The Banquet

Luke 15: 4-7 and Luke 14: 16-24 and Matthew 22: 2-14

“God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace.”

― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Buechner paints the wonderful picture of the stereotypical homeless who God invites to His Banquet because all the Chosen people are too busy to come. But in Luke we hear that even the poor were not enough to fill the hall so he sends his messengers out to the country lanes and city streets to bring in anyone who will come.

As I read Buechner’s and Luke’s descriptions of the wedding banquet, I cannot help but think of the Holy Chaos of the dinnertime at Haywood Street Congregation on Wednesday. The tables are dressed in white linens and everyone is served on china. No one is left out and the food and welcome are plentiful. The folks around the tables are the people who have responded to the invitation by God and Brian and Shannon to come, eat, and receive the blessings of being a child of God.

Not everyone is wearing their wedding clothes, however. In Matthew 22: 2-14 we read a continuation of the story of the invitation to the banquet. It is interesting to note that we have to accept not only the invitation to come, but we must also wear the attire the Host provides. Yesterday I sat with a young woman who I overheard telling another youth who had on her wedding clothes, a T-shirt saying she was a “Youth in Mission” that she didn’t believe in God. I could not hear the reply of the young woman in the T-shirt so I don’t know if she said what I’d have said, but the young woman who doubted had good reasons for her doubts, mostly her experience with people in her life who had not been trustworthy so her belief in this loving God was shaky at best and non-existent yesterday.

I understand. I wish I could have sat nearer. I’d have told the doubter not to fear putting on the wedding clothes of faith because her honesty and doubt were acceptable to God. He invited her to His feast, but she had to take the courageous step into believing He cared. It is not easy, if you have suffered abuse or neglect by your family or the world, to believe in the goodness of God. All of us who have put on the wedding clothes have to continue to provide support and caring until those who have answered the invitation to the banquet know in their hearts that they are truly accepted and that putting on the wedding clothes, acting in faith not wearing a T-shirt necessarily, is the way to eventually trust the love of God.