Open Invitation
The gospel reading for this Sunday stands as a sharp contrast to the immediately preceding paragraph (Luke 14:15-24). In the middle of a meal, Jesus offers a story about another meal. This is a meal where the guests who were invited all found ways of avoiding the invitation. As a result, the master of the house went and invited a host of strangers to come. When they had all arrived there was still room. The master sent out slaves to compel others to come so that the house might be filled. The invitation was broad, almost profligate. Initially, to be admitted, you just needed to show up. Later, you just had to be at the right place at the right time.
Within a few verses, Jesus turns to a large crowd that is walking with him and begins to lay out a demanding agenda for those wishing to be disciples. One needs to be willing to have all familial relationships examined and to abandon them if needed. Likewise, all one’s possessions.
Once one starts down this road of discipleship, any plans one has for the future must be interrogated and abandoned if needed. It would be worse to start to follow and then not be able to complete the journey. This is the way of the cross. Those who have come to the master’s banquet may now be having second thoughts.
In a very compressed form, this is Jesus’ way. The invitation is open to all, but the invitation is to something far more bracing, compelling and transformative than just a meal. Jesus will engage us wherever, whenever, and however he finds us. Jesus meets us where we are, but he has no intention of having us remain where we are. If we are willing, he will, in time, interrogate and examine everything about us. We will be invited to put some elements aside; others will need penitential transformation before we can continue with them; some may be pretty good just as they are.
This examination and interrogation is what Paul is talking about when he tells the Corinthians, “We take every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). The point of this is not to obliterate our thoughts (or our relationships or our possessions). Rather it is to subject them to Christ’s penetrating, healing gaze, letting Christ examine, shape, and transform our thinking. Over time, as we progress down this way of the cross, it becomes less and less clear whether Christ is examining us or whether we are examining ourselves under Christ’s tutelage. Indeed, the less and less clear this distinction between Christ and us becomes, the less important making the distinction becomes.
When we hear this gospel reading on Sunday, I will be on the cusp of starting my 33rd year of Jesuit higher education. This Jesus-inspired idea of meeting all students where they are is a hall mark of Jesuit education. I will be the first to admit that we do not always do this well. What is particularly clear is that the pandemic has thrown our students to the wind. They are everywhere and nowhere and harder to locate and meet than ever before. Many of us think we have a pretty good handle on how the pandemic has shaped and located our students. I am less certain about this than I have ever been. This uncertainty worries me less than in other times. We have managed to open our doors to the largest and most diverse group of incoming students in our history. We are closer to the story of the master’s banquet than in past years.
The next question for us, the next question for any church that has also managed to crack open its doors a bit more in the light of the pandemic, is whether we will enhance the prospects that in our classrooms, in our pews, in our fellowship halls, people will meet Jesus and allow him to begin that gentle, terrifying, disrupting process of interrogating and examining everything about us, leading us slowly and gracefully down the way of the cross.