Taste and nourishment

 This week I have Bible verses and a quote from a book. First the Bible verses, Luke 14:12-14:

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you host a dinner or a banquet, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors so you can be invited by them in return and get repaid. But when you host an elaborate meal, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Then you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

And the quote that goes with it, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together:

“The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire.
The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door."

 So this week's verses and quote build on what we were talking about last week, with how our inner attitudes shape our behavior, and how it's those inner attitudes that are important to God, not the behavior per se. Do you love the people around you enough for your natural default action to be charity? Or is charity the thing you do to mask the fact that you don't love the people around you?

In the Bible verses, Jesus is telling the host of the banquet to focus his efforts on inviting people who aren't on his A-list. Instead of hosting an event to network with people, or to enjoy someone's company that he finds entertaining, or to whom he has some mutual family obligation, the good host should invite the people everyone tends to avoid: the heavy, needy, burdensome people.

How do we choose the company we keep? If church life was a continuous banquet, would we just nibble at a few things that look appetizing to us, maybe something that seems safe and familiar? Would we insist only on our favorite foods? Or would we thankfully eat whatever was in front of us, maybe leaving the most appetizing things for others to enjoy? Is the pleasure of the experience the important thing to us? Or is it the nourishment of a real encounter with someone else God loves as much as us, whose value may be difficult for us to see at first?

Bonhoeffer's quote gets right to the point, so I had to share it. Instead of calling it "eating for taste" and "eating for nutrition" like I do, he calls it an "emotional community" and a "spiritual community." In other words, the people who are "eating for taste" are catering to their emotions. They choose their company based on their infatuation with the other person or what they represent. They want to be entertained, to be validated, and so on. Their desires are what call the shots. They are meeting their own needs by superficially meeting the needs of others.

The people who are "eating for nutrition" want something different. Spiritually, they want a true encounter with others, to see and be seen, as we really are. They ask themselves "how am I really better or worse than this other person? how are my needs any more important than theirs?" They encounter others as they would encounter Christ himself. There is no favoritism.

Both the spiritual and emotional communities may be charitable. On the surface they may look the same in that sense, but what makes them different is that the spiritual community isn't just acting out of emotions of love, but truly love even the difficult people around them. They know their place in the community, and it's the same place Jesus took among us: the servant, not the king who insists on an endless parade of jesters and musicians to occupy his time.

And this is where last week's verses and this week's verses meet up: Jesus tells us in both cases that whatever we do for the difficult to love people, we do for him. We encounter him when we do that, because we are embracing the way of life he modeled for us. It's when we reject that way of life by rejecting people we see as beneath us that we reject him.

This is really difficult! Nobody wants to make space at their table for the awkward, needy, disruptive people! Even if they've been one of those people themselves! If you only have six chairs at your table and you have to miss out on the company of even two friends to make room for two people who seem to have nothing to offer, that's not an easy choice to make.

Think of the get-togethers you've had in the past. Now imagine replacing the fun people and the old friends and family in them with mentally ill homeless people with hygiene issues, people with severe disabilities that require your care, poor people with no manners who might hit you up for money, and so on. Would you have enjoyed those get-togethers as much? Would the other "normal" people you would have taken refuge with have stuck around for very long? It's more difficult to imagine than you think.

And yet that's something that Jesus says will get us a reward in heaven. Why? For the same reason as that same behavior last week got you put with the sheep instead of the goats: because you've shown through your subconscious behavior that you get Him, that you've been listening, that you admire Him, and that you don't still think that you've earned a higher rank than the other sinners.

We had an event in my church recently which I would recommend to anyone: We had some people volunteer to host people in their homes for a meal, and the rest of us, according to our ability, put $10 into a pot to cover expenses. Our names were then drawn more or less randomly so that we would eat with people we didn't really know.

It wasn't a perfect match with these verses, in that there weren't really any bad cooks or difficult people in the list of random names, but the principle is the same principle we should be following in how we spend time with people. If we cook, we accept the people who show up, and we cook the same quality as we would for anyone, not just the people we know. And if we're lucky enough to eat at someone else's house, we accept the invitation and eat what we are offered with thankfulness.

So think this week on who is part of your social circle. The difficult people tend to get cut from the list, don't they? Or maybe they never get added. And there are some names that always come immediately to mind when you want to invite people over, aren't there? Instead of thinking about who will be most entertaining, think about who is most in need of being invited.

If church fellowship was a buffet restaurant, don't just load up on crab legs and lobster and leave all the vegetables and cheaper dishes to the slower eaters. Aim instead for the most nourishing choices, the ones that will prepare you for eternity.