Posted by from Fr. Steven Kostoff (dcalvert) on 6/7/2007, 2:24 pm
Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
At yesterday evening's Bible Study we read and discussed the following parable from the Gospel According to St. Luke:
A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to those
who were invited, 'Come, for all things are now ready.' But they all with one accord began to make
excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask
you to have me excused.' And another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to
test them. I ask you to have me excused.' Still another said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore
I cannot come.' So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master
of the house, being angry, said to his servants, 'Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the
city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.' And the servant said,
'Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.' Then the master said to the servant,
'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.
For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall tastes my supper.' (LK. 14:16-24)
We ended up having a pretty lively discussion based upon this parable. The original meaning of the parable must be sought in the tension-filled relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees. In fact, Christ spoke this parable while having supper "with one of the rulers of the Pharisees." (LK. 14:1) Jesus kept emphasizing to the Pharisees that the very people they tended to neglect and hold in contempt - "the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind" - were not only worthy of their attention and compassion; but that they too were invited into the Kingdom of God. In fact, and here is where Jesus offended the righteous Pharisees, they would supplant or replace the Pharisees who did not recognize the gift of the Kingdom in the words of deeds of Christ. The parable tells of the many "excuses" used to ignore the immediacy of God's presence. Such an attitude leads to self-exclusion from the Master's supper which, in turn, is clearly an image of the heavenly banquet in the Kingdom of God. Others will be invited, including the hated Gentiles! Thus the Kingdom of God is revealed as a "place" of inclusion, not exclusion. The coming of Christ provoked a crisis of decision-making. The implicit challenge coming from the Lord's ministry was this: are you prepared to put even important pursuits aside for the sake of the Kingdom of God?
For it is key to interpreting the parable to note that the excuses used by many to ignore the master's invitation were not that flimsy. Within the context of our knowledge of first-century Jewish society and customs, they were rather legitimate. As some said yesterday evening, they did not excuse themselves by saying they needed to go shopping - or gambling! At the same time, the human mind excels at excuse-making. And this rather dubious distinction includes excuses to keep away from God when He is "right there." We thus somehow manage to make even the most trivial excuses sound compelling when we want to avoid doing something meaningful like drawing near to God when invited. Wired and programmed with an amazing consistency into a "Sunday morning is my only time for Church" approach to our communal relationship with God, many of the faithful, in order to maintain that status quo, are equiped with an impressive supply of "excuses" that display an envious deposit of both ingenuity and resourcefulness. No matter how insistent the invitation, we will discover an appropriate excuse to ignore it! The drawback to this is more-or-less explicity implied in the following questions posed by an anonymous nun in a recent article entitled, "The Fullness of the Kingdom:"
Do we think of religion as a way graciously to include God in our life and allow Him the
courtesy of an occasional greeting? Is the Church just another one of the activities we
schedule into our life to a greater or lesser degree?
This past Sunday, we commemorated, remembered, honored and venerated all of the saints of the Church - All Saints Sunday for short. We can offer an endless stream of descriptions and definitions about the make-up of "saintliness" or human holiness, for the saints are literally the "holy ones." There are two extremes that we need to avoid, though: the saint as a "perfect" or "sinless" human being (for then they would be "equal to Christ" - a heretical claim rejected in the early Church); or the saint as "super good/nice person" (for then we would be teaching a glorified humanism). In the context of the Parable of the Supper that opened this meditation, perhaps we could say that a saint is a person who never made an excuse when graciously invited by God to enter into His presence. The saints refused to find an excuse as to why they could not pray in church or at home; to read and study the Scriptures at church or at home; to respond to the "neighbor" with kindness and compassion at church or at home. We would call this the gift of perseverance. The saints must have taken to heart these stern words of the Lord: "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." (LK. 9:62)
Every excuse is an opportunity squandered. A failure to "redeem the time because the days are evil." (EPH. 5:16) Once down the excuse-making path that leads us away from the Kingdom of God, it is difficult to recover and turn back. The more often we excuse ourselves, the fainter the invitation begins to sound. Only when we make the effort to repent and return to God will we discover just how pitiful our excuses really are.
When read carefully, the Lord's parables do not exclude anyone from the Kingdom of God. Each parable confronts us with a choice, and often a hard one. In order to emulate the great saints of the Church, let us persevere in responding to God's call as well as possible, given the circumstances of our daily lives. I believe that it is realistic to claim that at least some of the obstacles that we face on a daily basis can be turned into opportunities, or can be seen as "tests" to be passed. This means that not every obstacle will become an immediate excuse ready-at-hand to ignore the invitation of God to "draw near." A great deal will depend upon just how attractive the Master's presence at the supper actually is for our minds and hearts.
Fr. Steven C. Kostoff
Christ the Savior/Holy Spirit Orthodox Church
http://www.christthesavioroca.org
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