When you hold a Banquet, Invite the Poor

“When you hold a banquet invite the poor”
August 29, 2010: 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29 Heb. 12:18-19, 22-24 Luke 14:1, 7-14

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord

Being humble

On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. Noticing how some of the guests were choosing the places of honor at the table He told them a parable:

When you’re invited to a wedding banquet, don’t grab the best places at table. A more distinguished guest than you might be invited by the host, and then the host will say to you, “Give your place to this man.” Embarrassed you will have to step down and take the lowest place. Rather, take the lowest place first, and the host will say to you, “My friend, go up there to the front table.” Then you will enjoy the esteem of the other guests at the table. For everyone who makes himself great will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be made great.

Inviting the humble

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors. They might invite you back, and then you will be repaid. Rather, when you give a banquet invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and blind. Then you will indeed be blessed. They will not be able to repay you, but the Father in heaven will repay you at the resurrection of the just.”(Lk 14:1, 7-14)

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
The nation’s liturgy

The Nation’s liturgy began with the Memorial Day Weekend. It climaxed with the Fourth of July. Soon it will taper off with Labor Day. This time of the year is a turning point: things move swiftly now into a new mode and mood as kids go back to school. Before we know it, leaves of brown will be tumbling down, and the first dusting of snow will spray the landscape. Then “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house” we will go, to conclude the nation’s liturgy with Thanks Giving. After that, the Church’s liturgy takes over with the first Sunday of Advent in preparation for Christmas 2010. It’s that time “of the rolling year” when things start moving really fast.

Jesus & Luke’s predilection

In Luke’s gospel Jesus lines up a litany of people whom, He says, we should invite to a banquet: “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed.” (Lk 14: 13-14) Immediately following this passage, Jesus tells another parable which reiterates that selfsame litany, and which shows that Jesus and evangelist Luke have a predilection for such people.

A master, who intends to hold a banquet, sends his servant to invite various friends, but they all make excuses for not coming. That infuriates the master who sends his servant out into the streets and alleys of the town to bring in “the poor, the maimed, the blind and the lame.” (Lk 14: 15-24)

A friend writes, “These two passages of Scripture cut me to the quick. I must admit that my social interaction is often based on what I like and whom I like. I certainly don’t think Jesus is frowning on family banquets or quiet dinners with friends, etc. I do believe, however, that His exhortation to hold a banquet for people who can’t repay us is profound and fundamental to the Christian essence. Still, I must say His exhortation conflicts me, for I am nurtured by a society which trains me to be good to those who can repay me, and to pass by those who can’t.”

A symptomatic floor plan

The Church is at her best when she reflects Jesus and evangelist Luke’s predilection for poor. However, down through the centuries she has not always been at her best. In the papers of Simon Greenleaf (1783-1863), a scholar in American history and an active Episcopalian churchman, there was found the floor plan of an Episcopal Church in Cambridge or Boston. What rivets one’s attention is the fact that the pews were "rented" out to families at different rates. The most expensive pews were those right in front of the pulpit and five rows from it. From those seats direct eye-contact could easily be made with the preacher. Then the prices of the pews lowered as you moved away from direct eye-contact with the preacher in the pulpit.

That floor plan is symptomatic, and it is an indictment of the Church in all ages. Jesus has a different floor plan for His Church; At the Sunday Eucharistic banquet He would place the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind “right in front of the pulpit and five rows from it,” and He asks his Church to do the same!

A banquet for the poor at the Hyatt

In June of 1990 the Boston Globe carried a very unusual story about one who went out into the streets and alleys of the town to invite the chronically uninvited to a banquet. A couple had arranged to have their wedding reception at the Boston Hyatt Hotel. Years before, the bride-to-be had managed to pull herself out of poverty; she found a good job and managed to set aside a sizable nest egg. The couple had expensive tastes, and the bill on the contract came to over $13,000. But on the day the invitations were to go out, the groom got cold feet and asked for more time to think matters over! That infuriated the jilted bride-to-be, and when she tried to cancel the reception, Hyatt told her, “The contract is binding. You’re only entitled to $1,300 back. You have two options: to forfeit the rest of the down payment or go ahead with the banquet. We’re sorry.”

A way of life!

Angry, she decided to go ahead with the banquet, but in an utterly strange and surprising way, which by the way reflected her humble origins. She decided to “go out to the streets and alleys of the town”, and invite the chronically uninvited. She sent invitations to shelters and rescue missions throughout Boston, and invited them to a night on the town. That summer evening, people who were used to eating leftover pizza or whatever good scraps they could find in garbage cans were eating chicken cordon bleu and being served hors d’oeuvres by waiters dressed in the fine tuxedos. The chronically uninvited of Boston ate, drank, and listened to big-band music late into the night. That night the Hyatt Hotel hosted a banquet such as it had never hosted before.

For the jilted bride, that unusual banquet for chronically uninvited people was an angry expression (and perhaps also a sweet-sour reminiscence). For a disciple of Jesus such a banquet should be a way of life!

A banquet for the poor at St. Benedict’s

It is a way of life on State Street between Ninth and Tenth in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There stands the historic church of St. Benedict the Moor -- the first Catholic church in the city dedicated to ministry in the African-American community. There a daily banquet (not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas) is offered to the poor, the blind, the lame and the crippled of central city. They come in droves – three or four hundred every day, especially in these economically hard times.

It’s not your typical soup kitchen; it’s a veritable banquet hall. The meal is prepared by countless families from the suburbs. The families take turns preparing the meal in their own kitchens. Then they bring their homemade dinner down to the church hall in central city where they personally serve it. It’s suburbanites obeying Jesus who asks them to hold a banquet for the chronically uninvited, and who promises that the Father in heaven will repay them at the resurrection of the just. (Lk 14:14)

Repaid already

The good news is that those suburbanites don’t have to wait for the resurrection of the just in order to be repaid. In some strange way they’re repaid already in this life, for there at the Benedict Community Meal all are fed, even the suburbanite! And what he is fed -- what he ingests - is a sympathetic understanding that the poor, the homeless, the maimed, the alcoholic, the demented, the estranged, etc. of State Street have complex and painful stories behind them. And that understanding nourishes him. At that inner city banquet, he soon discovers that his `solutions’ to the glaring problems before him are either simplistic at best or self-righteous at worst. And that understanding also nourishes him.

Best of all, the suburbanite in that central city banquet discovers that there is something of the saint in central city’s chronically uninvited, and that sainthood isn’t as clean and neat as we are accustomed to think. On State Street he discovers that his thoughts are not God's thoughts, and that his banquets are not God’s banquets.

Liking as Jesus likes

Jesus likes tax collectors and sinners, whom the chief priests and Jewish elders do not like. (Mt 9:9-13; Mt 21:31-32) Jesus likes Samaritans whom his Jewish brethren not only do not like, but also soundly despise. (Lk 10:25-37; Lk 17:11-19; Jn 4:1-42) Jesus likes the woman of ill repute in town, whom Simon the Pharisee does not like. (Lk 7: 39-50) Jesus likes the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind whom His host does not particularly like, and whom he does not invite to his banquet.

What G.K. Chesterton writes of St. Francis of Assisi holds all the more for Francis’ master and model – Jesus: “Francis liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking. ” The New Testament from beginning to end shows Jesus as liking all those people whom everybody else is disliking, and inviting us to like as He liked.

Conclusion
Repaid already in this life

We hold banquets at Christmas and Thanksgiving, or on the occasion of weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. To those banquets we invite our friends, brothers, relatives and well-off neighbors. They in turn reciprocate. Jesus, who went to a wedding banquet in Cana of Galilee (Jn 2: 1-11), endorses such human and happy celebrations. But He also asks us to hold banquets not only for those who will reciprocate but also for those who can’t, and He promises that we will be repaid in the next life. In some strange way, however, those suburbanites who hold a banquet in central city Milwaukee feel repaid already in this life. Perhaps even that jilted bride who held a banquet in central city Boston, when the sun set on her failed wedding day, also in some strange felt repaid.