Fr. Kyle’s Trinity II Sermon

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the high-ways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 

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In his hymns on paradise from the middle of the fourth century, Saint Ephrem the Syrian wrote about the new heavens and the new earth in verses that are loaded with symbolic imagery. Drawing on hints from the book of Revelation about the monthly yield of trees in the new Jerusalem, Ephrem describes paradise as a place of perpetual and accelerated harvest, where each month brings its own fruits, so the trees are continuously laden with flowers, unripe fruit, and ripe fruit all at once. There is no dead season, no dormant winter. There is no scorching summer, either. He writes:

The scene that he imagines is one of ultimate fecundity and productivity, a fullness and abundance that can hardly be imagined—a Trinitytide, world without end. In Paradise, St. Ephrem says, the saints will recline under the blossoms of flowered and fruiting trees and they will be nourished by the very air whose breeze will quench one’s thirst and satisfy one’s hunger.

These are dreams of abundance. They go back in the Scriptures at least as far as the Prophet Isaiah who described the Mountain of the Lord as a place of civic peace where the nations will gather and God will one day “make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (25:6). But it’s already there in Genesis, isn’t it? The garden itself is a place of fruits and of increase. The Eden Garden itself is a picture that represents in a symbolic fashion the spiritual reality that we as Christians look forward to: not only of created delights (though there will be plenty of those to enjoy) but more importantly of that which cannot so easily be described, communion with the Triune God, a sharing in his life without the hindrances of sin and the frustrations of a world that has been made subject to suffering.

Why do we see in the Scriptures such imagery of food and feasting and agricultural abundance? Why are these images used to describe life in the Kingdom—and the life of the New Creation that we look forward to? Some scholars say the answer is quite simple: because the ancient world was, for most people, a place of necessity and, for many people, a place of scarcity. This is the economic explanation—and there is a reason they call economics the dismal science. The dream of abundance, in this telling, is little more than a kind of projection, a fantasy. In other words, the ancients hoped that the world to come would be brimming with food and drink because their actual experience of this world was of hunger and lack.

The problem with this interpretation is that it tells us nothing about food itself. And this is a problem because the Scriptural imagination and our Catholic faith are very concerned about and very attentive to what we eat. The projection theory says lack produced the dream of abundance, but Scripture has the banquet at the creation of the world, before the lack. As theologian Alexander Schmemann puts it:

The point is this: the abundance of the feast is not just a sign that points us to the world to come; instead the food that we eat even now in this life is Eucharistic: it is a visible sign of the gifts of God, the manifold ways in which he cares for us and nourishes us. This is why we should always receive our meals with thanksgiving and praise to God for his gifts—and preferably at a table with friends and family. When we receive our food as a gift, acknowledging the One from whom all blessings flow and offering him thanks and praise, our hearts will be lifted up. The mere stuff of material creation—the meat and potatoes of our meals, the flesh and bone of our very selves—will be transformed into an offering of worship to God. If we miss this—if we miss that this is the true purpose of eating—then we may misunderstand the meaning of the Gospel and the purpose of life.

That may sound like an overstatement, but I want to encourage you to pay attention to the Gospel reading for this Second Sunday after Trinity and tell me if you see what I mean. In order to understand this Gospel reading, we need to take into consideration the larger context of the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel According to St. Luke.

Verse one gives us the scene: “And it came to pass…[that] he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day.” Jesus is in the house of a Pharisee on the Sabbath day to participate in a festive and somewhat formal meal, which would have included bread and wine and fruits and olives and so forth. And Jesus is immediately at the center of attention. The fact that he is teaching the assembled guests is not at all unusual for this sort of invited dinner. He was probably the guest of honor. He was a widely known teacher at this point in his ministry. And such a figure was expected to teach and lead a discussion while the rest of the guests relaxed at table.

And so Jesus proceeds to hold forth. He wants to teach them about something important. His subject is proper etiquette at parties, in this case a wedding feast. Just like in our day when we have plenty of ways of distinguishing rank and social status—who is more important, who is wealthier, who is more powerful—they also had ways of establishing rank and social status. And at big banquets and feasts, they did it through seating arrangements. But these seating arrangements were not perfectly fixed. There were sometimes some reshuffling and rearranging of the order of things depending on who arrived and when they arrived. And so Jesus offers this bit of practical wisdom: when you show up at the impressive wedding feast, don’t waltz your way up to the head of the table and the most dignified seats. Be smart about this. Take a seat for those at the lower end of the table, then when you get called up higher, you’ll receive a special honor. That’s a lot better than the alternative: to be sent away when someone more important arrives and “thou begin with shame to take the lowest room” (14:9). This isn’t just a first-century version of Emily Post. Jesus has a point, a principle that must be remembered: “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (11).

At this Sabbath feast where Jesus is conversing and teaching and eating, he has more to say about how to socialize. He says, when you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends or family—and certainly don’t call your rich neighbors. Because you know what will happen? They will feel obligated to invite you next time, and you’ll be stuck in this endless process of repayment. Jesus is poking fun at the social expectations of the upper class. He says it is better to invite the poor, and not just the poor but also the crippled and the lame and the blind. These are the people who will never be able to pay you back, so be generous to them. Invite them over for a meal and “thou shalt be blessed…for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just” (14).

And here is the turning point in our narrative: Someone at the table, who hears Jesus say something about the resurrection (which the Pharisees and Jesus agree on), hollers out, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God” (15).

And this is the occasion for Jesus to offer the parable of our Gospel. This parable is also about a meal—a great supper. Probably a wedding supper. A man has made arrangements. He’s invited many people. And he sends out his servant to let everyone know the the time has arrived. “Come; for all things are now ready” (17). But these invited guests who have certainly already RSVP’d their intentions to come now go against their word and make excuses.

We need to pay attention to their excuses because this will bring us back to meaning of feasting. The first one says, I have bought a piece of ground. I need to go see it. “I pray thee have me excused.” This is a strange excuse. To agree to buy a piece of property sight unseen is one thing, but to have already followed through on the purchase without seeing it is another. And why does he need to go at that exact moment and decline the wedding invitation? Surely it could wait. These things are not explained. But you have to wonder if the guest is being disingenuous.

Similar things could be said about the second man who claims that he has bought five yoke of oxen. It’s an incredible purchase. But who buys ten oxen without checking on them first? Very expensive. And because he is so wealthy, surely he could have had someone else do the job for him. But he says, “I pray thee have me excused.”

The final man has the most remarkable excuse of them all: He can’t come to the wedding because he, too, is getting married. How is that even possible? Surely this could have been avoided if he had paid closer attention to his calendar. But this man doesn’t even ask to be excused; he simply informs the servant that he will not come.

When the servant has told the master host about all these excuses, the man is angry and he tells the servant to go into the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind. We already have all this food. The feast is going to go to waste. After the servant does so, there is still more room; so the master tells him to go out into the highways and the suburbs of the city for the poorest of the poor, and compel them to come in.

The holy fathers of the early church understood that the excuse-makers in this parable represented certain sorts of temptations and worldliness of various kinds. It is worth pointing out that the problem with the guests who shirk their RSVP is not that what they are otherwise engaged in are bad things: owning property; purchasing farm animals; getting married. These are all fine things to do. In their proper place, they are even responsible things to do.

But the great error is this and this is the point that I want to make: their deepest fault is something like the failure to cultivate magnanimity. They are not great hearted or great minded enough. And we know that is the case because they are consumed with their own personal projects and tasks—so much so that they miss the feast. They do not understand the point of life is the feast. Repeat.

And this is key to Our Lord’s teaching about feasting in this chapter. The people who seek out the best seats at the banquet: they are getting distracted from the point of the social occasion. Better to take the lower seat and not worry about it. Why? So you can focus on the conviviality of the feast. The people who are tied up in knots about inviting the right people with the correct social status and relationships have missed the point as well. Better to invite the poor and all those who have no means to pay you back, so you can set aside all the social gaming and record-keeping and focus on the feast.

In other words, put the feast at the center. But there are many distractions. Perhaps you know what I mean. We have jobs to attend to. Bills to worry about. Projects to finish. Retirement to prepare for. These things can become so all-consuming that they seem like the point of life. And we all know people who are so focused their responsibilities that it is hard for them to be present when it really matters. Maybe you have been that person. As Jesus taught at that Sabbath feast in response to the man who said “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God,” so our Gospel today tells us that as we look forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the abundance of the New Creation, we need to become well-practiced at eating well and feasting joyfully here and now.

And our model is found in the Eucharist. We receive what God has given us with thanksgiving. We enjoy what we have received. We are nourished by it. And we offer this gift in and through our very selves back to God, praising God on behalf of all creation and inviting others to join with us in this food which is given for the life of the world.

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the high-ways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 

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