Chapter
12
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Parable of the Great Dinner
"Someone gave a great dinner and
invited many. At the time for dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had
been invited, 'Come, for everything is ready now.' But they all alike began to
make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a piece of land, and
I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.' Another said, 'I have
bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my
regrets.' Another said, 'I have just been married and therefore I cannot
come.' So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner
of the house became angry and said to his slave, 'Go out at once into the
streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, crippled, the blind, and
the lame.' And the slave said, 'Sir, what you have ordered has been done, and
there is still room.' Then the master said to the slave, 'Go out to the
roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be
filled.' " (Luke 14:16b-23)
There are three
accounts of this parable: one from Matthew, one from Luke, and one from the
Gospel of Thomas. In Matthew's Gospel, the householder becomes a king. It is
part of Matthew's allegory that those who do not come to this party will get the
cold shoulder in the future. In Luke the householder takes revenge on those who
insulted him by refusing his invitation. In all these versions, the great dinner
is the symbol of the kingdom of God. Those who come to the meal receive
salvation, and those who decline are rejected.
Why do all three
traditional accounts make such a big deal about those who decline? For one
thing, they all offer rather lengthy excuses, all of which are somewhat lame. In
a village culture, one's honor was all-important and depended on one's
acceptance by one's peers. Attendance at an important dinner party was one such
symbol of acceptance. All those originally invited lived in houses and hence
belonged to the upper classes. Since the first two invitations failed, the
expectation of the hearers is that the third will be accepted. In the parable of
the good Samaritan, the first two travelers pass by and the third turns out to
be merciful. In the parable of the talents, the first two servants are well
received and the third is rejected.
The fact that in
this parable all three invitations are refused, emphasizes the total rejection
of the householder and the utter shame that he suffers from his peers. The
disgrace of the householder seems to have caused the three versions of the
parable to lose something of their original force. The evangelists provide
opportunities for the householder to regain his honor (if not to get his
revenge) by rejecting the original invitees. The dinner, however, continues to
represent the messianic banquet prophesied by Isaiah.
As the parable
unfolds in Luke, when the householder is rejected by all his well-to-do peers in
the village, he flies into a rage and orders his servants to go into the streets
and bring in the lame, the blind, and the disabled. The invitation to the
disabled suggests to the hearers of the time that the feast is a symbol of the
messianic kingdom when all those who have been oppressed by diseases or by
Israel's enemies will at last be raised up to an exalted stature and Israel's
honor will be restored.
In the parable of
the mustard seed, the hearers expected the seed to grow into a cedar of Lebanon
(300 feet high) and instead it became a four-foot shrub. Here, instead of a
glorious banquet, the house ends up full of undesirables and street people.
There is a
progression: first come the disabled and the oppressed; afterward come the
prostitutes, pickpockets, tax collectors, and all the disreputable riffraff of
the town. These are the people who finally show up for the dinner.
At this point the
average hearer is quite uncomfortable. The prophetic text of Isaiah about the
messianic banquet has been completely undermined. Let us recall the description
of Isaiah:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts
will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of
rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will
destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet
that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the
Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people
he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said
on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save
us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in
his salvation. (Isaiah 25:6-9)
The feast and the
celebration of the meal in this text of Isaiah clearly symbolizes a mighty
victory over the Lord's enemies. He will vanquish the ruthless nations and the
oppressed people of God will be restored to honor by their all-powerful God.
Such is the principal theme of the passage; the problem is that it does not
happen in the parable.
In the local
villages of the time there was no chance for upward mobility. It was a closed
society. Having been rejected by his peers, the householder has to choose
between canceling the dinner or inviting others that he would never have thought
of asking. In the messianic banquet foreseen by Isaiah, God raises the oppressed
people to God's own status and destroys all their enemies. In Jesus' parable,
the householder does not raise up the oppressed but joins them in their various
forms of human misery. Instead of a vindictive triumph over Israel's enemies,
the bottom line is that the kingdom of God as Jesus proclaims it is being
celebrated with the destitute and with sinners.
In other words, the
kingdom is to be found not in a dinner for the rich and famous, but in table
fellowship with the poor, with people of no account, and with those who hang out
on street corners. These are the people who in fact finally take part in the
dinner. In this remarkable parable Jesus opens a window on the nature of his
Father. The celebration of the salvation of God, symbolized by the dinner, is not
taking place with the big shots, the well-to-do, and the successful--they
declined--but is taking place with the poor, the weak, the ignorant, the
oppressed, and those afflicted with physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.
That is, in soup kitchens, bread lines, ghettos, and in places where nobody
wants to go.
The expectation of
the hearers is completely subverted. Just as in the parable of the mustard seed,
there is no cedar of Lebanon, so here there is no great dinner. It is our
desperate need that attracts divine mercy, not our virtues or anything else.
Can we accept a God
who becomes so vulnerable as to join the human condition exactly where it is, or
more precisely, exactly where we are--in the midst of our impure motivation and
behavior? God comes to those who consent to come to God with their lives just as
they are. The life and death of Jesus is the actual working out of what it means
for God to become a human being.
More information can be obtained by reading the
book The Kingdom of God is Like . . .by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered
in our Book
Store.
