Luke:14:12-24
12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." 15 One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" 16 Then Jesus said to him, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. 17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, 'Come; for everything is ready now.' 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.' 19 Another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.' 20 Another said, 'I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.' 21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, 'Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.' 22 And the slave said, 'Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.' 23 Then the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.' "
Talk about your radical hospitality! Hospitality is one of those words that has great depth, both in theology and practice. Hospitality is one of those practices that Jesus did in a radical way, he welcomed some a whole plethora of types of people to his table, and spent so much time wandering the streets and highways and byways that he came into contact with all sorts of people. In the feast that Jesus describes, the owner of the house is insistent that he wants guests for this feast, for this agape meal, for this wedding banquet and implores his slave to go out and find the "poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame" in order to fill the tables and have a joyous event.
God wants all of us to join in the banquet, and so many of us choose to stay away, but God is insistent. God is going to fill those tables, even if we stay away due to our own poverty of spirit, even if we stay away because we may feel too crippled to come, even if we are too blind to see God's embrace, even if we are not able to follow as gracefully as we might.
God's love for us is ever-present. God's grace is prevenient Grace, and we are not easily going to be able to stay away. Jesus describes the radical hospitality of the master in this parable and God offers us his radical hospitality. May we each accept the invitation the first time, and may we live out this sense of radical hospitality in our own practice of the Christian life.
~The Rev. Peter M. Carey
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