Midweek Faith Lift
November 20, 2019
The Dinner Party When No One Came
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
On the menu for today is quite a story about a dinner party where none of the invited guests came and instead made excuses. The dinner did not go uneaten, however! There are a number of plot twists which make this story uniquely interesting and which steer us away from a too simplistic or too moralistic understanding. It is not about guilting or shaming. So let’s take a listen for the characters, the action and the resolution of this little drama. Here is how it goes:
Luke 14:15-24
The Parable of the Great Dinner
15 One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” 16 Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. 17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ 20 Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 22 And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’” (NRSV)
So let’s take this one step at a time. First we have the set up whereby one of the dinner guests who is actually at dinner with Jesus makes a statement. The scene is a Sabbath dinner where Jesus is sharing the meal at the home of a prominent Pharisee because the Pharisees wanted to keep an eye on Jesus. And one of the guests pipes up, saying “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God.” In the very first sentence we have the words, blessed, eat, bread and Kingdom of God which all have huge metaphysical meanings. With that opening sentence, Jesus is making it clear that this is going to be a story with a twist that will help us to understand what it means to live into our Christ Consciousness. It is going to be neither simple, nor easy, but it is surely worth it!
Let’s take these one at a time. All metaphysical definitions come from The Revealing Word and the first one is (page 25) about blessing which means “to confer God’s good upon something or someone. Blessing imparts the quickening spiritual power that produces growth and increase. It is the power of multiplication.” The next one is bread (p.29) which is “Representative of universal substance, the substance of the omnipresent Christ body.” This is the sustenance for our mind, body, and spirit and we are sustained by both physical bread and spiritual bread. Then we have “eating” which is to appropriate the mental thoughts of substance, of God energy, of the Allness and Love of God. Eating is symbolic of mental appropriation of thoughts of Substance. It becomes my default programming as I appropriate it. And then finally, we have “Kingdom of God” which means the Christ Consciousness. (p.115)
So essentially, this dinner guest has declared that when one really engages and appropriates a deep understanding of the nature of the Universal Substance that is the Christ of each of us, then one experiences an abundance of spiritual power that has the capacity to produce growth and increase, to multiply one’s good and the good of all. All of these happen when we engage in meditation, prayer and a deep recognition of Spiritual Truth and the power of Spiritual Truth which is of God and Universal. We have to make time and space to “eat” spiritual food that awakens us to the truth of who we really are, Star-Stuff and of God. Truth is “owned” by no one and by everyone, as the rest of the parable illustrates for us.
How do we embrace Spiritual Truth in our lives? Who gets to embrace it? That is the set up for this story and those are the underlying questions. Now for the rest of the story! Jesus makes it very clear that specific people are invited to this feast, or opportunity to partake of the divine awakening in large measure. Metaphysically, a feast is “Laying hold of divine potentialities” (p.73) This is quite the opportunity! It is clear that preparations have been made and then the servants are sent out to remind those invited that it is time for the feast.
And guess what? Everyone is busy! There are three different scenarios of refusal and excuses, all legitimate for that time. Notice that it is a trinity of excuse makers! That immediately tells us that the reference is the creative process, Mind, Idea, Expression. The first excuse is a guy who has bought a field, but he does not understand what the significance of that field is as we remember from a previous parable, it is a consciousness of God, a treasure, but he doesn’t get it. The second person has five yoke of oxen! Imagine a new car, like a brand new car for this one. If we look at it metaphysically, then the number 5 is sense consciousness and this guy is completely absorbed by his human experiences and sense consciousness! Look at how much these oxen can pull…how much horsepower under that hood, right?
Now the last guy has a seemingly valid excuse because he has just been married, which again, is sense consciousness. It is getting closer because it involves two people, male and female in this tradition, which represents the head and the heart. When our head and our heart come together, it is as Jesus taught us, there I am among you. Where two or more are gathered means when your head and your heart are together, then there is the possibility of true realization of the Christ consciousness. But they still don’t get it and do not come to the dinner.
Now here’s the kicker! This feast is NOT going to waste! The Christ Consciousness and the energy of Divine Substance is not going to be wasted, not even a little bit. The host tells his servants to go into lanes to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame who will surely say yes because they will be glad of a meal even though they will be astonished to be asked to such a feast as this. When that doesn’t fill up the hall, the host sends the servants to fetch all other people they can find in the lanes and compel them to come in and they do this. And what is the result? There is still room!
This is a powerful message for the Pharisees with whom Jesus is dining when he tells this story. It is quite a plot twist because it is totally contrary to what would be the standard procedure here. There is no judgment of those who made excuses, just at statement of the consequences. All those who were originally invited and refused will not experience the power and presence of Spirit that could greatly multiply their good and expand their lives. As long as we are hung up on our human achievements and experiences, we will miss out on what more might be there for us at the feast of Spiritual Substance.
And, what is most heartening is that when we embrace our most basic humanness: our blindness and inability to see a bigger picture, the lameness of our inability to move into making a decision, the limitations (poverty) of our human perceptions and our impaired efforts to shift into our God-ness, that is when we are the hungriest and our Spirit breaks open and says yes to coming into the banquet. Likewise, when we are in that state of neutral, just hanging out, not desperately attached to how our good “should” show up, we can recognize that Good is being offered to us and we can say yes and come into the dinner. The most incredible part of the story is that it is open ended: there is still more room!
If we stay stuck in our excuses, then our good will only expand to what our human consciousness is able to realize and express. I am not good enough, not smart enough, not strong enough, too old, too young, too busy, I can’t do that…..yadayadayada. It is actually when I accept my human limitations, my blindness, my lameness, and the beliefs that cripple me, then I am able to step into my God-ness and Spirit does the multiplying! It almost seems like a miracle, but it is just Spirit at work in our humanness. The ultimate marriage of our Divine/Human nature.
Here is a powerful example of how this works in real life. I came across this on YouTube. Phil Hansen is an artist who initially did what is called “Pointalism” to make art. He made large and detailed paintings out of little dots but the repetitive motion resulted in permanent nerve damage to his hands, which made them shake. This condition was not reversible and so Phil walked away from art for a time. He finally had an appointment with a doctor who invited him to “Embrace the Shake.” There is a TED talk by that name which is 10 minutes long and it illustrates the incredible art that he has been able to do once he “embraces the shake.” It is worth your time to view. We are going to watch a 2-minute video of what he is able to do and to invite others to do that has an incredible impact of multiplying the good. This is the Parable of the Dinner Party in action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lYrEEXZQNQ
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb