Hosting a Dinner Party for Jesus
“Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite poor people, people who cannot walk, and people who are blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Today’s gospel comes from Luke 14:12–14, and it builds on Sunday’s liturgical reading from Matthew 23:1–12.
The theme is simple: Don’t engage in any acts of religion, faith, or piety for their performative value.
Today’s reading adds another ingredient to the mix. Don’t calculate how your actions might end up giving you some sort of repayment. If you do anything so people will applaud you, notice your holiness, or approve of your moral or behaviors, just stop.
However, if you show kindness and mercy to people who cannot repay, God will notice and compensate you. It’s a principle rooted in the Hebrew scriptures. “When you give to the poor, it is like lending to the Lord, and the Lord will pay you back” (Proverbs 19:17).
In Jesus’s culture, people hosted banquets with guests of honor as a way to induce repayment. I do this for my social superiors, so they have to return the favor with something similar or better for me. My dinner party would be would be an investment in myself.
Jesus teaches a new and unlikely way. He insists his followers should perform acts of kindness, generosity, and mercy to those who cannot repay in any way.
That is the “religion” he calls people to. Generosity, openheartedness, benevolence, and anonymity. The remuneration for those works of compassion, he promises in our reading, will occur “at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Go out of your way, he says, and serve people who can never reimburse you in any way.
Imagine what would have have looked like to the rest of the community. They would have thought you’d lost your mind. No less today. Imagine hosting a banquet for people who have low wealth, who are unhoused, who have significant mental and physical disabilities. What would that look like?
The repayment we might seek today is recognition. I can go out and tell everyone how I’m involved in this homeless ministry, Or maybe People will notice how prayerful I am and hold me up as an example. I might even hope to receive an award in my workplace for my civic engagement.
Ministry, prayer, and civic engagement are all good things. The point is not to do any of that for the repayment.
For Christians, this has theological underpinnings related to the Eucharist. God hosts a banquet and invites the spiritually poor, marginalized, and weak. No one can pay back God. No one can throw God a banquet that’s bigger in return.
“Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” (Romans 11:35)
God invites all to the banquet, and the only way anyone can begin to return the favor, so to speak, is to follow his example. When I show compassion to people who can give me nothing in return, I’m throwing a dinner party for Jesus. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40)
This leave me reflecting on three questions.
- How can I do that? What would that banquet look like and involve?
- Who can I invite to a banquet? Who needs my help? Who can I repay for all God has done for me?
- What attitudes in my heart are preventing me from hosting such a banquet?
