“When you throw a party,” says the Lord,
“invite those whom everyone else overlooks.”
Has anyone here ever attended a wedding or a quinceañera where,
at the head table,
in place of the wedding party or the chamberlains
we find street people and other social outcasts
enjoying huge helpings
of brisket, cabrito and wedding cake?
“Blessed indeed will you be
because of their inability to repay you,” says the Lord.
“Indeed, you will be repaid in the resurrection of the just.”
So, is the Lord recommending this course of action
to make ourselves feel good about doing a good deed?
No.
Not at all.
First all, note that he is not asking us to write a check or to make a donation.
Rather, he is asking us to “make room.”
And “to make room” for them means, most of all,
to “make room” in your heart
for the forgotten people,
the throw-away people,
people who have no one to hold in their arms at night.
Those who have no place to call home.
Those whose sleep beneath bridges,
whose only relief
comes through the end of a needle shoved into a vein.
Second, notice the emphasis that the Lord places on repayment.
These people can never repay you… but he can and he will.
And, in the resurrection of the just, in that place called heaven,
He will repay us
in ways we can’t begin to imagine.
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