About 20 or 30 Cedar Waxwings were flitting all around my yard yesterday morning, never perching long enough for me to begin to count them. They apparently had found so much food that they gave new meaning to the word "flighty" trying to gobble it all up. I had never seen them before. This much enlarged picture gives just a hint of how pretty they were.
I was praying this morning with Luke 14:1-14. I found the footnotes in The New Interpreter's Study Bible helpful. In the first part of the passage Jesus cures a man with dropsy, which is the swelling of the body due to an excess of fluid (today known as generalized edema.) In spite of that excess, victims suffered from an insatiable thirst. So in the ancient Mediterranean world dropsy was used as a metaphor for greed. People with an excess of money and prestige continue to thirst for more. These are the very kind of people with whom Jesus is dining.
Jesus notices how the guests choose the places of honor. He turns their attention from who gets to sit where to whom do you invite. The poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Those who embrace and embody the message of Jesus are known by their practices of hospitality to the least and the left-out. I wondered who I leave out.
No comments:
Post a Comment