Then he also said to them who invited him, "when you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you feast invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just."( Luke 14:12-14)
A strange teaching indeed. Who would like to do this? We usually hold such functions as an opportunity to spend quality time with our friends and family and to showcase our assets in terms of wealth and money power thus gaining a place in society. The normal practice is to invite people who share the same education, family status, wealth, money power and connections in society. We always want to be identified with those who have all these things and whose lives seem to be perfect.
In the passage above Jesus is referring to the Church which is the place where the real grand feast is going to take place. He refers to both our spiritual and worldly attitudes with regards to the people we prefer to hang out with. Jesus expects us to have His attitude in His house, the Church! Is the Church today welcoming the type of people Jesus wants to see at the feasts?
If you spend all your time with people with similar attitudes as yours you will remain the same. You will have no motivation to change or develop a Christ-like attitude. In many churches it is an unwritten law that the servant of God will visit the homes of each believer once in a fortnight or so. If the Pastor doesn’t follow this practice the believers are unhappy. It is during this time that they hand over their special financial gift to the Pastor. This can also be given in the church offering bag but if it is done that way we would not get the special honor and recognition from the Pastor because no one knows who put what into the offering bag. So we prefer to give the gift directly to the Pastor. This is our way of self gratification. We are gratifying our flesh and its desire for recognition. We are so consumed by this that we don’t care about anything else.
Whenever there is a special feast we call our rich friends who are already full and have no need to attend another feast. These rich friends actually have enough capacity to hold feasts for more people who are in need of food. It is unfortunate that we prefer to spend our time and money on rich friends. We believers need to reach out to the poor and lame who are dying of spiritual starvation instead of wasting our time with the rich and the famous.
A group of young Christian workers came for a visit to Bihar. They sat in rooms and prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit to come down in Bihar. If they had instead ministered among the lame and weak or if some of them had decided to feed the poor or go to the mission fields themselves this might have been an opportunity where they would have truly seen the Holy Spirit come down in Bihar.
Many times we cannot accept the fact that people with the same faith have different perspectives and outlooks in life. Instead of looking at the externals of a person we have to look at the internal. In the word it is written that God looks at the heart. We expect and at times even force people to change externally so that they fall within our expectations. We often don’t even give them any valid reason for these changes and it is sad when many of them run away because things don’t make sense to them. Remember the story of the elderly lady believer who visited a church in Bihar? She saw people worshiping and singing songs to God differently. She could not accept it. It is sad to see that many of us believers are used to certain practices and refuse to change. We have trained ourselves not to accept anything or anybody outside the normal frame work. What has led us to conclusions like this? Lack of exposure to the unreached is the main reason. We have chosen to spend our time with fellow believers who think and act just like we do.
To reach out to the poor and lame, the maimed and the blind, we must be willing to go to where they live. You must go and search for them, hug them, wash them, bring them to your spaces, make them feel at home and feast with them. Not easy, is it? But this is what Jesus demands of us. Let me complete the sentence. This is what Jesus did for you and me. He is only asking us to do the same for others. You may ask, where can I find these friends? They are everywhere, but you need to look outside your church. Look at your newspaper man, housemaid, milkman, your boss, your senior officer, your chief minister, your doctor, fellow passenger, even people who live far away from your neighborhood, those who speak other languages, and who belong to other cultures.
Shall we make a simple decision to reach out and invite these new friends for the feast? Let’s start regularly praying for these friends using a prayer journal and invite them home or visit them and share the love of Jesus with them regularly. Use your time wisely. It is not that you should not hang out with your believer friends but take some of that time to hang out with new friends who are not believers and invite your believer friends to join you. As a church, as a family, as an individual, plan a missions trip at least once a year for at least a few days. This will equip you to reach out, your perception about life, ministry, money, and priorities will change, and you will find that you are becoming more like Jesus. Jesus wants us to reach out and invite them for this wonderful feast. Amen.
