Jesus’ words in our Gospel passage have just as much relevance today as they did nearly two thousand years ago. Human nature, it seems, is human nature, and continues to be a challenge to us in our quest to live the kind of lives God wants us to live.
In today’s passage, Jesus gives some unexpected advice to His dinner host, a Pharisee. He tells him that, instead of inviting his family and friends to the table, he should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; people who could not repay him, for he would be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
We know that Jesus ate with all sorts of people: the poor and the wealthy, the powerful and the powerless, the educated and the uneducated, with saints and sinners. Jesus’ circle was a wide one because He recognized everyone as a child of God and as made in the image of God.
Our human nature may cause us to relate to only those people we consider family or friends, with only those people who share our outlook on life or our religious or political views. But Jesus encourages us to stand apart from the cultural and political tendency to distance ourselves from those who are not just like us and to recognize and experience the reality that all people are children of God, are loved by God, and are instruments of God’s love, presence, and action in our world.+
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free