I’m sure we all played the familiar game: who are the three people you would like to invite to dinner and why. The guests may have likely included Saint Theresa of Calcutta, Martin Luther King, Mary, St. Paul, and my parents. Of course, it was a given… Jesus was always at the top of my list. The proposed dinner guests would invariably change depending on where we were at given points in our lives, but Jesus would be a constant.
However, after reading Luke these many weeks I might rethink inviting Jesus to dinner. Really, he always tends to make a scene or create a disturbance, making the guests uneasy. We could find ourselves possibly siding with the Pharisees as they raised their eyebrows at Jesus and his disheveled group of “hangers on” who tended to eat and drink to excess. And remember the woman who in the middle of having a “meltdown,” crashes an important dinner party and bathes Jesus' feet with her tears and hair? Really! And, what about Jesus taking poor Martha to task for complaining about her sister who instead of helping with dinner preparation, hangs around with all the men in the dining room. And now here in Luke 14:1,7-14 he is not only telling us who to invite to our party, but where they should sit when they do arrive. Frankly, Jesus can be an unconventional risky guest at the very least.
Although it can be
confusing and at times disturbing, there is a consistent theme in Luke’s
gospels. He warns us about becoming too comfortable with convention, and protocol for protocol
sake. Self-imposed cultural niceties fast become devices to exclude “others”
who are different from us. Of course it’s easier for us to associate with those
who are just like us and reinforce our comfort zone. But perhaps we should ask
why do they make us uncomfortable? Do
we see in them, something about ourselves that make us uncomfortable? Perhaps we
believe that associating with the “disenfranchised” cannot help us socially,
economically, or emotionally…but what about spiritually?
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