Come, For All Things Are Now Ready

[Luke 14:16-24]

These opening words given by the Master of the Banquet to His servant are words that are intended to call those who were already invited to the banquet to gather.  “You know the time is coming.  Well, it is now here.  Hurry, the Master calls to you.”

With this being our understanding of the parable, how do we rationalize those who received the invitation now making excuses so that they need not come?

Is it that this banquet is in some way undesirable?  Who can imagine such a thing?

Is it that being in the company of the Master is somehow abhorrent to those invited?  How can one countenance this being the case?

Is it that attending the banquet is somehow onerous, that it takes too much effort to ready myself?

If none of these are plausible reasons, what can it be that would cause not just one who was invited, but all with one accord offering excuses?  Can’t figure it out?  Look at the world around you!

This banquet is prepared by this very Master, and is set before His people every Sunday.  His servants are still issuing His call.  The invitation went out long ago.  We as Orthodox Christians extend that invitation to two groups.

Those who have been baptized and Chrismated into the Faith received this ‘perpetual call’ to His banquet when they were brought into the Church.  If all of these would come (knowing that the invitation is still active), the churches would be overflowing.

You say, “...but they’re not”?  So, are these making excuses?  What could justify such an excuse?

But the invitation is extended also to those who need to hear the word of our Lord’s working salvation for all of humanity by His Incarnation, by His showing us how to live, by His showing love to all by His healings, by His gifting to us His Words through the Gospels, by His life-creating death and Resurrection, by His assuring that we would receive the Holy Spirit, by His promise that the gates of hell would never prevail against His bride, the Church!

If we as Orthodox Christians shared a fraction of what we know of this Divine Love with those in this second group, we’d be building larger and larger churches, we’d be ordaining more and more priests, we’d be feeding more and more of the hungry, clothing more of the naked, visiting more of the sick and imprisoned.

This is the blessing already given in His words, Come, for all things are now ready.

But those words will take on yet another new meaning very soon.

Soon, He Who left us to feed those who could be driven into the banquet, those who He commands us to compel them to come in, this same Master is coming again—and very soon.  See how in His parable He tells us that His faithful servants report to Him We have done as You commanded, and there is still room.  We as His servants can’t fill the space that our Loving Lord has made for us, and for all who will come to love Him.  He is returning to say to us again Come, for all things are now ready.

Let us labor to never be ones to hear Him say to us None of those who were invited shall taste my supper.  Let us LIVE each and every day awaiting the next Supper, and the next, living in the Love that He freely has given to us, and showing His love to all others in the highways and hedges who might be ‘compelled’ to join us—if only we allow His image and love to be reflected in our words, and the love we show to all others.