Love Bade Me Welcome*

He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Luke 14. 1, 7-14

Ever since I was introduced to Sieger Köder's art**, I have seen these faces at the Eucharist. Today's gospel reminded me of this banquet table image. In a class once, we went around this table and speculated about each of these people and what he or she brought to the Great Thanksgiving we call Eucharist. We also spent much time studying the hands at the head of the table, clearly the pierced hands of Jesus, wide open and offering bread, body.

Everytime I gather with people around our dining table, I wonder if perhaps I should have/could have invited "one of the least of these." I have certainly met angels unawares when I have invited strangers into my home, but I don't think I have invited them in for a banquet as Jesus suggests in this parable.

Today if you lift up your hands to receive the Body of Christ, think about these faces and how you might serve them or they serve you in the week to come. Where in our world can we serve the peace that passes all understanding and the Body of Christ to each other...one hand at a time, one smile at a time, one heart at a time.

*George Herbert

Love

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’

Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.’

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

So I did sit and eat.

** "Sieger Köder was a German priest-painter, a prisoner of war during WWII and a secondary school art teacher. At age 41, he went to study theology and was ordained as a priest in 1971. His work shows the artistic influence of Chagall and a distinctly earthy theological and spiritual interpretation of biblical and abstract themes. The scene above includes a Jew, a beggar, a prostitute and a wounded African 'guest worker' in the striped pyjamas of the Nazi Holocaust."