He said to the host who invited him,
"When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Jesus doesn't mean that we are never to invite family over to dinner. Rather, he means we ought to sometimes make a special practice of giving even when there is no immediate payoff for us. Society presents us with a game where everything is for the sake of something else, to pay for some past good, to prepare for some future good. Jesus presents us with a different paradigm, wherein we invite people neither for what they have done for us nor for what they might do in the future, but simply for sake of they themselves.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
Let's be honest and admit that to hold such a banquet sounds like a challenge without much of an upside. This example would be even more work for us than a normal banquet. Every guest would require personalized care and special attention. Yet this is what Jesus wants us to learn to do. And he himself demonstrates it first by calling the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to dine in the Kingdom of God. Indeed no one invited by Jesus to the his wedding banquet is able to repay him. All must repeat, "I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof", and yet no one is excluded because of it. Jesus even gives each of us the personalized care and special attention that we would find so burdensome and tedious to give to others. He addresses us not only in our positive aspects but also in our poverty and our filth. He heals our spiritual blindness and stoops to wash our feet. This is the example Jesus gives to us. But we tend to think that to act that way is one thing for Jesus but something different for us, something beyond our capabilities. And it will remain thus unless we learn to first receive mercy from Jesus, to depend on that mercy ourselves. That wisdom leads to our becoming able to invite others to the banquet, which is not finally our own banquet, but that of Jesus, within his Church.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
We tend to find it more difficult to sustain motivation for long-term goals than for those more proximate. But if we do not learn to look beyond this world for our repayment we will be at constant risk of being ensnared by that which is only temporary while remaining indifferent to things eternal. Another way to say this is that we must find our treasure in heaven, not on earth.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (see Matthew 6:20-21).
We may then begin to learn the all surpassing sufficiency of God himself, which Paul understood so well.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord
or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given him anything
that he may be repaid?
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To God be glory forever. Amen.
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