Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
I have a friend who is always inviting me to dinner. She's profusely hospitable - the kind of host who serves a rich chocolate cake with ice cream after a simple weeknight dinner, and then slips a quarter of the leftover cake into my purse when I'm not looking. I usually don't find the cake till I've made it home, where I have no choice (sigh...) but to eat the leftovers with my lunch the next day.
I hate to admit it, but I am just not terribly good at being on the receiving end of such enormous hospitality. I have often felt in her debt, often anxious about repaying her for her dinners and extra bits of cake.
I mentioned that to her once. She looked at me with a very sad face and said, "Jana.... I think you have missed the point. This is a GIFT." We said no more about it, but it jolted me and made me realize that hospitality isn't only about what we give to others. It is also - and perhaps especially - about what we receive from others. Today's scriptures pinpoint this.
In the gospel (Luke 14:15-24), Jesus speaks of a banquet, where all kinds of people have been invited - but one by one, they make their excuses. The excuses are perfectly reasonable, ordinary kinds of excuses. I can imagine myself making similar kinds of excuses in our contemporary period: "No, I can't come to dinner with you today, I have to take the kids to soccer practice.... we planned today to go buy the new couch we've been thinking about.... I got married last week and I just want to stay home with my new spouse."
The excuses are perfectly reasonable - but also perfectly trivial. The invited guests have made the mistake of equating their own everyday "things to do" list with being invited to dinner. Eating seems like just another thing to do, to check off the to-do list, and we’re getting pretty good at doing that in the twenty-first century (nuking a meal in the microwave).
But in Jesus' parable, eating is about much more than just getting nourishment in our bodies. It's about building relationships with the one who invites us to the meal; it's about enjoying each other; it's about learning what it means to give and receive hospitality.
The master's guests didn't really wish to receive hospitality at all - so instead, the master offered it to whomever would accept it. That turned out to be the most humble people, all the outcasts of society. The key difference between them and the first batch of invited guests was that the outcasts were empty, waiting (even longing) to be filled. The invited guests had lives that were already full – even though that fullness came from trivial things.
Today’s first reading (Philippians 2:5-11) makes a similar point. Jesus himself shows us that the best way to be full to bursting with God is to become empty.
Today, let us reflect on the trivial things of our lives that take us away from receiving God’s own hospitality and God’s fullness of love. And let us practice giving those up, in favor of receiving the Kingdom of God.
- Jana M. Bennett