the feast

What if you threw a party and nobody came?

In Luke 14 Jesus tells the story of a rich man who throws an elaborate banquet and invites several of his rich friends. On the appointed day he sends a servant to remind the invitees. But each of them has an excuse for not attending. It's odd because they all knew the event was coming but they scheduled other things on that day: a real estate deal, purchasing a fleet of vehicles (a yoke of oxen would be like a truck, so five yoke/pair of oxen would be a fleet of work vehicles), even a wedding.

So what's Jesus' point? As always, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God. The rich people and religious leaders are talking about how wonderful God's Kingdom is. But Jesus is telling them that the Kingdom is right next to them and they are missing it. They are going about their rich and religious business and it all seems very legitimate. But the King is among them. So their business becomes their excuse for not noticing him.

God is throwing a party all around us. That was Jesus' good news: the Kingdom is right here next to us ("at hand" in the KJV). The core of his teaching and all of his stories were ways of peeling back the layers of the world to reveal the presence of the Kingdom: in a field (Mt 13:44), a yoke (Mt 11:29), a wedding (John 2), a tree, a vineyard, even a seed. But we aren't aware of it because we're occupied with all the things that make us feel important. It's not that these things aren't worth doing. It's that they can become walls instead of windows. It's like focusing so much on the glass that we miss the breath-taking panorama of God's glory just on the other side. The point isn't how grand the window is. Windows are ways to see what's outside, to let in beauty and light and warmth.

TV

I don't enjoy it myself. It's not the last impression I want to have of this world.

In the book Gilead (by Marilynne Robinson) it's 1956 and John Ames is reflecting on his life, which he has been told will end soon because of his feeble heart. Television is a new phenomenon. John considers TV to be a way of looking at the world, a world that he knows through experience and engagement. He considers TV to be a pale imitation of reality, lacking depth.

Which makes me wonder: How many people die watching TV? And how many people allow TV to become an alternate reality in which they live and move and have their being? It must be a lot, judging from the abundance of ads that are trying to create in us the desire to stare at little screens (or very big screens) for most of our waking hours. From which we can probably extrapolate that more and more people are spending their last hours staring at a screen. Who needs the Matrix?