Do You Want To Go To Dinner?...Continued from page 4

The host was mad when he received the regrets.  All the guests had agreed to come and then all backed out at the last minute.  But it doesn’t bother us that the host gets upset at first.  We’ve been snubbed, stood up; it hurts.  We like to hear “the owner of the house became angry.”  He should!  He was snubbed.  When he tells his servant at the end, “For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner,” we think, “right on, you get’em!”  But the story ends there, and if we were thinking God was the host of this party, we’ve got problems. 

Even though I turned my friends down when they asked me to go out with them, they called back, and, well, we went the next week.  Friends call back ? shouldn’t God?  Shouldn’t God understand that we live busy lives?  In this parable, our “good-friend-God” is no more.  It’s like running into someone you didn’t get along with so well in high school and thinking that time heals all wounds, only to discover it doesn’t.  Or perhaps, it’s running into a former church member, one who has been hurt by this place, and expecting them to forgive, forget, return, and start tithing, but they don’t.  The hurt is too deep.  Jesus flips our expectations of reconciliation, our expectations that everyone will end up at the dinner.  Here there is no forgiveness, no coming to terms, no reunion, no reconciliation. 

Are you confused?  I am.  This parable leaves us confused.  Every group addressed in or by this parable has their expectations flipped by Jesus’ words and is left confused.  Think of the poor, crippled, blind, and lame; they must be confused.  What was someone so wealthy, so well off, doing inviting them to dinner?  Meanwhile the invited guests become confused when they realize they’ve been shut out ? black listed!  Think of the people first hearing this story.  Luke’s gospel has Jesus telling this parable while at a dinner party in the home of a wealthy Pharisee!  He’s telling a parable suggesting the people with whom he is eating are the one’s locked out of the dinner.  This isn’t preaching to the choir; this is condemning the choir.  Jesus flips all our expectations, and we are left confused.

But, confusion draws us into community.  When students come across a problem they cannot answer, what do they do?  They ask someone else for help ? they form community.  Many good teachers put students in conversation with each other to solve problems together.  Questions draw us into community.  A problem with the men in the parable is that they had answers, or thought they did.  They believed they could live life on their own terms, plan their own schedules, and manage their own calendars.  But, those with answers ate dinner alone, accompanied only by their idols. 

Offering answers like that ? hiring a new pastor or fixing the leaking roof will solve all our problems ? only kills the questions, kills community, and erects idols.  There are genuine questions to be asked, deep pain and vulnerability to explore.  This parable shows us that those most vulnerable are those welcomed to dinner.  The poor and lame allowed themselves to be led.  Their confusion drew them together, and amidst a roar of bewilderment and questions, they dined together. 

It appears that because we accepted an invitation to God’s dinner with baptism we are like those shut out of God’s house.  But at the end of every day when we sit in our chairs to relax, that same crazy crowd forms in the streets walking toward the host’s house.  The dinner goes on.  God’s dinner is not a one-night deal ? we didn’t miss our chance.  God’s been serving up dinner for thousands of years.  We can be among those welcomed into the banquet if we stop being individual excusers with answers and become a community of travelers with questions, trading our self-assurance for God-reliance. 

The more we see ourselves as church and the less as individuals or factions, the closer we move to this banquet.  The more we collect can goods together, study crucifixion films together, read scripture together, work Habitat together, and love together, the closer we travel to the banquet.    Confused, but faithful, we, Church, are traveling together to the banquet. 

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1. Bernard Brandon Scott, Re-Imagine the World (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 2001), 115.