This is a blog for those wrestling with Christianity, and more specifically, wrestling with many of the beliefs about God many Christians hold.
Too often God is presented as mean, vindictive, condemning, and hell bent on sending us to hell.
Jesus, however, paints a far different picture. And his primary way for painting that picture is through story-telling: telling stories that turn our perceptions of God upside down.
Like this story about a rejected invitation:
The scene:
Jesus was the guest of honor at a Sabbath meal hosted by a Pharisee. It’s an interesting invitation in that many of the Pharisees were Jesus’ fiercest critics. They didn’t feel he obeyed the rules enough. They were scandalized by his penchant for hanging out with the wrong kinds of people.
Yet this particular Pharisee invited Jesus to be his guest of honor. Was he curious about Jesus? Did he want to catch Jesus out? Did he want to join his team of followers?
Almost immediately Jesus proves to be a pain-in-the-butt guest.
First, during the meal, he heals a man—on the Sabbath Day, the day of rest. Some of the guests would have seen that as a provocative breaking of the Sabbath rules.
Next, he criticizes those who fought for the most prestigious spots around the table as they sat down for the meal.
Then, he criticizes his host for inviting friends, telling him that he should instead be inviting the outsiders to a meal—those whom God has seemingly abandoned: the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
You get the sense that Jesus probably didn’t get invited back to parties often.
The story trigger:
Then, perhaps to change the subject or lower the room temperature, one of the guests said: Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!
It was a brilliant move. Immediately the minds of all the guests turned to the long-awaited promise of God—the promise of a day when all of Israel’s enemies would be vanquished and Israel would live in peace.
It was a promise made in Isaiah 25. On that day God will spread out a banquet feast where death will be at an end and tears will be wiped away.
One small problem: Isaiah said that this banquet would include Gentiles—non-Jewish people. But by the time of Jesus, Biblical interpreters added commentary to that passage saying that while the Gentiles will be invited, it will not be an honor for them but a meal of shame and plagues. Others said that the Gentiles would be slaughtered at that meal by the angel of death.
For some of the Jewish elite in Jesus’ day, the inclusive feast of Isaiah had become an exclusive feast for the chosen Jews only. There was no way outsiders would be invited in.
When the guest threw out that feast as a topic of conversation, he was hoping Jesus would turn from his somewhat cantankerous mood to a more upbeat, celebratory mood. But Jesus saw it as an opening to rock their view of God with a story of outrageous, relentless grace.
The Story:
A man wanted to host a feast and invited many from the community. In Jesus’ day the invitations would be sent out without a specific date because all the food was prepared fresh. A servant would bring word of a soon-coming banquet, get RSVP’s from the guests, and then the process for gathering and preparing the food would begin.
Once all was ready the servant went out immediately to say: The party is on! Come quickly. And the guests would stop what they were doing and head to the party.
But in this story, rather than keeping their commitment to the party, many of the guests began to make excuses for why they couldn’t come.
One had purchased a piece of land he needed to inspect
One had purchased five oxen and needed to test drive them
One had just gotten married
These all seem like appropriate excuses but those listening to Jesus would know that none of those excuses were valid in that culture. They instantly understood that the invited guests in this story were intentionally dissing the man who invited them to the party. In an honor/shame culture, such behavior was scandalous.
Imagine you had planned a big banquet. You invite your friends. They all turn up. You put the food in front of them. And then, rather than eating, one by one they make some kind of excuse.
Oh, I just forgot, I need to:
Mow the lawn
Feed the cat
Catch the next episode of the latest binge-worthy show
And then leave.
How would you feel? Angry? Hurt? Bitter? Dissed?
And what would you do or want to do? Drop them from your Facebook friends list? Diss them on Twitter? Delete their contact information from your phone? Never speak to them again?
The party host has the same response. Jesus says that he was angry. But notice what he does next: Rather than taking vengeance on those who hurt him he extends his grace even further. This man’s natural expression of anger is remarkably more grace!
He tells his servant to go out and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame—all those seemingly abandoned by God
Then, when there’s still room for more, he instructs his servant to go out onto the streets and compel people to come in—because he wants his house full. He has a bountiful feast and he wants to share it with as many people as possible.
This well-known socialite, so to speak, hosts a banquet for:
People sleeping in the doorways of Macy’s
People used to eating scraps from the trash bins behind swank hotels
People who haven’t bathed in a summer of Sundays
And it costs them absolutely nothing. It is undeserved, unexpected, unearned.
This party host proves to be relentless in his desire to share his abundance with as many people as possible.
The Point: This is what God is like!
Jesus shows us that:
God is relentless when it comes to grace! Grace abhors a vacuum. God will not rest until heaven is filled. God is a gracious heavenly father who’s prepared a feast for all humankind and he will not stop until the banquet table is full—pursuing us through the cross.
God’s grace always includes those we think are beyond God’s grace. Whoever it is we think is unworthy of God’s grace, Jesus says, “Surprise! God loves them, too!” As the Reformer Martin Luther reminds us, grace is always for and only for sinners.
Or, to quote Episcopal priest Robert Capon, Grace says: All you have to be is a certifiable loser and God will send his servant Jesus to positively drag you into his house!
The God of Jesus will not stop surprising you with that unexpected, relentless grace!
You can contact me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org