Re:Verse passage – Luke 14:12-24 (day three)
“Go out into the highways and along the hedges…”
There’s a party happening somewhere to which you’re not invited, an A-list somewhere on which your name does not appear. Conversely, you’ve never planned an open house that’s completely open. There are always parameters. Whether it’s finances or social standing or affinity drawing the lines, everybody knows that invitations have limits. The story Jesus tells here upends that convention. It’s unimaginable, really, because nobody’s that rich. And if the host is that rich, the company kept by that host tends toward exclusivity in the extreme. But here we have in this parable a host who’s unfathomably wealthy and, by the end of the story, tearing down the gates to the mansion lest anyone be hindered from partaking in the feast. Will you still insist the host needs you as a bouncer?
Ouch!