And You Will Be Blessed

“And you will be blessed…”

These words stopped me in my tracks as I was reading chapter 14 of Luke’s gospel. I thought I knew the story. Jesus goes to the house of a “prominent Pharisee,” and he notices that all the guests at the table are jockeying to sit in the places of highest honor and status. He also notices that the host has invited all sorts of people who are like him, other powerful religious leaders of his time. So Jesus challenges both groups. He tells them they are getting the kingdom of God all wrong. He tells the guests they should take the lowest place at the table, not the highest. And he tells the host he should invite a completely different group of people, “the lame, the blind, the poor, and the crippled.” 

As if these ideas aren’t startling enough, then Jesus adds what will happen if the host follows his instructions and invites all the wrong people to his feast. Jesus says, “And you will be blessed.” 

I’ve had to wonder—in what way is it a blessing to welcome people who are poor and needy? In what way is it a blessing to associate with the dispossessed and identify with the ones who most people see in terms of “can’t do,” the ones who can’t walk or can’t talk or can’t see or can’t move quickly?

In what way could it be a blessing to show hospitality to people who can’t? 

Our daughter Penny has Down syndrome, and for the past few months, she and I have been meeting with her friend Rachel, who also has Down syndrome, and Rachel’s mom Ginny, for a conversation about the Bible. This conversation came about because we ate meals together. This past summer Rachel and Ginny spent a few days with our family, and Rachel noticed that we pray before every meal. After they got home, Rachel asked if they could start praying at their meals too. That first night, Rachel stretched out her hands, bowed her head, and said, “Thank you God for having us!” 

A few weeks later, we started reading the Jesus Storybook Bible together on Zoom. When we read about Genesis 1 and the idea that we have been created in God’s image, I asked the girls why God created us. Rachel answered, “Because God just loves us to pieces!”

Rachel does not know the names of the gospels or how to pray the Lord’s prayer. She does not know much about the Bible or the church. She doesn’t know a single hymn. But she understands more theology than many of us because she recognizes core truths about who God is and how God’s kingdom works. She understands God’s radical welcome—thank you, God, for having us— and she understands God’s expansive love—God just loves us to pieces. She understands that God has invited her as she is, as a beloved child, to experience blessing. 

Through Rachel, I have been reminded that we all are invited to understand the same. We are invited, as we are, as beloved children of God, to live under God’s blessing. 

When Jesus confronts the host and the guests at that party in Luke 14, he sets up a contrast between a human economy and God’s economy. The human system says I need to work hard to get what I deserve. I need to know the right people. I do my work, and I get a paycheck for it. I invite a friend over for dinner, then she invites me back. 

But Jesus tells us that God operates in a totally different way. We have an economy of buying and selling. God has an economy of giving and receiving. We have an economy of scarcity, where we snatch what we need and hold on tight. God has an economy of abundance, where there is more than enough. We have an economy of payment. God has an economy of blessing. 

In both of these stories, Jesus promises a strange reversal. In the first one, Jesus says, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” When we intentionally identify with the ones who do not have high status, when we associate ourselves with people who are visibly needy, it is then that we find ourselves in a place where we can stop thinking we need to earn our way to the top. We stop thinking we can buy our place at God’s table. We start seeing our neediness and our vulnerability.

And it is in that place of dependence and need and identification with other people who know their need, it is in that place that we are open to the possibility of God lifting us up. Not of exalting ourselves. But of being lifted up by the love of God into a different way of being. 

Jesus tells the host that he shouldn’t invite the important people, and instead he should invite the ones with disabilities and the ones with desperate needs. Then Jesus says: “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” If you invite all the wrong people, they won’t be able to give you a party in return. Your name won’t make it to the top of who’s who in Jerusalem society. And somehow, that lack of payment, that lack of honor, will be a blessing. To you. Because that party that you throw for all the wrong people will invite you into God’s way of generous, abundant, love for raggedy, messed-up, needy humanity. It will invite you into knowing that earning your way to God or to success or to fame will never work, will never satisfy, but surrendering yourself to God’s love will fill you to overflowing.

Some of us in already know that we are needy. We’ve encountered our own illnesses, addictions, and failures. We’ve hurt people and we’ve been hurt. But if we are still operating under an economy of trying to earn our keep, then we think we are rejected by others and rejected by God. We think we are on the outskirts of God’s favor rather than right in the center of it. For those of us who are really clear about our need, but not so clear about our belovedness, Jesus urges us to recognize that God invites us to the wedding feast. We are the guests of honor. God wants to shower us with love and grace and provision. The invitation to us is to receive ourselves as God’s beloved ones. 

Others of us are like the guests at the party Jesus attends. We are constantly working to prove our worth. We’re looking for the promotion. We’re networking with all the right people. For us, Jesus invites us to intentionally identify with people of lower social status than our own. To seek out the person no one else wants to talk with. To befriend the colleague who eats alone or the neighbor on your block who can’t get out of the house without assistance. To play with a child instead of responding to the most important emails. To associate ourselves with people who are sick, poor, and seen as unimportant. Jesus invites us to identify with them, put ourselves in their place, and trust that we will be lifted up by love together.

And some of us are like the host of the party. We’re content with our position, settled in our lives of relative ease, grateful for what God has given us and yet still thinking we earned it. For us, the invitation is to extend intentional welcome to the very people who can never repay us, and to receive God’s abundant blessing as we let go of the idea that we need to prove our worth to God. 

The Bible discussion that Rachel and Penny and I have been having offers a combination of those opportunities for me. Penny and Rachel can’t repay me for my time or for the information I’ve learned over the years about the Bible. From the outside looking in, it might seem like I’m doing something virtuous by offering my time. But being in their presence to talk about life with God offers far more to me, I believe, than it does to them. I will never be paid back. But every time we gather, I am blessed beyond measure because Rachel and Penny give me an invitation into this realm of abundant blessing, of knowing that I am loved to pieces by God, just as they are.