The Great Banquet

From Saint Luke 14, the Holy Gospel for Trinity II...

The popular and well-respected Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, often called the 'last' Archbishop of Canterbury, said of the Church: ‘The Church of Christ is the one institution on earth which exists more for the sake of the people outside of it than for those within it.’

It is certainly true that if the Church were ever to lose her native character, her charter of salvation and grace, which is to be the herald of the Good News of the reconciliation of mankind to God in Jesus Christ, to preach the Gospel to every creature, she would surely cease to exist.

If the Church does not make Christ Jesus our Lord known to all mankind in Word and Sacrament, she certainly would cease to be Christ’s Church, and would thus squander her greatest treasure and displace her birthright.

In order to be truly Catholic, that is, embracing the whole universe with the fullness of revealed Faith and truth, the Church must never cease to be evangelical in character and spirit - preaching Jesus to the world.

And the Church, I remind us all, is not simply a building or external institution, it is the People of God, the Divine Family, you and I, we who are God’s children adopted by His grace and made partakers of His Spirit.

This evangelical commission Christ offers to each Christian as the unique privilege of the human being who can genuinely pray with Jesus Christ the eternal Son in the Spirit, saying ‘Our Father.’

As Our Lord feasts with the clergy of His own day, and His disciples, Our Lord tells the tale of the parable of the Great Banquet. Our story as found in St Luke’s Gospel makes the evangelical truth crystal clear, abundantly plain to the hearer. It serves as an allegory describing the reaction of mankind to the invitation to share in the messianic banquet prepared by God for the human race, the eternal fellowship meal (which is foreshadowed in the Holy Eucharist) shared by all those who have been graciously called to live with God in the glory of His Kingdom. In the parable, God provides a share for the outcasts of Israel, that is, Gentiles, those outside the old covenant, and therefore for all men everywhere.

In the parable, God the Father is the lord of the feast, Jesus is the servant, and the people who refuse the invitation make excuse to cover their love of wealth, riches, pleasures of this life, and distractions which make virtually impossible the need, as St Paul says, ‘to keep our hearts on things above, where Christ reigns at the right hand of God.’ Representing the leaders of the Jewish nation, the party-poopers who reject the Lord’s offer of free salvation find themselves outside the festivities, as those folks out in the ‘highways and hedges,’ the Gentiles, and those who were once without God in the world, have been made partakers of the heavenly supper. No one is outside the kingdom because they were not invited. They are outside because they don’t want to be there.

The gift of salvation, which secures not only forgiveness of sins but wholeness of supernatural life, appeals to our freedom, to our free-will, not to force us to come to God, but lovingly to draw out of us the loving and trusting response of that freedom with which we have been endowed. In the process of salvation, which comes by the Gospel, God respects our fundamental human freedom and never forces our hand. God will not save us in opposition to our will, ‘in spite of ourselves’ one might say. God’s Life given to us by Christ, which we commonly call grace, requires and desires man’s free correspondence, his co-operation with God. We are summoned to God’s feast, the joy of his Kingdom, to be, in an intrinsic sense, the ‘co-workers of God.’

‘Be it unto me according to thy word.’ Our Lord’s very Mother articulates with a perfect faith and love the response that should be on our lips today. She who conceived and bore God in the flesh, the first Christian believer, the God-bearer, responds to the gracious working and gift of God with nothing but total selflessness, complete obedience, trust, faith, love. She believes God and trusts Him. The result, well, we all know well: Jesus Christ is born as Man, and His Mother becomes the first to bring Him to others.

As we consider the past summer months and the time for vacations, isn’t it good to know that God doesn’t ‘go on holiday’ when it comes to His providence, mercy and love in bringing men and women into communion with Himself? We should emulate God’s example to us and not fail to be in Church every single Sunday, to pray, work and offer ourselves for the spread of the Gospel in our place, in our time. We mustn't make excuses for ourselves or for our failure to respond to God’s gracious gift of Himself, a Divine Giver who demands that we offer Him to others. The Christian should not allow himself to fall into the danger of a multitude of excuses for either not receiving God’s gift, or hoarding it once received: excuses which can reflect apathy and an attitude that doesn’t take God very seriously.

The Lord loves us and desires us beyond all things. We are the object of His love... and of all that God wishes for us. To participate in His goodness is to accept His gift, to respond to the call of the Father to His children. Many are indeed called, but few are chosen, for few choose the right! Perhaps we may find our inspiration in the powerfully applicable prayer of Saint Ambrose of Milan, as we meditate on the Christian’s purpose in life:

‘So then, Lord Jesus, come wholly to thy Church. Send forth into the highways and call together good and bad, bring the weak, the blind, and the lame into thy Church. Command that thy house be filled, bring all to thy supper, for thou wilt make whom thou callest worthy, if he but follow thee.’

Finally, St Cyprian of Carthage, a martyr-Bishop of the third century, put it this way: ‘Extra Ecclesia non salus est,’ ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation.’ That means that all who will be brought to eternal salvation will be so brought by the merits and atonement of Jesus Christ, the Head of His own Body, the Church, so that all who are in Christ are in His Body. We are His Church, and we are empowered to bring others into this Body of which we are the members. Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher of Canterbury in the last century put it another way:

‘The vocation of the Church is to put bums in pews.’

Both divines sound a clarion call to the Church to be the Church, to win souls for Christ by our obedience to His calling and trustfulness in the power of His Spirit. We should keep in mind and heart the vocation set before us, as we seek to fulfil Our Lord’s call to each of us to be an evangelist, a God-bearer like the Blessed Virgin Mary, consecrated to bring Jesus Christ to our neighbour. We have a job to do. Let us then proceed. As Jesus teaches, so we ought to act: COMPEL THEM TO COME IN.