In Luke’s gospel, Jesus spends a whole lot of time eating with people. And most of the time Jesus is the guest, not the host. He is the one who is invited, not the one who invites. Jesus doesn’t have the wherewithal to be the host. He doesn’t have a big enough house with a big enough table, nor the right kind of dinnerware, nor the financial means to serve up even a simple meal. So Jesus spends a lot of time as a guest at other’s tables.
Today Jesus is dining in the home of a Pharisee. This guy is an expert in the Jewish law. He says what the law means and what it requires, and makes sure that other people are keeping it. Jesus has been invited for dinner not because this Pharisee likes him and enjoys his company. Jesus is there because these religious leaders are watching him. They are watching him because he is a making trouble. On his way to dinner on this particular evening, Jesus has healed a guy, on the Sabbath, which is against the law, and these leaders have seen him do it. They are watching him, taking notes, building a case against him.
So you can guess that the mood around this dinner table is not one of relaxed conviviality. These people are not telling the latest jokes they’ve heard, or exchanging friendly banter about the Roman senate’s latest proposal for tax reform. The tension in this dining room is so thick you can cut it with a knife. And it builds when Jesus begins to criticize his host.
Now I grew up in a household without a lot of table manners. We talked with our mouths full. We didn’t say, “please pass,” we just grabbed. And it sometimes happened that spaghetti went air borne if somebody said something that you didn’t like. But, despite all of the manners I didn’t learn, I was taught not to criticize the host when I was a guest in someone else’s house! I suppose Jesus’ mother Mary did try to teach him this and other table manners.
But, on this particular night, Jesus criticizes his host for going along with the whole practice of only inviting people to eat with you if they are in a position to invite you back. Jesus says, quite clearly, don’t play this social game. Instead, fill your table with people who cannot possibly repay your generosity. Invite the ones who are outcast and excluded from normal table fellowship because they are poor, crippled, blind, or lame. In Jesus’ time these persons were stigmatized not only because of their financial and physical challenges, they were stigmatized because it was believed that their circumstances were evidence that they had sinned and were cursed by God. Jesus is asking his host to behave in preposterous ways. Not only to invite those who could not repay, but also to set places for people whom he has written off as sinners. Jesus’ instructions here could not be clearer, or more offensive. Yet he goes on to tell a story that makes the same point in a different way. Why does Jesus do this? Why not just leave well enough alone and get on with the eating?
If you grew up in church, you have probably heard this story Jesus tells many times. And you have heard it interpreted as a parable. In Sunday School I was taught that parables are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. They appear to be stories about ordinary life, ordinary people, but hidden in them is a story about God. According to this way of understanding the story, God has invited some people to a great banquet, and they have sent in their RSVPS saying “yes, I accept. In Jesus’ day, the exact time for the dinner was not precisely set, so on the day of the banquet, those who had accepted the invitation would be called to come when all things were ready.
According to this interpretation of the story, the servant God’s sends to say come on down is Jesus, and the guests who said they would come, but now say “no” to God’s banquet are the Pharisees. They say “no” by judging and excluding the kind of people whom God is inviting through Jesus to sit at table in God’s household—the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. They exclude themselves, so God invites others to take their places at the table and in the end, it appears that there will never be room for them at God’s banquet table.
But what if we interpret this story differently? What if we read it as an earthly story about earthly people, regular people like us who are comfortable with certain ways of living until something happens that causes us to question the ways we are living? What if we read it as a story about the possibility of human conversion?
Once there was a man who prepared a great dinner and invited the kind of people who could repay his generosity. His is just fine with the whole social game until the people he has invited refuse his hospitality for no good reason at all. Even we can see through their flimsy excuses. Nobody buys land without first seeing it. Nobody purchases oxen without first trying them out. And why in God’s name would you schedule your wedding at the same time as this banquet you have accepted to attend?
All of these people with their lame excuses dishonor the man. They slap him in the face. Reject his company. Refuse his friendship. They hurt his feelings and leave him alone with a ton of food to eat. He was fine with the “I’ll invite you and you invite me” game. You honor me, I’ll honor you. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. He was fine with it until the whole thing falls apart. And the weird thing is, the guests with their lame excuses have done this host a favor.
He is forced to think about who would be available to come and feast with him on short notice? Who would be grateful to share a gracious meal? Who is never invited? Who will befriend him? The man remembers all the people who are outcast and excluded—the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. Their social calendars are clear. So he invites them to come.
Now, clearly his motives are not pure. He is not acting with a generous heart or genuine care for these strangers. He is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But this is the cracking of the closed door. This is the first step in breaking down the barriers and the social stigma that excludes the so-called poor and disabled. This is the beginning of the host’s conversion to see his own blindness and recognize his own disability to love. It won’t be easy for this host or the guests he is compelling to come in. Everyone is going to feel uncomfortable at first. Our conversions happen slowly. Everyone is going to have to figure out how to be in this new configuration of humanity where everybody is somebody, where everybody has a name and a story, where everybody sits at one table, a community of differently abled equals in need of welcome, and food, and friendship, and love.
Jesus spent a lot of time sitting at table with all kinds of people. He was usually the guest, not the host. But there was one time when Jesus was the host, when he sat with his disciples in a borrowed room at a borrowed table on the night before he was crucified. And he took bread and he took the cup and he gave it to them saying this is my body, this is my blood, given for you. This is myself, my life, my love given for you. This is costly food and drink, given for free. This is the banquet that breaks through the barriers and dissolves the stigmas, and opens our eyes to our blindness, and overcomes our disability to love every neighbor. This is the feast that converts us. This is the table with room for all, where the food never runs out, and God keeps extending the invitation, until every “no” becomes “yes” and God’s banquet room is filled, and people talk with their mouths full of food and rejoicing.