Colossians 3:4-11; Luke
14:16-24
As we continue to prepare to welcome Christ
into our lives and world at His Nativity, we must remain focused. There is no shortage of distractions this
time of year that appeal to our passions and threaten to convince us that there
are matters more important than accepting His gracious invitation to enter
fully into the joy of the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Savior calls us to embrace our true vocation not
only during divine services or in the eschatological future, but in every
moment of our lives.
The
people in today’s gospel reading had made themselves deaf to the urgency of
their calling, for they rejected the invitation to enter into the joy of the great
banquet that represents the Kingdom of God. They did so for the most mundane reasons: One
owned real estate, another had animals, and a third was married. They somehow convinced themselves that the
commonplace circumstance of having regular responsibilities justified their refusal. After the invited guests refused to attend, the
master commanded his servant to “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the
city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.” Because there was still room, the master
ordered him to go out even further to “the highways and hedges, and compel
people to come in, that my house may be filled.” Even as God wants all to be saved, the
master in the parable wanted as many people as possible to share in the
blessings of the festival.
There may be deeper spiritual
significance to the symbolism of the yoke of five oxen in the parable, for
there are five books of law in the Old Testament. Having a field of land may represent those
who wanted the Messiah to set up a nationalistic religious kingdom on Earth. Marriage may represent the belief that God’s
blessings were only for their particular family line or ethnic group. Many did reject our Lord because He interpreted
the law in a way that challenged the authority of the Pharisees, rejected the
temptation to become an earthly king of the Jews, and extended the blessing of
His Reign even to foreigners and enemies.
In the historical setting of the
passage, “the poor and maimed and blind and lame” brought
in from the streets to the great banquet represent the Gentiles, who were not
the descendants of Abraham and did not know the law and prophets of the Old
Testament. Especially as we prepare for
Christmas, we must remember that we are those with no ancestral claim to the
blessings of the Messiah. Our hope for
entering into heavenly joy has nothing to do with having the right ethnic heritage
or mastering a set of religious laws. Apart
from the mercy of the Savior, we would have no part in the great spiritual
heritage of those who foreshadowed and foretold the coming of the Christ across
the centuries before His birth.
Those who looked forward in faith
for God’s fulfillment of the promises to Abraham did not do so simply on the
basis of the law, which came later through Moses. The law was necessary for sinful people as a
tutor in preparation for the coming of Christ.
The ancestors of the Lord hoped not merely for a great teacher, but for liberation
from slavery to sin and death, which the law lacked the power to accomplish. The
forefathers of the Savior trusted God that their hope would not be in
vain. The original promise to Abraham
extended to the Gentiles, for God told him, “In you all the nations of the
world will be blessed.” (Gen. 22:18) Now
all who are in Christ “are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise.” (Gal. 3:29) Jew or Gentile, “those who are of faith are blessed
with believing Abraham.” (Gal. 3:9) The Savior is born to bring all who bear
the divine image and likeness into the joy of the heavenly banquet.
The Hebrews of the Old Testament
who prepared for the Messiah’s coming through faith did so of their own free
will in response to their calling as the children of Abraham. That is true also for the Theotokos, who is the
highest offering of the Hebrew people and became God’s living temple in a
unique way as His virgin mother. She was
chosen for this astounding vocation and responded in freedom to the message of
the Archangel Gabriel. No one forced her
at all, but she chose to remain focused on hearing and obeying the Word of God.
Likewise, no one forces us, but we all
have the ability to respond to Christ with the obedience of humble faith.
Unfortunately, those who had convinced
themselves that the normal cares of life excluded them from entering into the
joy of the heavenly kingdom responded very differently. As the master said in the parable, ‘”For I
tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” Those who are chosen are those who follow the
Theotokos’ example of making receptivity to Christ the top priority of their
lives. Like her, we must use our freedom
as those who bear the image of God to seek first His Kingdom.
Contrary to some of our favorite
excuses, the conventional responsibilities of life are in no way incompatible with
uniting ourselves to Christ, for they provide opportunities to reorient the
desires of our hearts to God as we love and serve Him in our neighbors. Nothing but our own sinfulness keeps us from making
our daily responsibilities points of entrance into eternal joy. By mindfully offering them to God every day
of our lives, we will gain the strength to obey St. Paul’s instruction to “Put
to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil
desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
Family life, work, and the countless challenges of living faithfully in
our culture present opportunities to find healing from “anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and foul talk,” as well as lying. This is possible not because we have fulfilled
a list of legalistic requirements, but because in baptism we have “put off the
old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being
renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”
As in the parable, “many are
called, but few are chosen.” As in the
parable, many of us have become blind to the profound spiritual significance of
living faithfully amidst our daily challenges.
Perhaps we have made work, school, family, our financial situation, or concerns
about political or cultural issues into false gods that take precedence over our
calling to share more fully in the life of the God-Man born at Christmas for
our salvation. We make the choice every
day of our lives whether we are going to offer the blessings and struggles of
this life to the Lord as opportunities for finding the healing of our souls or
whether we are going to use them as excuses to become further enslaved to our
passions. The path we take will shape us
decisively, leading us either into the joy of the heavenly kingdom or into the
despair of those who have wasted their lives on what can never truly satisfy the
living icons of God. If we remain so enslaved
to our passions that we refuse to welcome Christ into our hearts and lives with
integrity on a daily basis, then we will shut ourselves out of the joy that He is
born to bring to the world. Before His holy
glory, we are all “the poor and maimed and blind and lame” in need of His
gracious healing mercy.
Christ came to save us who are perpetually
distracted by disordered desires in every area of our lives. He calls us to learn to see all aspects of
our life in this world as an invitation to “seek first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness” with the humble trust that “all these things” we need “will
be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33) That is
our calling every day of our lives and especially now during the busy and often
stressful last days before Christmas, when we must remain vigilantly on guard
against every temptation to excuse ourselves from focusing on entering into the
great joy of the feast of the Nativity in the Flesh of the Word of God.
What St. Porphyrios taught about the
spiritual possibilities of our daily work applies to the rest of life in this
and at all other times of the year:
At your work,
whatever it may be, you can become saints—through meekness, patience and love. Make a new start every day, with new
resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence—not with anxiety so
that you get a pain in the chest.[1] Let your soul
devote itself to the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” in all your
worries, for everything and everyone. Don’t
look at what’s happening to you, look at the light, at Christ, just as a child
looks to its mother when something happens to it. See everything without anxiety,
without depression, without strain and without stress.[2]
During the
remaining days of the Nativity Fast, let us refuse to exclude ourselves from
the great joy of the heavenly banquet by focusing on Christ through prayer, fasting,
generosity, confession, and repentance.
That is how we will gain the spiritual clarity to accept His gracious
invitation to the blessedness of the heavenly banquet, where “there cannot be
Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free
man, but Christ is all, and in all.”
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