Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 486

The master then ordered the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.'"




The excuses the invited guests offer for not attending the royal wedding should sound familiar. "I have bought a wife and married a cow!"
What may surprise us is that we're no more bewitched, bothered and bewildered than our first century ancestors. True, we have an infotainment complex that pursues us day and night, whether we are busy or at rest, relentlessly offering us new opportunities and threatening us with missed opportunities. People expect us to answer immediately when they call, email, text, twitter, flicker or tinkle.
But, on the other side, our side, we're just as reluctant to accept the Invitation as Jesus' contemporaries. We may have more excuses but they are, after all, nothing but excuses for not doing what we know we must do. In that respect, the times have not changed and there is nothing new under the sun.
If anything we have fewer excuses since we have so many efficient devices that allow us more leisure time.
Our reluctance is the problem, not the excuses.
I remember my Dad saying to my repeated buts, "But-But-But-But, you sound like a motor boat."
There is only one way to address that problem, head-on. "Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will." We hear those words and that ready attitude often in the scriptures, from Abraham to John of Patmos. Whatever I was doing, whatever my attitudes, whatever my experience -- none is so important as the Lord who stands at the door and knocks.