Unexpected Parties ...

There was a time when an invitation to a party or a feast, was more commonplace.  Just a couple years ago you would not have thought twice about one.  Going to family for Thanksgiving or Christmas has been baked into the psyche since you were a child.  Regular family meals and get togethers were a dime a dozen.  But this year?  Those simple gatherings begin to nudge into the doubt column, or into the dangerous one.  I love my mother, the grandma of my children.  I want to celebrate events with her.  But with covid-19 hanging around, any one of those celebrations could literally expose and then kill her.  So my love for her must take an expression to find safer ways to share and keep in contact with her, but not physical ways for the time being. 

I wish everyone loved my mother as much as I do.  In heaven, this will be the case, the commonplace.  But here, it is not so.  Many claim to love her; but think nothing of attempting to meet with her personally.  Not because she requested it.  But because they did.  They had the time.  They were going to be available.  It was going to be convenient for them.  They do not share my thoughts about trying to protect her, to keep her safe during this time.  Yet all of these folks know about her pre-existing conditions.  She still fights cancer, has only 50% lung capacity and requires oxygen every few minutes to get around.  She is ~80 (not allowed to say the exact number, vanity being what it is).  And all the folks who want personal, physical time, in her presence know all these factors.  Yet their own interests, desires, needs, become the only things of focus for them, and so they push to meet someone whose life they now knowing gamble with.  And this is called love; it’s not.  It is love of self, not a real love of my mother.

Many might say I go too far in trying to be safe.  My hair is longer now than it has ever been in my entire life.  I look horrible (well more horrible I guess 😊).  It isn’t that the hair salons have not re-opened, they have.  But in my mind, the virus is still here.  When our governor opened up our state way too early, and turned everyone loose, I predicted our case counts would explode 4-6 weeks later.  They have.  When the protests took place, I predict our case counts will once again explore in another 4-6 weeks after that.  The lives we try to make matter will now be exposed to a killer who has no compassion, and who has no heart that can be moved with pity.  A killer who preys on the weak and the infirmed harder, but who hits the young and healthy as well, causing damage that will never be undone.  If staying home as much as possible avoids that, then call me crazy.  What is my vanity to look better stacked against that ever-present threat?  But I am a man.  My mother is a woman who has made it a practice of getting her hair done every week since she was very young.  And her vanity could not resist.  So all my efforts to protect her from contact with me (as my wife is a frontline worker), come to naught.  Last week her hairdresser called her the very next day to tell her she was symptomatic and confirmed with covid-19.  My mom has been exposed, up close and personal.

I wonder now, would all those people who claimed to love my mother still want to go meet with her now?  Or would her definite exposure cause them pause?  Her test results are not back yet.  Would you go, to an unexpected party at her house now?  Or would you be less willing to take a risk with your own life, once you understood it was a real risk?  Would you be more thoughtful of your own mother’s life or family’s lives that carrying something from contact with my mother right now might bring to you?  All of the sudden the risk becomes more real to you.  But the risk is a death sentence to my mother should she have it.  Only God can remedy now, what vanity could not resist.  In this climate, invitations to a party or a feast, are unexpected, and very possibly life threatening even when no intent of that ever existed at all.  But as we all know, this was not always the case.  And we hope one day after a vaccine takes its course, and an effective treatment regimen is developed, all the risk and fear and threats of the day will dissolve back into our memories once again.

Jesus once attended a feast at the home of the chief Pharisee of His day.  Talk about an unexpected party invitation.  But He went.  And He remained who He was throughout, even as He ministered.  And as Jesus sat at that feast, He could not resist using the occasion to compare it to the Kingdom of Heaven.  So Luke records in his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why, the parable Jesus chose to offer while at this stately feast put on by perhaps the richest and most important man in the area roundabouts.  He picks up in chapter fourteen and verse 15 saying … “And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.”  One of the other guests at this feast recognized the importance of what was taking place.  He was eating with the long-awaited Messiah.  And while that was a stunning event.  It was still here in this wicked world filled with sin.  This believer looked forward in his own mind, to the day in which he might eat again with the Messiah, in the Kingdom that has no end.  To eat then together, would be to truly be blessed.

Jesus responds with his parable in verse 16 saying … “Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: [verse 17] And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. [verse 18] And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. [verse 19] And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. [verse 20] And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”  Oh the good old days, when no fear entered our minds; but then, only unfortunately taking-gifts-for-granted was the norm.  These first invitees were called of God.  They knew who God was.  They had likely dined with Him on other occasions, taking in His gifts, and knowing the full favor of the Lord.  But on this occasion, they were too busy to make time for some unexpected party.  The association with God could wait, there were other more important things to attend to (as said by every person ever to discard Sabbath observance for similar reasons).  But this was a bigger problem than that.

It took time to get things ready.  Perhaps all the time it takes to make ready the second coming of Jesus Himself.  Time to go home and eat at that final banquet prepared for dining with the Messiah Himself at the beginning of the end of the former.  It was that important.  It was that big a gift from God for us.  We were to be that close.  But we just bought land, and needed to go attend to it.  We used our wealth, the wealth God sees fit to give us as His blessing to us, on you guessed it, on ourselves.  And we needed to go see what our new goodie was like, what it might do.  Our happiness was now to be centered in the things our wealth would buy.  And for that, we would skip out on the second coming itself.  Still others of us were obsessed with career.  Like the invitee with 5 oxen who need to go get them prepared for the fields, we turn our focus to what we do, and allow that to fully define us.  We put career ahead of church, for without our jobs, we would not be able to survive.  We put our trust in jobs, and remove it from God.  We think we only need God when times are bad.  We fail to see that careers are also meant to be gifts from our God, not intended to so preoccupy our minds so that we have no time or space or priority for anything else.  Lastly are those of us consumed with love of family.  Our wives and husbands, yet another gift of God, are taken to such extreme we lose sight of the importance of God in maintaining our homes, assuming if we work hard enough on love we can make love wonderful all by ourselves.  Until we realize the heart is only the province of God, and He alone can make love where no love exists, or has grown cold.

Was Jesus really talking to these guests at this unexpected feast, or was He really talking right to you and I?  Jesus continues with the story in verse 21 saying … “So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. [verse 22] And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.”  Now we get a glimpse at the heart of God when He must yet endure the rejection of those He has poured so much love into.  All those gifts He gives us, for no other reason than He loves us, yet we take the gifts and reject the giver.  The first-called were supposed to be ready.  This was supposed to be the big day.  But none of us were ready to put anything else aside to be with Jesus when invited.  So who was called next to this feast?  Those who had NO ability to attend it on their own.  The poor had no funds to travel there, the maimed needed help to even take one step to this unexpected party.  The halt could not walk, they needed to be carried.  The blind could not see, they needed to be led.  These people knew they had need of Jesus, all the other gifts of the world could not distract them from their own need.  Their need was ever with them, it was a part of who they were.  And if help was needed, if they needed to be carried, or led, they were not too proud to put themselves in the complete care of the Master of the feast in order to attend it.  From a group of church goers who should have had no priority greater than this, to a group of sinners who knew they would never deserve such an honor, but went anyway, fully depending on Jesus to get them there.  And still there was room.

Jesus continues in verse 23 saying … “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. [verse 24] For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.”  Then the entire world is bidden to come, the gospel is preached in the highways (the places where many travel), and the hedges (the places that may appear dark, or way out of the way).  Everyone is bidden.  But the state of those who were first invited is left horrible.  Because they valued other things more than God, they refused to be humbled to submit themselves for transformation to the love of Jesus.  They thought themselves as already “good enough”, in no need of a Savior.  They already knew of Jesus.  They already knew the scriptures.  They already had forgiveness, though they could not for the life of them, remember what they might need forgiveness for.  They were blessed of God.  Just look at their wealth, or their careers, or their wives and husbands – they had all they needed right now.  What need is there of transformation when you already have the favor of God?  So this would be one invitation they would pass up.  Never knowing it would be their last invitation, and that time is not without limit.

So many of us today are truly in the first-invited category.  We do know of Jesus.  We wait for that second coming.  But while we wait … do we lose sight of everything that matters?  This is the time when our need should be driving us to the realization that it is we who are blind, and crippled in our hearts.  We need this time for His transformation to make us into people we know not yet.  If we push Him away now, we may push Him away forever.  There is so much more to life in this world.  There is so much more to living.  Even in this world of covid-19, there are ways to love and serve others, that protect them at all costs.  Should we not value the lives of others above all things?  Someday, we are to receive an invitation to an unexpected party for eternity, by the Messiah Himself.  Someday, there will be a time when at last everything is ready.  Everything else that is.  If we are to be ready, we must realize we need to be carried there, to be led there.  If all we value then is what is convenient to us, what we have time for.  Then as the parable predicts, there will be many who push aside the final call for other more pressing matters.  For love of self, thinks only, of self.