BANQUETS AND BLESSINGS
This image is called “The Poor Invited to the Banquet”. It is from a series called “Jesus Marfa”, in which an African congregation did live re-enactments of scripture passages which were turned into paintings.
Good News: Luke 14:1, 7-14 Common English Bible
14 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely.7 When Jesus noticed how the guests sought out the best seats at the table, he told them a parable. 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding celebration, don’t take your seat in the place of honor. Someone more highly regarded than you could have been invited by your host. 9 The host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give your seat to this other person.’ Embarrassed, you will take your seat in the least important place. 10 Instead, when you receive an invitation, go and sit in the least important place. When your host approaches you, he will say, ‘Friend, move up here to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11 Allwho lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.”12 Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. 13 Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. 14 And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.”
Holy Wisdom, Holy Word. Thanks be to God!
Reflection: “Banquets and Blessings”
I wonder how many of you have been involved in planning a wedding recently? It seems like there’s been an explosion of big events like weddings and family reunions during the last year, as folks celebrate being able to mingle again with friends and family. I have heard that good venues have to be booked far in advance. For example, a few months ago I was asked to officiate at a wedding a year from now at a popular spot near Campbell River because that was the first date available.
Anyone who’s been a part of a big formal event knows that the invitation list and the seating plan are really, really important. Do you invite everyone you know, or just close friends and family? If they’re paying the bills, can your parents invite everyone they know, whether or not you know them? What can you afford? Who sits at the head table? Do you put all the singles at one table, or at tables with couples? Can everyone see and hear the speakers and music? It’s the stuff of many a romantic comedy movie, or in some cases the stuff of nightmares.
In the parable that Jesus tells in our reading this morning from the gospel of Luke, we discover that invitation lists and seating plans were just as important then as they are now. Meals were used to cement and reinforce relationships, both social and business. An invitation extended meant that a return invitation at a later date was expected. Guests were seated according to social standing and their relationship to the host, and sometimes guests might even be served different qualities or quantities of food depending on their status.
Jesus has been invited to a Sabbath meal at the home of an important religious leader in the community. When he notices the guests jockeying for the best seats, he tells them: don’t sit at the head table, in case someone more important than you is invited and your host has to humiliate you by asking you to move. Instead, sit at the back of the room where your host may find you and move you to a better seat. If you lift yourself up, you’ll be put down. If you humble yourself, you’ll be honoured.
Jesus then turns to the topic of the guest list. He says, don’t just invite your neighbours and friends and relatives, because you will be repaid when they invite you back. Invite the poor and the oppressed, everyone who is unable to pay you back. You will be blessed. They cannot repay you but you will be rewarded for helping to build the kin- dom of God.
Once again, Jesus is literally turning the tables on his listeners. Speaking to the elders of his religious community, he tells them that true blessing is not to be found in the obvious places: having status, being invited to the “best” parties, knowing all the right people, sitting at the head table. True blessing is to be found in humility, and in offering radical hospitality to those who can’t reciprocate.
I have an ambivalent relationship with the word blessing. It seems both overused and misused these days: misused by those who see their material success as a sign of divine favour, and overused in social media where it is often accompanied by a praying hands emoji. And yet, I sign my church email with “Blessings” because it seems to cover everything that I hope for the folks I am contacting. And I love the Celtic tradition of blessing everything in everyday life.
The Greek word translated as blessed in today’s passage is “makarios”, which can be translated as blessed, fortunate or happy. Perhaps the most familiar passage using this word is what we call the Beatitudes, in which Jesus also reverses the usual order and declares the poor in spirit, the sorrowful, and the hungry to be blessed.
Candace Simpson points out in an excellent commentary on this passage that Jesus “subverts what a blessing is, and more importantly, who can give you a blessing.” She notes that blessings show up throughout the gospel of Luke at strange moments: when Mary discovers she is pregnant, when the oppressed are invited to the table. Blessings happen when we are disoriented, when we start questioning what society sees as normal. Maybe being blessed means being changed.
Simpson says, “What if every time we read the word “blessed”, we substituted it for “change”?: But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the oppressed and the disabled. And you will be changed because they cannot repay you…What kind of people would we be if it were our instinct to have banquets where the vulnerable were the guests of honor?”
Lately, I have been challenged to think much more deeply about who should be included as “vulnerable guests of honor”.
We have a large family room in our basement that is often occupied by young people needing a temporary home for various reasons. Our last guest moved out several months ago. After the room sat empty for several months, I saw a desperate plea for foster homes from the local cat rescue society. I contacted them and within days we had two lovely ginger brothers who were adopted after a month in our care. They were soon replaced with two black strays, one from Sointula and one found on the dock in Campbell River. They’re both shy and scared, but are starting to look for attention and maybe even starting to make friends with each other. I suspect their path to adoption will take longer as they get used to being inside cats.
Becoming involved with this organization has been a real eye opener. There is such a huge need to rescue, care for and rehome these vulnerable fellow beings and the volunteers put huge amounts of time and effort into helping them. Some of them seem to be on the go all day and sometimes all night trapping cats, running them to vets, coordinating foster homes and arranging adoptions. It can be quite overwhelming, this need to care for the vulnerable.
I have also recently signed up for an online course as an Animal Chaplain, a role I didn’t even know existed until I saw a webinar advertised by an organization for spiritual directors. According to their website, Animal chaplains provide support for animals―and the humans who love them―by using spiritual practices, rituals, ceremonies, and the tools of spiritual companionship. The course covers interspecies spirituality, companioning grief and loss, trauma stewardship, the human/animal bond, rituals, eco spirituality and planetary ethics.
The course hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already challenged to think differently about the beings we call animals – the language we use to talk about them, how we think about them and treat them. In particular, I’m struggling with how my eating habits and lifestyle impacts other beings who I believe contain a spark of the divine.
And that brings me back to the theme of blessing, with a conversation that happened recently in an online ministers’ group. Many churches offer a Blessing of the Animals, often in conjunction with the Feast of St. Francis in October. One minister is planning an outdoor blessing service, and because they are in a rural area they are hoping that people will bring farm as well as companion animals. The minister was asking for ideas for the service, which will be followed by refreshments for humans and animals. In the discussion following, one person commented “When you bless the farm animals you are often also blessing the food.” And I thought wow, does that ever lead into an ethical quagmire. How can we bless a being and then turn it into food? I don’t think this is what Candace Simpson meant by “being blessed is to be changed”. I suspect that what needs changing in this situation is us, not the animals. I know that I am going to be changed, sometimes reluctantly, by this course.
So as we think about today’s parable of the banquet, let’s think about who is invited, who is blessed, who is changed. The kin-dom of God is an open table. We are invited to that table simply because we are God’s children. Everyone is included, and maybe it’s time to think beyond the human species and invite the rest of Creation to the banquet where all are fed and all are equal.
Let us pray: Christ, you call us to your table, but we are uncertain of our place amid the changes and struggles of this time. When we wonder where our place is and what we are to do, remind us of what matters most to you. Amen.
For Reflection: Is it time for human beings to have some humility? The assumption of having dominion over the earth has caused suffering, destruction and climate change. Who can show us another way?