Come to the Feast

Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our social lives revolve around food. When one invites people to their home, it is usually understood that the host or hostess will offer some refreshment. Even when it is a small group of people, food figures into the celebration.

There are also larger situations in which people gather together. Call them “parties” if you will. We gather together to celebrate the birth of a child, a marriage, a graduation, a promotion, an election victory, or to welcome home a traveler. We even gather together to eat after a funeral, a party of a different mode. At the conclusion of the gathering, no matter what the celebration, compliments are usually offered about the quality of the meal that accompanied the celebration. Even when the sisters gather here at the motherhouse for community meetings as they do this week, the kitchen staff throws away the ordinary menu and prepares something special.

The writers of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures often include texts about celebrations that are accompanied with food. Several of the parables that Jesus tells involve a feast or a meal. In today’s liturgy, the Church presents us with several readings that include the notion of feasting. Isaiah writes of a feast that celebrates the triumph of God over our mortality. The language that appears in this text is important; rich, juicy food, and choice wines were not the usual fare for the children of Israel. Most of the population lived on what we would call a “subsistence” diet. Refrigeration was unknown so meat was dried, smoked, or salted to preserve them for later. The wine of the common people was bitter and close to the taste of vinegar, so much so that water was usually added to the wine to make it palatable. Therefore, the menu which Isaiah presents could be compared to a sumptuous banquet.

The story that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel text revolves around a wedding feast. As is the custom even in our own day, invitations were sent to specific people who were asked to participate in the feast. However, this was before the day of the customary RSVP. The story revolves around people who have received an invitation but who have failed to participate. It was common in Jesus’ day for people to inquire about the others who had been invited. Decisions to attend would be based upon whether or not the invited people wished to attend a banquet with the other invited guests. Cultural rules about associations were prevalent in that day. The refusal to attend, even if they had been invited, usually indicated that they did not want to be associated with the others who had been invited. The original context of the parable was to chide the chief priests and elders for their refusal to accept Jesus, the bridegroom.

Perhaps we restrict the meaning in ways Jesus did not intend if we think of this banquet that God offers as only beyond death and outside history, or if we think of it in terms of some rather elusive spiritual salvation. Jesus, as we know from his many references to the bounty of nature and the interdependence of creatures, saw all creation as the joyful hospitality of God inviting everyone to feast and to share God’s embrace. The way we respond to the invitation to ultimate happiness, the consummation God offers, the “heavenly feast,” is expressed in terms of the lives we live in the here and now.

If we think of the whole world and all its resources as divine hospitality, a wedding feast of the Divine Word with free human response, the meaning of history and of our lives in that world is startlingly transformed. It becomes an invitation to share the gifts and the fellowship, to rejoice in the joy of others and to take on the burden of their grief. Then it becomes clearer why the anguish of Jesus over the rejecting of the invitation is a matter for all of us to reflect upon at all times. It is a rejection evident in every injustice, oppression, exclusion, and failure to care. It is a refusal of the divine invitation expressed whenever a blind eye is turned to the sufferings of the poor, or a deaf ear to the cries of the hungry and homeless. In that light one can begin to guess at the meaning of that man who enters without a wedding garment.

The text from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians fits nicely into this theme because St. Paul is writing to them to thank them for their generosity to him during his imprisonment. He explains to them that he has experienced both hunger and satisfaction in his life and is ready to do whatever God asks of him even if it means languishing in prison. However, the Philippians have shown themselves to be people who have accepted the invitation that God offers to each and every one of us through their concern and care for Paul.

Picking up the theme of the banquet on God’s holy mountain, the Psalm that we use to respond to the readings makes reference to the fact that God has spread a table before the sheep of his flock. Each of us is creating a wedding garment for ourselves as we approach the table that awaits us in heaven. Each time that we respond to the needs of our neighbors, we knit a fabric that will not be destroyed by death. May we all approach God’s wedding banquet, the foretaste of which we experience in the Eucharist, properly attired.