Turning Down the
Invitation
It was the weekend, and one of the town’s most respected businessmen was hosting a lavish dinner. Toward the middle of the meal, the conversation turned religious. One man, who was a little less polished than most of the guests, began to talk about respect. He said that in the kingdom of God respect would look different than it looks in our world. The poor and the helpless, who are typically either ignored or treated with condescending pity, would have the most respect, he said.
Some people winced, finding the sentiment a bit dreamy and improper for such a gathering. A few others, however, seemed inspired. One man, moved with feeling, spoke up and said, “Yes! How great will heaven be!” (cf. Luke 14:15).
The first man smiled and said, “Yes. How great it is…for those who receive it.”
He went on to tell a story. “Imagine,” he said, “that the kingdom of God is like a lavish dinner. Like the one we’re having right now. The host”—and here he nods to the respected businessman hosting the dinner—“sends out invitations. But he is quickly disappointed. One friend says, ‘I’ve just acquired a new piece of land, and I need to go and see it.’ Another says, ‘I just bought some new equipment, and I have to try it out.’ A third says, ‘I just got married! Sorry, I can’t make it.’” The storyteller stopped abruptly. Apparently his tale was done.
Everyone in the room looked quizzically at the man, unsure of his point. To their blank stares and furrowed brows, he explained, “The kingdom of God is great indeed…but how often we turn down the invitation!”[1]
The Kingdom’s Scandal
You probably have picked up by now that this paraphrased dinner party story is in fact from scripture, from Luke’s account of a certain Pharisee’s sabbath meal (Luke 14:1-24). I share it because I wonder if it is not also in the back of Paul’s mind when he writes to the Corinthians and issues them a similarly baffling teaching.
Paul encourages the Corinthians to live as if they were not attached to their spouses and loved ones, or to their work and accomplishments, or to their property and wealth. His words are scandalizing, striking at all the respectable bonds that hold society together: family, work, possessions. On second glance, however, these are precisely the attachment that Jesus addresses in his parable. In his parable of the dinner banquet, people miss out on the kingdom not because they’re evil and engrossed in all sorts of wicked behavior, but because they’re respectable and care more for their present attachments—possessions, work, family—than they do for God’s incoming kingdom.
There’s a clue in Paul’s language, however, that may help us to digest his message, which otherwise seems a bit hard to swallow. Five times in three verses, he repeats the phrase “as though.” For example, “Let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29). Now Paul is clearly not calling for divorce or for the dissolution of the family. Elsewhere he acknowledges the value of married couples in the church. What he’s calling for is a change of mind, a change of attitude. Or what we might call repentance—not in the hand-wringing, guilty sense that we often attribute to the word, but in its literal sense of having a new or different mind.
Living Ourselves Into
a New Way of Thinking
I’ve heard it said that, contrary to popular belief, we do not think ourselves into new ways of living. Rather, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. In other words, we do not simply decide to change the way we think. Our thought patterns are much too engrained and resistant to change. They’re second nature, like our breathing. It is only after we start to behave differently, that our thinking and our beliefs will follow suit.
The recovery community has demonstrated this truth better than any other place I know. In recovery, people who have trouble accepting the idea of God or even of a “Higher Power” are invited just to live “as if” there were a God who cared for them. To live “as if” is a gentle way of learning trust. The more we act “as if,” the more we see how our experience bears out the truth that we were hesitant to accept. For an addict, this might mean that living as if God cared for them and others results in experiences that show the goodness and beauty of care. They discover the little joys of life, like getting a full night’s rest or being clean and feeling good about it or looking into another person’s eyes and feeling seen. They begin to believe that there really is a higher power of care, and that trusting in its provision and guidance really does result in a better life.
I don’t know if recovery got this tool from the Bible, but I’m nearly certain that Paul is espousing the same practice in today’s scripture. His living “as if” is not meant as a literal and stringent rule. He’s not calling for couples to divorce or families to dissolve or workers to down their tools. Rather, his “as if” is meant as a sort of holy experiment. His “as if” is meant as a tool, as a sort of crowbar to pry open our lives to the kingdom of God. He’s not against families or friends or the fruits of our labor. He’s against those things being the end of our story. His invitation is to begin living as if the present order of life did not have the final word. As if our family or clan or political party were not the only people who matter, because everyone is a child of God. As if possessions were provisional and not permanent, because everything belongs to God and is meant for the good of all. As if achievements and losses were not the defining moments of our lives, because God’s love is steadfast and the true mark of our value.
In short, Paul’s inviting the Corinthians to begin living “as if” the kingdom of God were already here.
As If the Kingdom
Were Already Here
We often talk about the kingdom of God as though it were a future event, a reality that will be visited on us later and from the outside, that will come with overwhelming force and establish itself once and for all.
One day God will wave the wand and everything will be better.
But what if God has already waved the wand (so to speak)? Could you believe it? Could you live “as if” it were true?
Jesus himself declares that the kingdom of God is among us, within us (Luke 17:21).
And the way that Jesus talks about the kingdom suggests that, at this point, it’s not up to God as much as it to us. It is up to us whether we decide to live in it. He compares the kingdom to something we receive, as a child receives the love of a parent and all the gifts a parent gives (Mark 10:15). He compares the kingdom to a place we enter (e.g., Matt 7:21), as though we had received an invitation to a banquet and accepted it (cf. Luke 14:15-24). He compares the kingdom to a seed that is carefully tended to and that grows (cf. Mark 4:26-27).
A common denominator in all these metaphors is that the kingdom of God happens not by force but by acceptance. Not by grasping but by letting go and opening up. It is never a matter of our being in control, but it is always a matter of our living faithfully—“as if” God’s care were real.
An Opening Up
Today’s gospel text in the lectionary is the famous beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when he calls the fishermen to become disciples and they leave behind their nets and their father. It is a dramatic image, and in our either-or way of thinking, it seems to suggest the disciples have renounced their work and rejected their family. But—and this is just my interpretation—I don’t think Christ was calling them to reject these things any more than Paul was calling for divorce. I think our faith and the kingdom of God ultimately entail not a rejection but an opening up. For the disciples, their story suddenly expanded beyond a fishing net, beyond the roof under which they grew up. Their story suddenly enlarged to include the concerns of not only their Jewish brothers and sisters but also Samaritans and Roman soldiers and lepers and gentiles and Canaanite women and destitute widows and little children. The kingdom of God was much bigger than the world they had previously inhabited.
What about us, I wonder. I feel that today’s scripture is too powerful and far-ranging to be reduced to a few routine prescriptions, so I’d prefer to leave it open-ended and to leave you with the question: What would it look like for you to live as if the kingdom of God were here? How might it affect your relationships and how you see other people? How might it affect your finances and how you handle your possessions? How might it affect your politics and how you live in a world of competing interests? How might it affect your mortality and how you relate to the reality of death?
It might be hard to believe that the kingdom of God is already here. Paul understands this difficulty, I’m sure of it. He asks us not to feel it entirely, or to be convicted of it, but simply to give it a shot. To live “as if.” And maybe we’ll be surprised with the results.
Prayer
Whose love is the end of the world
And the beginning of the kingdom—
Loosen our grip on the things, the people, the ideas
That hold us back from the grandeur
Of your kingdom
…
Give us the courage
To give your kingdom a try,
To live “as if” and to discover the truth.
In Christ, who shows us the way: Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment