Reflection:
In Lk.14:1 – 24, Jesus teaches disciples and Pharisees about being guests (v.7 – 11), hosts (v.12 – 14), and invitees (v.15 – 24) of the kingdom banquet. Jesus confronts two major social issues in table fellowship practice: social honor and materialism. While a guest of the Pharisees, and after challenging his fellow Pharisee guests about their own status-seeking (14:7 – 11), Jesus challenges his Pharisee host in this public luncheon. Despite the unwritten code against such public statements from a guest, Jesus invites him to shed both social honor and materialism: Don't invite your peer group; invite outcasts instead (14:12 – 14). Consistent with 6:20 – 36, Jesus wants to move relationships beyond mere reciprocation; such relational patterns keep people separated from each other, keep some marginalized and stigmatized, and keep others in places of power. Jesus’ kingdom program decidedly runs against these patterns of relationship.
Without knowing anything about the cultural background, that sounds challenging to us, doesn’t it? I like going out to eat with friends who I know will always argue for the check, at least. ‘Let me get that.’ ‘Oh no!’ ‘Let me get the check.’ ‘No, no, please! You got it last time!’ Jesus says, ‘That’s what it’s like to go out with your friends, your family, and especially your rich neighbors. They know how to repay you. They know the rules. They know how to preserve the system.’ Do you ever spend go out to eat with people who always let you pay? Pretty soon, you don’t eat with those people anymore. The people you have over to your house are the people who you know will understand your gesture, who will repay you with a visit over to their place, and everything will continue on. It’s that reciprocation thing. But imagine one evening Jesus coming over and challenging you in front of your guests!
Jesus and the Pharisees had completely opposite opinions about the purpose of eating. Culturally, eating was very intimate thing. It was not just serving homeless people in a soup kitchen line. It was inviting someone in to your house, to sit at your table, to put your resources at that person’s disposal because hospitality meant everything. Once that person entered your home, you are simultaneously intending to serve them, to share your life with them. It said, ‘You are my friend and equal and you have a claim on what’s mine. I am including you. I am inviting you.’
The Pharisees saw it as a time to preserve their status and sense of community. When you ate, you ate with your friends. You ate with other Pharisees because you wanted to be seen as part of that community, especially since they saw the Temple as corrupt and wanted to elevate their own circles. But this put them on a collision course with Jesus. Jesus saw eating as a time to give up your status and give up your money. For him, it was a time to open your life, to broaden your sense of community. In Luke, meal scenes are very important. Jesus apparently enjoyed eating because we see him do it at least 10 times in Luke’s Gospel. When Jesus eats with people, he is not just saying, ‘I like to hang out with you.’ He is saying, ‘Back in paradise, in Genesis 2, people ate with God. God shared His life with you in that way. Now I am restoring you to paradise, therefore I want you to eat with me.’ The reason why Jesus ate with prostitutes and tax collectors was to symbolize to them a new reality he was bringing in.
The Pharisees want to keep to their ‘in crowd.’ Jesus wants his disciples not to be that way. In this particular meal scene, the difference of opinion is painfully clear. So Jesus turns to address his host in this very public way and says, ‘You are a bad host’: You only invite people who can pay you back. What about all the people who can’t?
Why does Jesus do that? Because Jesus wanted to show how God’s kingdom invites all, and wants to include all. So Jesus wants to reach the poor and the lost through us. And he wants to do that not just for their good but for our good as well. The two things are intimately related. Let’s look first at who Jesus wants us to reach in v.13: ‘But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.’
In first century Israel, the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind were the ones who were thought to be cursed because of their sin. They were very vulnerable. They were on the margins. They made you feel uncomfortable. They made your life inconvenient at times. Imagine having to build a wheelchair ramp into your house. That could cost a few thousand dollars. Not only that, these folks were usually thought of as being disadvantaged because of sin: either their own or their parents. Jesus spoke many times against that view, and he went further in inviting them, including them in his circles.
Now who are the outcast today? Well, certainly it’s the homeless, especially if they smell. There are HIV/AIDS victims. There are the poor cousins we have, the family members that get held up as the family's negative example. And what does Jesus want us to do today? It’s not just a superficial ‘to eat with them.’ That would be untrue to the cultural significance of what Jesus was actually doing. Table fellowship back then was not just a slice of life; it was the life practice that symbolized all of life. Jesus wants us to invite them into our lives, to be inclusive, to let them affect our decisions.
When I graduated from college in 1994, I got a job at Intel, and soon afterwards I moved into a Mexican immigrant community in East Palo Alto, CA to do ministry there. One morning, I was heading out to work, and a grandmother who was about 50 years old, asked me if I could give her a ride to work. Her usual ride, she told me, had been arrested! So I gave her a ride that day. We spoke in Spanish so I could practice speaking in Spanish. Turns out that her workplace, a potpourri factory, was less than 10 minutes from my office, so it wasn't too much trouble. The next day, she was there again, and I gave her a ride. Soon enough, I was giving her rides to and from her work for over a year. Needless to say, that constrained my work hours. This was during the heyday of the late 90’s when the stock price was doubling every year. Employee surveys showed that over 2/3 of all Intel employees worked more than 50 hours a week. Usually, single people lead the rat race because it’s not until you’re married do other people look at you as if you have a life outside of work. But I wasn’t married then; instead, I was doing enjoying what Jesus was doing through me, enjoying my Christian team of friends, and spiritually mentoring some younger guys. One day my supervisors offered me a promotion. I thought and prayed about it, studied Scripture, and decided no. It would require too much from me. Some said, “Really? You’d get more stock, more impact in the company, more visibility.” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m a Christian, and I feel like what Jesus is doing with me outside of work is too valuable – I don’t want to cut into that.” Within the next year, they offered me another promotion, and I turned that one down, too. By the time I was there for 4 years or so, I had mastered my job and was working about 30 hours a week. People knew that I loved Jesus and that he mattered to me, not least because every Monday, my co-workers asked me how my weekend was, and I told them about the youth in my apartment, about how we prayed for them, about how we valued spiritual mentoring, about how I saw families that had been transformed. And most importantly in this example, this grandma had asked me if I could be ‘el padrino’ – the godfather – to her grandson. In Mexican culture, that is a huge privilege, and I felt very honored. I was able to share that. All these opportunities happened because I included this Mexican grandmother in my decision making. Because I invited her into my life in a way that really affected me. Jesus showed me the importance of being inclusive and inviting.
