Reflections on a Banquet (28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

I’m sure you’ve read reports in the newspaper or seen them on TV of suicide bombers in the Middle East. One of the reports I saw emphasized that Muslims believe that those who die in such a way will go directly to heaven, and according to the reports be "attended" by groups of virgins. The idea that one report put forward was that the Muslim idea of heaven is almost orgiastic. We’ll, a couple of years ago, I decided to read the Quran myself to see exactly what it said. What the Quran actually says is quite a bit different from what news reports say, which should be no surprise to anyone who has tried to follow religious matters in the popular press.

In the Quran heaven is pictured as a banquet with really good waiters and some wonderful guests. Among the guests are women who are of high moral character (that probably gets translated "virgins" in some places), who are very intelligent and excellent at conversation. It also says that these women have exceptionally large and beautiful eyes. So in the Muslim view, heaven is a great party with wonderful guests and terrific conversation.
It’s really no surprise that the Prophet Muhammad tended to see heaven as a banquet. That view came directly from the Hebrew prophets whom Muslims read and venerate. Isaiah, in looking forward to the day of the Lord, says that the banquet will happen right here on this mountain, the mountain on which Jerusalem sits. And on that day, God will "destroy the veil that veils all people," the veil that separates them from God and from each other.
In the city of Jerusalem about 500 years after Isaiah wrote, Jesus gathered a group of followers in an upper room and held that banquet, a banquet that has continued since then and will continue in heaven forever. Jesus lifted up the bread and the wine and gave thanks for them and said the words of consecration which made them his body and his blood for us. When we come together here at Mass we don’t start another banquet, we join into the very banquet that Jesus held in the upper room. We join into the very banquet that Jesus holds even now in heaven.

But in the story that Jesus tells in this evening’s Gospel reading, a lot of the people who are invited aren’t coming to the banquet. Why not? One of the reasons that so many of those originally invited didn’t come was that the real banquet looked so much different than they had imagined. The Jewish people worked hard for more than 1,000 years before Jesus to keep their faith separate from the worship of the pagan peoples around them. A large part of the story of the Hebrew people is their succumbing time and again to the temptation to adopt the pagan forms of worship, and time and again God sending prophets to purify the faith, to get the pagan practices out of their worship and pagan philosophies out of their thinking. So by the time of Jesus, the sense of separateness was so deep that it was impossible for some to recognize that in Jesus, the faith was now opened up to all the nations. This was very difficult issue for the early church, and it led to fractured communities all over the Mediterranean region. The issue was only settled when Peter, Paul, James, and others held a church council in Jerusalem where they made the decision to admit gentiles as full Christians -- recognize that in Jesus, God was bringing something absolutely new into the world.
But the story tacked on at the end of this evening’s Gospel reading hints at a different and bigger reason for people to refuse the invitation to the banquet. Recall that one of the guests was not properly dressed for a banquet and was forced to leave. What is that all about?
Accepting the invitation to God’s banquet requires a change in us. We need to take off our regular street clothes, the idea that what life is all about is getting and spending, the idea that we need position and power, the philosophy of "me first." We need to put on different clothing. We need to remember that each of us is God’s beloved child. We need to know that each of us is here for a purpose, and that purpose isn’t to accumulate the most toys. We are here to love and to accept love. To support and to heal and to nourish and to protect, to leave this world a better place than it was before we came. To come close to God in this life in anticipation of being close to God in eternal life.

Thank you so much for being here and accepting the invitation to God’s banquet. Here is the banquet table. And just look at all the intelligent women of high moral character with large and beautiful eyes. You must be in the right place. Thank you for letting Christ’s light shine through you so that it warms and brightens the whole world.