he has a very strong bias one that I share namely that God's absolute grace is at the core of Biblical interpretation. His is a hermeneutic of grace. He writes as if he is sitting in a cafι sharing pizza and beer and/or seltzer and french fries with you - not worrying about the syntax - but oh does he know his Greek its there all over the place. And believing that his Saviour was given to hyperbole he too is prone to wild exaggeration. So it is engaging as well as illuminating reading.
So there I was back with my 'friend' Father Robert rereading his passage on this portion of Scripture. He admits that he has been a bit overbearing in his insistence that Jesus' actions and parables at this point in time have to be held in context a context of death. He says all that Jesus has said and done needs to be considered in light of Jesus' determination to go to Jerusalem in order to die. Jesus knows that he is to be martyred he knows also that this is not the popular messianic expectation. Everyone wants political freedom and God's about to grant freedom from the power of death. How like God.
And - perhaps - knowing that people by in large are not going to comprehend what he is doing (or about to do) gives Jesus the freedom to behave a bit outrageously. In some ways it doesn't matter what Jesus says it matters what he will do.
He will die and he will be raised again. And we will be transformed not because we do certain right actions not because we know the right people or own the right stuff... we are transformed by doing something almost incomprehensible by believing that we matter to God by believing that because Jesus died and was raised from the dead so we shall be raised as well.
We are told to take the lowest - the last seat. The Greek word is eschatos. Now somehow the word eschaton has made its way into some corners of popular culture. We know to associate it with the end times with death. And this is Father Robert's point. Jesus invites us to come to our deaths
[all the little deaths such as surrendering our need to be in control loosening our grasp on possessions risking inconvenience for the sake of others --- as well as the ultimate death leaving this world as we've known it]
trusting that God is holding us God is loving us and God will bring us more and more fully into our wholeness so that we live eternally in bliss.
What confuses us is that we think that this eternity begins after we die... when in fact we already experience eternal timelessness whenever we are deeply in prayer.
But because we tend to think that eternity is later... we put off truly living in this moment. We are hungry for God's presence but instead of encounter here and now... we say oh there's time. And we foolishly try to satisfy our hunger with novelty whether it is a different experience or owning something new which of course could be something old and beautiful. It's okay to own things to do new things but they need to be secondary to God. It is important to reevaluate to ask, what is really necessary? What do I have that I perceive as blessing? What symbolizes grace? What owns me more than I own it? Do I own this at the expense of someone's well-being?!
What notions do I hold? Do I think about the whole of Scripture when I decide to judge others? Or do I gloss over those things that would make me uncomfortable if I actually thought about them.
Consider the passage we heard today from Hebrews. Let mutual love continue the author says, offering a summary of the life of faith so it too can be reduced to seven words: care concern purity fidelity freedom generosity and loyalty. We have in these words an invitation to empathy: imagine that you are there with those in prison; imagine that you are being tortured with those who suffer torture... We discover an invitation to reverence - we are to honour the institution of marriage and all that it represents and we are encouraged to be modest, for we are to allow God to be the judge of those who do not show honour judging is not part of our mandate.
Too often we are caught up in what we can use to accuse others
but alas here is something that speaks deeply to so many of us in our consumer society
see how it is elaborated upon with two quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures.
Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for [God] has said, I will never leave or forsake you. (Deut. 31.6, 8; Joshua 1:5)
So we can say with confidence
'The Lord is my helper
I will not be afraid
What can anyone do to me?' Psalm 118:6
God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ. And that person was an outspoken and challenging dinner guest... he was also a man of great compassion and courage. Jesus' life death and resurrection are intended to move us from a simple intellectual debate about right behaviours move us beyond a semi-conscious nodding at the words quoted from Psalm 118 (the Lord is my helper I will not be afraid what can anyone do to me)
to total commitment.
God has invited each one of us to the banqueting table. Do we dare take the lowest, the last seat? Do we believe that we will be called to move higher? That we shall rise again?
