Most of us know basic table manners . . . for example, like not eating with your mouth open or saying “please” and “thank you” during the meal. But we all have our own family variations, like at the Anderson table when I was growing up: We bolted through the meal prayer as fast as we could. [I give a rendition of saying the prayer too fast to understand.] Then we’d reached over each other, piled on food and gobbled it down and ran off to the practice or game.
I remember being amazed at a meal at one of my friend’s home. “Wow.” I said, “You folks actually talk. And I didn’t see anyone knock over a glass of mild.” (This happened at EVERY meal at our house.)
Still there are some basic etiquette manners that we all should be aware of:
[Using a British accent] If there is more than one fork or knife . . . begin by using the one on the outside first. (More than one? Heck at our house it was “save your fork” which means dessert is coming.)
Do not use your fingers to eat chicken or chops.
(OK, busted. All you at last week’s Summer Bash meal, I saw lots of fingers on the pork chops.)
Foods like peas should be smashed with knife then held steady with knife to be picked up by the fork. (So I guess the time when used my fork to flick a pea over at my brother and it hit my Dad in the face wasn’t a good idea.)
Well for most of us, our meals are a combination of things . . . getting fed, teenagers acting like they’re auditioning for the next zombie movie, catching up on the day (sometimes with the TV on). For many of us meals can be a contradiction of what we want:
Something nutritious, but the kids won’t touch it
Quality time, but everyone has to rush off somewhere
Home cooked meals, that come in a box.
Jesus was talking about contradictions in the gospel . . if you want to be “honored” go to the lowest place. Now remember at these big social gatherings, where one sat was so important, because it proved your social status. In a sense, Jesus invites the dinner quests to think of paradox. Now a paradox is difficult for a logical mind that has to have everything figured and in black and white. A paradox is something that can mean this, yet also mean that. The word paradox comes from the Greek prefix “para” meaning “beyond” or “outside of”
And things that seem different can be true at the same time. We Catholics get this for we have that all the time . . . Mary is Virgin AND Mother
Eucharist is bread AND the Body of Christ
So I would like to think that the banquet Jesus talks about in the gospel is an invite for you to come and get closer to God BECAUSE you are a paradox yourself. Think about it. Each of you (and me), you are a sinner and a saint.
you screw up and you are loved
you have these moments of really saying some dumb or hurtful things and you say
some kind and wonderful things
AND you are invited to the banquet not because you are only one thing. For example because you are so holy or perfect. NO, it’s because you are a paradox . . . . saint and sinner.
So here’s the challenge, which you just heard Jesus talk about in the gospel . . . when you hold a banquet go into the street and get the marginalized people to come in (and remember this is a parable, a story, it doesn’t mean a real dinner party . . . it’s symbolic). When you think of who you invite into your life, invite the people who are a paradox to you.
That is, not the ones who think like you or look like you or act like you. Go stretch yourself. This is good information for you kids starting school . . . go and meet those “different kids.”
When any of us hear about these awful things that people do (e.g. a crime or a hateful act) instead of just writing them off, perhaps ask yourself, “I wonder that was going on in her life?” Don’t just dismiss them.
As we are invited to become closer to God . . . even with our daily contradictions, so we are also to go and invite others . . . even when we can’t understand their behavior or words.
Let me end with a quote from theologian Fr. Karl Rahner. He was from Germany and is considered one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century. He said
“Now it is the paradoxes of my life that ironically I have come to see God’s greatest mercy.
All my life I tried to avoid the paradox but every contradiction that I am and that I’ve had to live through . . . have become signs of God mercy to me.
The very thing which I avoided has become the very thing I needed and wanted.”