In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 14, Jesus says to a dinner host,
When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
This teaching has been in my mind a lot the past 8-9 years. At the biggest party I ever threw, I had this verse stuck in my head as I planned. I put effort into trying to fulfill it as well as I could at the time. In the end I was disappointed with how it turned out, but I just figured, “well, at least I tried”. Recently I was thinking again about that effort, and I realized that there were a number of key reasons that my attempts did not go the way I wished them to.
- I invited about 10 rich people for every poor person. That meant that the rich people were more likely to feel comfortable coming to the event than the poor people, even if all the poor people came.
- I held the event in a rich neighborhood, in a building built by rich people for rich people, in a place many of the rich people I know had spent much time. The poor people I knew had to travel to get there, to be in a place they had never been, in a neighborhood they weren’t comfortable in, in a building they had no connection to. And really, I expected that to work? It’s no surprise that only 2 of the 20-something poorer people I invited actually came.
- Why did I invite 10 times as many rich people and hold the event in a rich church in a rich neighborhood? Because most of my family members are relatively rich, and because most of my closest friends are relatively rich. The proportion of rich people to poor people there was right in line with the amount of emotional and relational energy I was investing in the lives of the rich as opposed to the lives of the poor. The fact that I was living in south-central Los Angeles and working full time at Catholic Charities at the time doesn’t let me off the hook, it only indicts me further for my lack of participation in God’s idea of community.
This gives me some food for thought for the next time I want to live out this verse. But the most important lesson is this – if I am truly to follow Christ and his teachings, then applying verses like this is a process that starts right now, in the decisions I make in my everyday relationships and choices of community. Yes, I need to do my best to follow the principle when I’m throwing that party, but if I’m not developing relationships and community with the poor now, then by the time the party comes around it will get pretty difficult.
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p.s. – There were some people at the event that probably did not fit in the categories of “rich people” or “poor people”. I can think of maybe 6. Overall I think I invited around 250 rich people and 25 poor people to the event, and the ones that didn’t fit into either category don’t affect the overall numbers much. If this sounds unlikely, take a look at some global income numbers and the amount of housing space the average global inhabitant gets per person and what kind of house it is, or ask yourself, “What % of the world’s population can afford an automobile (or even an expensive bicycle), a refrigerator, and a personal computer with an internet connection?” If someone is in the top 5% of the world in personal income, personal living conditions, and/or material possessions, then they’re rich. A large proportion of America's population fits into that category. Remember, the “rich young man” that Jesus told to sell everything almost certainly had a lower standard of living than most of us reading this blog do today, and there are millions of poor people today who are every bit as bad off as the most impoverished people he knew. The greatest difference is that we’ve created a world in which the rich can insulate themselves from the poor more than they ever have, so that they can either pretend that they don’t exist or convince themselves that they have no relevance to their own lives.
I appreciate this reflection on the big party. I appreciate that you did try, and tried hard, and that you enlisted me to help. I've been a functionary in many such parties, but no role was so rewarding as the one at your party.
It's also worth remembering that you were not the boss of that party, although you obviously had a major role. If you had decided to hold the event in Lennox, would you have had the authority to do so? If you had put your foot down and said, "If it's not in Lennox, I'm not participating," would you have been right to do so?
yeah, I'm with rjh on this one - if you're thinking of the party I think you're thinking of... on that day of all days, you were not your own. The party was not your own, and you should remember the extravagance and abundance of that day without regret if possible.
You obviously nowadays hold (albeit smaller?) parties with decidedly more people of the poor persuasion in attendance, I'll bet. :-p Work with what you've got - I do agree with you that the insulation of rich from poor is unBiblical to say the least.
Another Biblical Application That Will Solve This Issue: Throw More Parties! hehe
You guys make a good point, but I think it reinforces the last point I made - much of the reason that it had to be done in such a way was because of how we'd set things up with our lives in the previous few years. If we were already in deep relations in a poor community and attending a church within our community, I definitely think that it could have gone a lot differently.
When I read this passage, I not only think of the financially poor, but I also understand that Christ is talking about the socially, emotionally and spiritually poor. Those people sometimes seem "rich" on the outside but are so poor within. They are sometimes even lacking more than the financially poor.
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