Fix It Up

Jesus has accepted an invitation to a Sabbath meal with the leading Pharisees.

There’s already tension between them.

They’re scrutinizing his sermons and his actions with the crowds, and he knows it.

In yesterday’s Gospel, he started the dinner with a lesson on dinner invitations.

He told them they shouldn’t invite powerful people who might repay them with worldly favors.

But rather, invite the poor, the crippled, the blind and the outcast.

If they would do that, they would be rewarded in Heaven.

That’s the setting of today’s Gospel passage.

And that explains the harsh response Jesus gives to the Pharisee’s seemingly innocent comment:

Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.

The Pharisee’s comment showed that he still didn’t get it.

Jesus had just finished describing the kind of actions that lead toward a Heavenly reward.

He had just finished suggesting that they needed to change their ways.

And this Pharisee responds with his overconfident, highly presumptuous statement.

In effect saying,

We already know who’s going to Heaven, it’s us holy and privileged Pharisees.

And so, Jesus spells it out for them in a parable.

A generous host honored some special guests with an invitation to the great feast.

The Heavenly banquet.

But those invited guests failed to appreciate the invitation.

They placed a higher priority on tending to their wealth and other worldly matters.

They insulted the host by declining his generous invitation.

They took the host for granted.

They were presumptuous—self-assured of their worthiness of the host’s favor.

But Jesus’ parable said they were wrong.

They were forfeiting their invitations.

They were forfeiting their special status with the host.

The parable was both a condemnation and a warning for the listeners.

A call to examine their special relationship with God and to do their part in maintaining it.

Those Pharisees recognized the parable was aimed at them, and they were moved to action.

The action they chose was to begin plotting how to get rid of Jesus.

We can be a lot like the Pharisees.

We too can be the presumptuous, unappreciative, insulting invited guests of the parable.

And when we recognize that the parable is aimed at us, we too should be moved to action.

But we know a lot more about Jesus than the Pharisees knew.

We know who needs to do what to fix the problem.

Tuesday, 31st Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 14:15-24           Read this Scripture @usccb.org