Tuesday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time, November 3, 2020

Luke 14:15-24

One of those at table with Jesus said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

With the passing of October, the year seems to be hurtling towards its end.  The days blur into each other.  We get up on Monday morning and we go to bed Friday night, with quick naps in between.  This is just the time when we ought to be very watchful, keeping in mind the Lord’s frequent command that he is coming “soon”, and his warning that we do not know the day or the hour.  We should remember the terrible words in Revelation 10, 6: “And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things which are therein, and the earth and the things which are in it, and the sea and the things which are therein: That time shall be no more.”

“Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.”  Jesus takes up this exclamation, which seems self-evident, to teach the assembled scribes and Pharisees about the people who will in fact dine in the Kingdom of God.  The speaker thinks that the kingdom of God will be filled with people like himself.  Jesus says otherwise.

“A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many.”  That is to say, he did not invite the whole town, or even most of its population.  He invited “many”.  It is safe to assume that he invited the people most important to him.  Now, we are told explicitly that this was a “great dinner” — it was not a wedding feast or a birthday or something of the kind.  As we are not told the cause of the feast, we take it for granted that it was an expression of the man’s generosity.  “When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ ”  The day-long work of slaughtering, preparing, and roasting goats or cattle would be nearly completed, bread would have been made, and wine purchased.  All that was needed was the guests.

“But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.”  The invitation would have been issued days, if not weeks beforehand.  The date would have been carefully chosen so as not to come during religious holy days or times of planting or harvesting.  If an invited guest could not attend the dinner, the time for excusing himself was at the time the invitation was received.  Declining such an invitation would be a serious matter in those days.  An invitation entailed a virtual obligation to attend.  The excusing here amounted to a very serious breach of social custom.

“ ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ ”  The fact that these excuses are insincere is plainly shown by the fact that these transactions were foreseen — these are not emergencies that occurred suddenly.  The obvious insincerity is a sign of contempt for the man hosting the dinner.  “And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ ”  This might seem a more plausible excuse, but, again, it is not.  The invited guest did not suddenly run off with a woman.  This too would have been foreseen at the time the invitation was accepted.  Besides this, the man hosting the dinner would almost certainly have gone to this guest’s recent wedding feast and would have known he could not come.  It is possible that he had not married after all, then, and was openly lying.  It is this recognition of the contempt that explains the next line: “The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant.”  If the excuses had at all seemed valid, there would have been no occasion for the rage.  Meanwhile, time was passing and the feast needed to be eaten or the food and all the work of the feast would be wasted.

“ ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ ”  That is, bring in people who are hungry, people who otherwise would not eat that day.  They would eat and be thankful.  Their joy at having good things to eat would exceed any joy and gratitude the original guests would have shown, and the host would bask in this.

“ ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ ”  The servant does not merely carry out his master’s orders, but intercedes for other hungry people of whom he knows, pointing out that more people could be accommodated.  The master is pleased to know this and orders as many needy people as possible be brought to his house: “ ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled.’ ”  These people lived, as it were, on the edges of the world.  They were the rejects of society, those not good enough to dwell in the town itself.  “ ‘For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’ ”  There seems a causation between this line and the one previous to it: even if those invited originally changed their minds and came anyway, they would take one look at those who were feasting and they would have departed in a huff.  But the main idea here is that those who were hungry were fed, and those who expressed no hunger were allowed to stay away.

This “hunger”, of course, is the hunger for the company of Almighty God, and for the feast of love that only he could provide.  The invited guests were the very people whose appetites should have been cultivated by their study of God’s law and words.  Their study, however, left them feeling self-sufficient, maybe even “autonomous” to use a term that has become fashionable among those who are truly blind.  Those who hunger for God’s feast are the ones who should have been “fed” by these teachers of the law.  They are in fact starving.  Unable to work because of their infirmities, they sit in the streets and beg.  They might buy a crust of bread with what it takes them a day to earn in this way.  The servant who goes in search of the beggars and the rejects is the zealous priest or religious or layperson who teaches the Gospel to these folks and brings them into the Church where they feast on the Holy Eucharist.

We can see the Lord Jesus as this man’s servant, toiling away at his Father’s command to bring all people to the feast, going to the furthest corners of the world in order to do so.  His is perfect, uncomplaining obedience.  And the only ones who did not eat that day were the ones who refused the meal offered to them.