Do You Want To Go To Dinner?...Continued from page 3

We have received a great invitation.  A formal invitation complete with our names penned in calligraphy, two envelopes, that transparent paper inside, and little RSVP slips included.  A dinner invitation to beat all dinner invitations.  God has offered ? we have accepted.  No more eating alone ? God’s throwing a dinner party, and we are gonna be there.

Stuff comes up, though.  We plan to attend, confirm our invitation, but something comes up and we have to excuse ourselves.  I’d already accepted an invitation to join a few friends for some live music one night, but when they called to go, I found myself knee deep in the middle of writing a sermon.  I told them, “I can’t right now, maybe next time.” 

As we observe the invited dinner guests in Jesus’ parable, we see stuff crop up in their lives.  They had accepted the original invitation, but when the time came to attend the dinner, it seems things came up ? life got hectic, “maybe next time.”  At first glance, these are men leading busy lives and making judicious judgments about the use of their time, preferring prior commitments to a simple dinner party.  They had real estate to inspect, a fleet of commercial vehicles to test out, and a new bride who needed some attention.  But, deep within these commonplace, acceptable regrets, however, lays the heart of the matter. 

The Bible gets interesting when we realize we’ve been misreading it.  Suddenly, in our new awareness, we can sense the Gospel breaking through the Bible, the Word of God erupting through the words of God.  What appeared nice regrets become blatant excuses.  As one commentator wrote, “Who would buy a farm before he inspects it? Who would buy five pairs of oxen, even a single ox, before checking it out?  Who would accept an invitation to a banquet and forget that he was getting married on that day?”1 These excuses sound like asking your big crush out on a date only to be told they are too busy washing the goldfish, ironing non-wrinkle shirts, or planting plastic flowers.  These aren’t regretful friends, they’re deceitful scoundrels.  Who knows what they had against the host, but the priorities of their lives trumped all else.  Their saying, “not now, but maybe next time” was not an honest response, but a rote rejection.  Something always comes up. 

We don’t attend the dinner because we have our own agendas.  After a long day of work, we relax in our worn-through recliners to watch some TV.  We settle into our schedule, but before we become too comfortable, suddenly, we are shaken by a fury rising just outside our windows.  We scurry to see what is happening, only to find the streets teeming with the “poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”  A circus of the marginalized complete with wheelchairs, seeing-eye dogs, tattered pants, and scooters, limping up the road to dinner.  Our cheeks twinge, a small smile forms, our heads shake just slightly, and a quiet laughter rumbles.  This host must be crazy to invite all these people just because we couldn’t go.  We, like our excused friends in the parable, retire to our own specially prepared meals.  No company, but good food.  We schedule life on our terms and someday the time may come to attend the dinner, but “not now, maybe next time.”