Homily for November 3rd,
2020: Luke 14:15-24.
Some
Scripture commentators suggest that the host in the parable we have just heard
was a tax collector. His party is an attempt to break into society by inviting
the leading citizens of the town and providing lavish entertainment. His guests
have all told him, in the offhand way that people do, that they’d be happy to
come to his house. “Any time,” they’ve
all said. When the invitations arrive, however, it turns out that these
acceptances were insincere. The excuses offered are so flimsy as to be almost
pathetic.
Jesus’
hearers would have smiled as they heard of the frustration of the host’s plans.
He thought he was going to make a big splash. Now all his guests have stood him
up. The man’s growing anger enhances the humor of the situation. He resolves to
repay the insults of his intended guests with an insult of his own. He will
give a party for people whom those originally invited hold in contempt. That
will show them!
The
parable, like many others, contains a warning — but also good news. The warning
is the exclusion of those first invited. They represent Jesus’ critics: people
confident that the best seats at the banquet were reserved for them. They
assume that there will be other opportunities, other invitations. Too late,
they discover that this was their final chance.
The parable’s good news is contained
in the description of the substitute Sguests. They are a portrait of Luke’s
own Christian community: “the poor, the blind, the crippled, the lame.” The
parable’s good news is its assurance that God welcomes not just the fit and
strong, people whose good moral character makes them role models and leaders.
The Lord who was reproached in his earthly life for welcoming sinners and
eating with them continues to do the same today. To claim a place at his table
we need to show him not our successes but our failures; not our strength but
our weakness; not health but sickness.
Preaching
on this parable back in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI told about bishops from Western
countries, Europe especially, telling him on their visits to Rome about how
people refuse the Lord’s invitation to his banquet. Yet at the same time, the
Pope said, “I also hear this, precisely from the Third World: that people
listen, that they come, that even today the message spreads along the roads to
the very ends of the earth, and that people crowd into God’s hall for the
banquet.”
Are
you among them?
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