“My banquet is all prepared”: Come on and Celebrate!
Speaking about food and cultures: an African lady, who used to work for an ethnic Indian family in East Africa, once told me: “You Indians take so much time to cook, but you eat it all so quickly.” As an Indian, I had never thought of that! Come to think of it, it seems so true. Our women spend most of their day cooking – despite the grinding machines and ‘mixies’ these days! Traditionally and even now in most Indian families people squatted on the floor while eating, and used their fingers. Both these factors could be accelerating the speed of eating. Yet, in the Indian culture, people sit and talk for long before and after the actual hurried eating. In most cultures a meal is an occasion for coming together. It is communitarian. It is a fellowship. That is why, even people eating alone in trains and buses might invite others to join them, and if forced to eat alone, they would do it rather awkwardly.
In the context of a meal strangers become friends (Lk5:29), and even enemies become covenantal partners (Gen 26:26-31). No wonder then, meal or celebration is used in the Gospels as a powerful image of the Kingdom of God (or the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, as the Gospel of Matthew has it).
Life in God is a celebration. Yes, the Kingdom God is a party! The book of Deuteronomy (14: 22-23), says, “Every year, you must take a tithe of what your fields produce from what you have sown and, in the presence of Yahweh your God, in the place where he chooses to give his name a home, you must eat the tithe of your wheat, of your new wine and of your oil, and the first-born of your herd and flock; and by so doing, you will learn always to fear Yahweh your God.” (Just an aside: this seems to be the original meaning of offering tithes!) But I am struck by the expression here that by this common celebration “you will learn to fear the Lord God”. It seems to me that coming to experience God as an awesome God is a celebration in itself. It is a party.
That is why in the first reading of today, prophet Isaiah declares, “On this mountain, for all peoples, the Lord God is preparing a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of rich and juicy food, of well-strained wines” (Is 25:6-10). With no apology to teetotallers – like me! What a powerful image is this! But how come, our children sometimes say: “I don’t want to go to church, it is so boring!” Why have we made the experience of God so boring! How do we make it ‘cool’?
The Celebration is a gift and a choice. I have always wondered about the ending of the story of the prodigal son (in Lk 15): did the elder son actually go in to join the celebrations? Did he make that choice? Today’s gospel has a similar story. Those who were invited refuse to have fun with their king. The reasons they offer turning down the invitation are valid, though some of them act aggressively: they beat up the messengers. When God invites us to spend time with him, we too find it difficult. And we have valid reasons. We fail to celebrate life: because we are too busy. We choose to stay out! My own struggle is this, particularly when it comes to spending quality time in silence and contemplation. I too am caught up in this rat race of the competitive world.
There are two levels of choices involved here. In the gospel of today there were those who refused to come to the party at all; and those who came without proper preparation – those without the wedding garment are thrown out of the party (Mt 22:11-14; note: Lk 14:15-22 does not have the 2nd part!). Even in our contemporary world, there are those who have not responded to the invitation of God at all in their lives. They have no time for Him! But there are those of us who have responded to the invitation of God, like most of us who have made the choice to be part of a believing community. But we may not make a choice to respond to our inner desire to experience God personally. Celebration is allowing the life of God to flow in us. Yes, “many are called but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14). Could we say, many are called but few have chosen!
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