The Gospel for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Luke 14:1, 7-14) speaks about giving a banquet. The Eucharist is our banquet, the sacred meal that foreshadows the great Messianic Banquet when all the nations will be gathered around Christ the Lord. This gospel passage seems to be about humility, which is why the first reading was chosen (Sirach 3:17-20, 28-29). But is it really about humility? What does Jesus actually say? What he says is something like this: If you really want to be noticed by everyone when you’re invited to a banquet, sit in the very lowest place. Then your host will be forced to say, “Come up higher,” and so you will be honoured in the sight of all. Is this what humility is all about?
The passage mentions a wedding banquet and it’s followed immediately by the parable of The Great Banquet (Luke 14:15 to 24), which is not used in any of the Sunday readings. The reason why it’s omitted is probably because it repeats the words that Jesus uses in today’s passage, when he tells us to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. But what’s wrong with repetition? If I were compiling The Sunday Lectionary, I would keep both these passages together, because those words are worth repeating. And I would choose as a first reading that passage from Isaiah, which begins, “On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food…” (Isaiah 25:6).
Isaiah is announcing the great Heavenly Banquet at the end of time, when all peoples – all the nations, all the Gentiles – will be gathered together on Mount Zion with the People of Israel. This is Israel’s vocation: to bring God’s Word and God’s salvation to the whole world. This is our vocation also, as Christians. Someone has said that Christianity is the missionary arm of Judaism (it was Leonard Cohen, as a matter of fact, who said this; he’s not listed among the minor prophets, though perhaps he should be). Christianity, of course, is much more than the missionary arm of Judaism. It’s the fulfilment of Israel’s prophetic vocation and mission to the Gentiles.
Isaiah’s words have not been interpreted favourably in some later Jewish writings. For instance, the apocryphal Book of Enoch (which dates from the second century before Christ) has a great banquet at which the gentile peoples will all be gathered together and slain by the angel of the Lord. And then, there is the group called the Essenes, who were actually contemporary with Jesus, and who produced the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. They see the Messianic Banquet as a banquet of the Perfect: the Gentiles are excluded, and also those with any physical defect: anyone who is paralyzed, lame, blind, deaf or dumb.
Now, these are the very ones Jesus tells us to invite when we have a banquet, the ones who never get invited to anything, because there seems to be no point in inviting them: they can’t walk, they can’t see, they can’t hear, they can’t talk. They’re not just last; they’re left out and never get to sit even in the lowest places because there is no place for them at all. These are the ones, Jesus tells us, who will be first, who will have the places of honour at the great, final, Heavenly Banquet.
We are left with a question: what is true humility? Who is the one who is truly humble? Is it the little child? Jesus tells us elsewhere to become like little children, so this must be part of the answer to who is truly humble. Is it the Christ-child, lying in the manger? The one who emptied himself, to take the form of a servant? The one who accepted death, even death on a cross? As with so many of his parables, when we go deep enough into them, we find Jesus at the centre. But he’s hidden, and so we don’t usually see him.