Banquets: The Medium is the Message

http://oxidation.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/banquets-the-medium-is-the-message/
It is amazing how much of our lives revolve around food. We meet people for lunch, have church potlucks, and rarely have guests in our home without feeding them. Given this centrality of food, it shouldn’t be any surprise that many of the stories involving Jesus, also involve food. It started at His first miracle – the wedding feast where He turned water to wine – and then progressed to feeding thousands of people, harvesting wheat on a Sabbath afternoon, or using banquets as the foundation for a relevant parable.

In one parable Jesus openly condemns those who were the rightful invitees to the Kingdom, but were too busy to come. That is when the opportunity is taken to invite and welcome those who wouldn’t expect to be in the Kingdom. In another parable, Jesus explains that people need to be careful about taking the honored seat at the table, lest they be displaced by someone more honorable than they. But my favorite story, is more than a parable. It is about a woman of ill-repute, who attended a banquet uninvited, and then honored Jesus the way everyone should honor Him – despite the scorn and hatred with which she was being targeted.

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