His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 31, 2025, 11:00 AM Mass
Ss. Peter and Paul Parish, Waterloo
“Our Faith in God and God’s Faith in Us”
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
When I was growing up in Chicago, my precious parents, who were excellent cooks, taught me, my sisters, Gwendolyn and Patricia, and my brother, Lawrence, how to cook delicious meals, how to set the table for a formal dinner, and how to receive guests in our home for dinner parties. (And my grandfather taught us how to make homemade vanilla bean ice cream with Georgia peaches.) After I entered the seminary and began the serious study of scripture, my parents and I discussed the parables of Jesus. I remember a conversation about this morning’s reading from St. Luke c.14 about the comments of Jesus about making arrangements for a dinner party. Is Jesus being realistic when he tells us to take the last place at a dinner party and to invite disabled strangers to dinner who cannot afford to invite us to their homes for dinner?”
Today Jesus is teaching us about the Kingdom of Heaven with two short, parables: the 1st might be called the parable of the dinner cushions and 2nd might be called the parable of the invitation list. Luke c. 14: v. 1 tells us Jesus is at a wedding banquet on the sabbath at the home of a “prominent Pharisee.” The gospel writer informs us that people were watching Jesus closely probably because he had just healed a man with dropsy at the door of the Pharisee’s residence, which was strictly forbidden on the sabbath.
Knowing that the Pharisees and Jesus were not friends, we might ask why Jesus was invited to this banquet? Could the invitation have been a trap to see if Jesus would do or say something contrary to strict Jewish Law on the sabbath? Luke tells us Jesus was being “watched very carefully.”
In Jesus’ time people did not sit in chairs at a table to eat. They reclined on cushions. At a formal Jewish dinner, it was understood that only the most prominent people took cushions close to the host in the front of the dining area. If you were less prominent you took places towards the back of the banquet room. Jesus noticed that some of the guests were rushing to cushions closest to the host’s cushions. Jesus comments, “When you are invited to a wedding feast, do not try to recline close to the head table. If you do, the host may arrive and ask you to move to cushions at the back because the front cushions have been reserved for a more important guest. Then you will be forced to walk to the back in shame. If you take a place at the back, the host, noticing your humility, may invite you to move up higher.” Then Jesus proclaims the point of the story. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”
*******
My dear father, Cullen Braxton, who worked as a chef on the City of New Orleans Trains, said this parable did not ring true to him. “Every day I humbled myself in the heat of the kitchen preparing gourmet meals for the passengers for a modest salary. But I knew that I could not dare to sit next to one of them and enjoy the dinner I had prepared. I could not even travel in the same train cars in which the diners traveled. It seemed to me that the passengers were exalted and never humbled, and I was always humbled and never exalted.
I explained to my father that the parables of Jesus are not simple and not easy to understand. They allow for multiple interpretations. Nor are they to be taken literally. In the parable of the cushions, the party host, paradoxically, represents God just as the rich man represents God in the parable a few verses later about the rich man who has a banquet and tells his servants to go out into the alleys and bring in the poor and the needy, since all the invited guests stayed home (Luke 14:15-24). The banquet is the Kingdom of Heaven. In the parable of the cushions, Jesus is explaining that His Father will exalt the humble in the Kingdom of Heaven and humble those who exalt themselves with pride and arrogance. However, I told my father, this certainly does not happen in everyday life in this world. The parable is ultimately about living in a manner worthy of Eternal Life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The second parable is the parable of the invitation list or the guest list. This is NOT a continuation of the previous parable. Now Luke has Jesus speaking directly to the person who invited him to this meal, questioning his reasons for inviting certain kinds of people to the dinner and not inviting others.
“When you give a dinner party, do not invite only your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, who can afford to invite you to their homes for dinner. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” In Jesus’ view, the practice of only inviting those who can return the invitation reflects a selfish, transactional view of human relationships. The Kingdom of Heaven, however, is about unmerited generosity and love, not about seeking something in return.
By inviting those who cannot invite him to dinner, the host would be imitating God’s manner of giving his love freely to all people without expecting anything in return. This is unconditional love. God expresses His unconditional love for us in the person of Jesus. And Jesus’s entire ministry (and His life, teachings, death, resurrection, ascension, His Body and blood in the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation) are expressions of his unconditional love for all people.
The parables have teeth! They call us to live lives of unconditional love, which is not easy. If all people imitated Christ’s unconditional love, Russia’s immoral and unjust war against the people of Ukraine would not have never started; those prosecuting the deadly war between Israel and Hama in the Gazza, which has cost more than 63, 000 lives would have embraced a cease fire by now; and the ongoing deadly conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, largely ignored by the west would have been resolved. If all Americans lived lives of Christ’s unconditional love, the families of 10-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 8-year-old Harper Moyski from Annunciation Parih in the Archdiocese of St. Paul -Minneapolis would not be planning their funerals because of the disturbed mind and heart of a 28-year-old murderer. That same unconditional love would have, by now, motivated those with the power to do so to develop reasonable gun safety laws.
*******
In a society that valued power, wealth, and status, Jesus urges his followers to show unconditional love by welcoming those who cannot offer anything in return. This kind of love reflects the heart of God, who loves all people, regardless of their social standing. Jesus’ message is clear: true love is not primarily about establishing relationships with those who can give us something in return but about offering love and kindness to all especially those most in need. The unconditional love of Jesus requires radical inclusivity.
As my parents and I talked about these parables, my Mother Dear, Evelyn Braxton, asked, “Isn’t it impossible to take Jesus’ words literally in today’s complicated world? Wouldn’t it be impractical and even dangerous if your father and I planned a dinner party and, instead of inviting only our relatives and friends, we went out and searched for homeless people who we did not know and asked them to join us? Wouldn’t this make our other guests feel uncomfortable? Don’t you think we are doing what Jesus wants when we contribute to the homeless shelter, volunteer one Saturday a month and serve St. Vincent de Paul Society breakfast to the needy, and contribute to the food pantry every Thanksgiving? Should we feel guilty for not taking the risk of helping people in a more personal way? I told my mother, “What you are doing is more than some people do who have greater resources than you have. At the same time, this parable probably makes everyone who hears it feel uncomfortable because parables have teeth.
Luke does not tell us what the stunned host said in response to Jesus. The instructions about the guest list surely embarrassed the host, who may have thought Jesus was being rude and disrespectful.
In this second parable of the invitation list, the host obviously does not represent God. God, in the person of Jesus, is the narrator who announces, “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Those who welcome the undesirable and the marginalized will be numbered among the righteous in the mystery of the resurrection.
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
You have heard these two disconcerting parables many times. How much time have you spent puzzling over their meaning and asking yourself, like my dear parents, how do they apply to you? The parables are not simply inspiring stories. They are confrontations with our souls causing us to examine our fidelity to Christ’s words and deeds. They force me and each of you to face the tension between the challenging things Jesus teaches us to do and what we actually do. Today’s parables really do have teeth that bite into our consciouses reminding us that it is not always easy or comfortable to be a Christian!
Praise be Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. AMEN!