October 10, 1999

James R. Gorman

The culture of the ancient (and probably modern) Mediterranean was a patronage culture. This meant that what was important, effective, even morally superior, was not what you knew but who you knew. The mark of a superior man, indeed a righteous man, was that he had connections.

Romans and Jews of that time, like the gentry of our own day, prided themselves on their capacity to make and keep connections and to win favor of political patrons. But only about 5% of the population, the wealthiest and most powerful, ever had the privilege or opportunity to engage in this kind of political maneuvering. As members of the tiny segment at the top of society, the chief priests and elders were the best situated. Recall in the previous parable of the tenants in the vineyard, that the chief priests sided with the landed gentry against the tenants.

Now, the chief priests would also condemn the people who turn down the invitation of a king as fools, even moral reprobates--but Jesus makes it clear in the parable that it is the chief priests who have refused the invitation of God.

The wedding feast of a prince presents a prime opportunity to win patronage. The king becomes a patron to all who are invited. All they have to do is show up, show respect, be seen, hobnob, you know the routine. But the invitees, in this story, squander the opportunity in favor of "trivial" work.

So the king loses his temper and dis-invites the guests who would not come. He tells his servants, "The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. So go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet. The good the bad and the ugly."

Luke records the same parable, but he remembers Jesus' words somewhat differently. Maybe Jesus told the same story on different occasions to different audiences. When no one the king invited would come to the banquet in Luke's version, the king says to his servants: "Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame." And then he says, "None of those who were invited will taste my dinner."

And we are left with quite a picture of a great banquet of the lost and the forgotten, the lame and the misbegotten.

"...the champagne glasses are filled, the cold pheasant is passed around, and there they sit by candlelight with their white canes and their [blood shot eyes], their [two dollar] haircuts, their orthopedic shoes, their sleazy [thrift shop] clothes, their aluminum walkers. A woman with a hair-lip proposes a toast. An old man with the face of [King] Lear on the heath and a party hat does his best to rise to his feet. A deaf mute thinks people are starting to go home and pushes back from the table..." (Beuchner, WISHFUL THINKING, p. 67)

A party like this would seem an embarrassment, wouldn't it? Like everyone else, I want to be invited to the patronage party. The party with a future. The party which I would love to tell my friends about the morning after.

But these are not the parties that God cares much for. To be sure, God loves a good party. But the parties which God delights in, if Jesus' parables are any indication, are the parties filled by people who are the replacements of the nobility who were first invited.

To be a born again Christian, as I understand it, is to be the one who accepts the invitation of the prince to the wedding banquet that his friends would not attend.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to throw parties for those who live in the streets and the lanes of the town and who are not so politically or economically connected.

I seriously doubt whether Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt would sanction such a guest list as our Lord has drawn up. And one wonders what sort of bedlam such a gathering would result in? Bedlam is an interesting word. It comes from a London hospital named Bethlehem, where the mentally ill were housed in the era of Dickens. In the cockney accent of that time the word "Bethlehem" was shortened to "Bedlam." Imagine the irony of a place of such mental terror of a Dickensian hospital as a setting for the messianic banquet, where everyone is invited regardless of their patronage connections.

I prefer the patronage parties frankly. But I have been to the other kind of parties and I admit to being moved by the presence of God's rich and well-prepared smorgasbord.

When I was in seminary, my wife Sally worked in a nursing home in St. Louis. There she met a former Franciscan monk named Lewie MacDonald who had been trained as a nurse. We often went to his house for parties and they were always an experience of a lifetime.

Lewie and Dave Roach were roommates who had both been monks at the monastery in Eureka, Missouri where the Shrine of the Black Madonna is. They left the monastery and shrine not because Catholicism was not modern enough for them, but because the monastic community would not open itself to the real needs of the community around it. They left the monastery, but never gave up the public meaning of their Christian discipleship. They remained disciples in the way they lived their lives. They always knew how to party.

We used to go to the apartment of Lewie and Dave, never quite knowing what to expect. One time when invited to one of their parties, we found on the floor of their apartment a profoundly retarded child named Ricky. Ricky laid in anonymous silence for 4 and one half years. Dave's girlfriend, Ann, also a nurse, was trying to adopt this child from the nursing home that she worked in. The child long ago stopped responding to any stimulation because well-meaning folks stopped offering it. Even in nursing, they tend to think in pragmatic terms. (There is, if we are honest about it, a kind of emotional triage used in the helping professions.) Ann brought that child home and in just three months Ricky began to laugh and cry. He loved to touch people and be touched.

They called Ricky's progress miraculous. Perhaps you'd call it love. And I have seen it at work again and again in my ministry. Most often these days, I see it at the other end of this building where there is a party almost every day of the week. It's Jo Jo's birthday party. And it's Elmer's celebration of having received a postcard. And it's Lupe's excited announcement that she has somehow appropriated a new pair of shoes, very often on the wrong feet. And it's Bev's new pair of sunglasses. And, truth be known, there really doesn't need to be a reason for the party. It is quite enough that the sun is out or that the rain nourishes the flowers in their garden. And it is a privilege to be invited to their party, believe me.

We all know about the fabulous parties given for the rich and famous. Robin Leach loves to take us on tours of those parties and their locations. Few of us know about the parties given for Ricky and Jo Jo and Lupe and Elmer. And yet, our story says that those are the parties that God loves to give and attend. Out there at this moment, there are parties being given by those who live their lives as if Christ made a difference in the way in which we see the world.

Nurses, prison wardens,

social workers who have not given up hope or allowed themselves to become calloused to the world around them,

police who still believe that their work is a public calling and a holy vocation,

politicians who still remember the reasons for which they first ran for office,

teachers who remain convinced after all these years that their work is all about children, and all about the future.

All these people are giving parties. They are quiet parties. The music is not very loud and the dress is not very extravagant. Fine liquor is not being served and the cold pheasant is largely picked over. If you are not looking for it, you might not find the way to these parties, for the culture in which we live does not celebrate the simple virtues of caring for one another. Nor does it think that such would be a good party theme.

But this is the party to which we are invited. To care and continue to care long after our cynicism gives out.