SQJ Taipei

In the parable of the great dinner, the original people invited did not take their invitation seriously. A similar problem is treated in the parable of the hidden treasure. If we get something for nothing, we tend not to value it too highly. This is the risk that God has taken in inviting us to share the divine life.

In the parable of the great dinner, a symbol of the kingdom of God, we would expect that the householder would get huffy and say, “Since my friends and peers won’t come, to heck with the banquet!” He does in fact get very annoyed at the original invitees who did not value his invitation. But rather than cancel the affair, he tells his servants to go out and bring in the lame, the halt, and the blind. Even then the banquet hall is not filled. As a final effort, he sends his servants out to beat the bushes, so to speak, and bring anyone they can find, the street people and public sinners. These are the people who actually take part in the banquet. The householder shares the meal with them. Evidently God does not stand on honor but prefers to identify with us and enter into our ordinary lives and deaths, including the scandalous elements in our lives that the leaven in the parable of the leaven symbolizes.

In this way God reveals solidarity with us in the ordinary affairs of daily life, as well as in times and places of monumental corruption whether this be a physical disaster, mental illness, or moral degradation. Jesus exemplified the latter by eating and drinking with sinners, which was in his time the sign of belonging to the group with whom one shared table fellowship. The more desperate the need, the more the infinite mercy of God responds by living it with us if we consent.

Christian transmission, then, is not a revelation leading to high states of enlightenment but a participation in the mind of Christ. In this transmission the community–family, local, national, global the entire universe–is all-important. God is interested in the salvation of every human being and wants us, above every other consideration, to get along together in peace and harmony. If we can believe the teaching implied in Jesus’ parables, morality is rooted in this primary concern, and in laws and rules only insofar as they lead to and support the disposition of unconditional love. This understanding is exemplified in the parable of the prodigal son in which both sons treated their father abominably. He forgave them both without putting either of them to any test of repentance. The transmission of divine life is designed to empower us to think, act, and feel as God does, or at least as God would think, act, and feel if God were a human being. As things are, we have to do that for God.

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Fr. Thomas Keating - from The Kingdom of God is Like . . .
(1923-, Founder of the Centering Prayer Movement)

I haven’t done a “Quote of the Period Only Squiggy Knows” for a while and I just read this the other day and thought that it would make a nice point of meditation as we begin the new year. It *has* been good for that purpose and you may wish to use it that way as well. Jesus often speaks of “The Kingdom of God” and as Christians it is important that we grasp what it (The Kingdom of God) really is. I suspect that much of the current hostility towards Christianity is *in part* a result of Christians forgetting what Jesus says that “The Kingdom” is like.

The book this is quoted from, “The Kingdom of God is Like . . .“, is available for purchase HERE, but it is also available at The Kingdom of God is Like . . . for free if you want to read it on the web.