A theology against petunia safe processes [Luke 14]

It is a very dangerous thing to preach pieties to a living God. Your words will be used as an example. The pious interjector was used as a starting point for a parable.

And the message of the parable makes us uncomfortable. The rules of hospitality and reciprocation: which is how parties and friendships work, are broken. You are told to be hospitable to those who cannot pay, to those who are shunned,

And those who you hate.

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

(Luke 14:12-24 ESV)

What you have from every guest is legitimate excuses in the law and customs of that time. Each one of them was doing their duty. But the kingdom trumps this.

Paul said that at this times those who are married must be akin to those who are single, and those who are free slaves, and those who are slaves consider themselves free. For the time is limited. The window where we can talk, where our speech is not regulated, will close unless the West repents and rediscovers itself.

And it may be that we will not be able to host banquets. For we will be the poor, blind, broken and outcast. In this world.

But there is a greater parallel here. God has no need for us, and we cannot repay him but with praise and gratitude. When God offers a feast: that very feast that our pious interjector mentioned, that feast that is to come, then there will be no repaying, and no one will deserve their seat at that table.

None of us are worthy. And we cannot make conditions to God on the diet, nor what we are given, nor micromange him to spare our feelings. Christ did not spare the feelings of the interjector.

For there are greater things than our sensitivity, or our need for correct process.