Many of us may come to the Gospel or this first Sunday after Christmas with very recent memories of a great meal at Christmas.
Our meal memories may include both anticipating and enjoying some traditional foods. Particular dishes of ethnic importance to us, or which we always have at Christmas. Maybe the feast of Christmas is enhanced by who we share it with -- family and friends who gather with us; or we may have the tradition of always having Christmas in the same place with pretty much the same people. Whatever our traditions, certainly a significant aspect of how we celebrate Christmas in America is food -- and plenty of it.
Listening to the Gospel of Luke today and the description of the Great Dinner reminds us, initially, of Christmas. The similarities include great plans for a special meal; guests invited; preparations all underway -- and finally, it is time to eat! Sounds like Christmas so far! But here's where it changes. When the guests are invited to come in to actually eat, they begin to make excuses. "This or that has come up, so I cannot come," they say. The poor slave must return this sad news to his master -- no one is coming to your dinner. After inviting, preparing, cooking -- no one to eat any of it. This is not our image of a Christmas Dinner! Everyone comes! They come early, they stay late. Some of you still have Christmas company with you.
Luke says the master then invites strangers and those who are outcast to come to this dinner, and finally, when there is STILL room for more -- the master says, "Go out and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled." The Great Dinner has changed considerably! No elegantly dressed friends chatting with each other and playing with their food. Now it is a house full of homeless and hungry, desperate and disheveled folks who don't know each other at all, and eat like they don't know where their next meal is coming from.
Parables are intended to teach us something about the Kingdom of God. In the Great Dinner parable, the master seems to represent God in his generosity and his determination to welcome all people to the table. We can usually find ourselves and God in each story. So eager is God to feed us with love, the Word, and forgiveness that God is willing to compel us to come to the Great Dinner, to fill the house, to consume the meal. No leftovers. So generous is God that this dinner is lavished on everyone. God is willing to feed all and has invited everyone. God invites new people to the table, people who don't know each other or God. People who aren't perfect, who are ordinary. People who are different. Not on the "first list" of party-goers. I have the sense that these dinner guests were eager to come, hungry and wanting to get on with the meal. If we are to see ourselves in this parable, this is the group I want to be with. Given the invitation, they go after it.
They teach us, remind us, that there are many people who are hungry to be fed by God; who long for the invitation and the meal. Who have dignity and talent that they bring to the table. We are reminded too, that these may be guests we weren't expecting, people we didn't think were God's friends, perhaps.
This dinner no longer resembles our Christmas dinners which are often close-knit family affairs. This Great Dinner is for a much broader family, the family of God. We can expect the unexpected at God's table -- that is we can expect to be surrounded by people God invited whom we do not know and who are not like us and who regularly will disagree with us and who expect us to be more like them than we are or can be. It's not the family meal of tradition and heritage that our family Christmas's often are. God has invited us to His table and filled His house with a grand collection of humanity. At the head of the table, the host's place, sits the Baby Jesus, the long-expected Savior who has come in the most unexpected way. God comes to us in the unexpected.
The parable calls us, in these post-Christmas days, to continue to seek the God of the babe in Bethlehem in the unexpected, and among the unnoticed. The Christmas message continues to shine through the master's filled house, the full tables for all to come to, the caring host for all to know. God with us, baby Jesus.
One last piece of the parable to consider; when there's still room at the dinner the master tells the slave to go out and impel others to come so the house will be filled. What does that mean? Who are the people who are compelled to come? To compel means to persuade more than to force or insist. Perhaps the lesson is that God is prepared to wait for his guests. That this is not a one-seating, if-you-miss-it, it's over type dinner, but rather one of those continuous buffets where the food is constantly fresh and replenished so for those who take some compelling to get to the table, fear not! The meal is still there and so is the master.
Like the Savior who comes as a baby who will be with us for a lifetime, so, too, the master in the parable hosts a Great Dinner that goes on and on and on, for an eternity. So all can come, and keep coming. God's table is always abundant, and there is always room. Unlike our Christmas meal which even now is just a warm memory, and a fridge full of leftovers -- God's Great Dinner continues to be offered, and ready. It is our joy to be among his guests. It is God's joy to invite the whole world.