Sharing like the Father

 Today’s gospel (Luke 14: 12-14)  is one of those nuggets of Jesus’ wisdom which have the potential to echo in all kinds of circumstances. On the surface, it is about the motives for giving a dinner. “Don’t invite those who can invite you back,” he tells the leading Pharisees.  Don’t just do the socially acceptable thing, or -  worse still - don’t just play your part in the social round of getting and spending, darling.

Yet this logic should exist in other areas of our life. It is not just about the giving of concrete things (like fine dinners) but also about more intangible things like respect, esteem or even friendliness. How easy it is only to pay these things out to those who return them to us. How easy and yet how purely contractual. Hilaire Belloc, who was famously cantankerous, wrote, nevertheless, about courtesy as the crown and sign of love. And if we are called to love our neighbour, whoever they may be, then might we not be called to pay them our respect and courtesy, regardless of whether they pay it back to us? And if we could manage this, would our neighbour then perhaps meet in us the “Word made flesh in Mary”, as we pray after Holy Communion?

There is, nevertheless, one further reason underpinning Jesus’ counsel to the Pharisee in today’s gospel. When we give to those who do not or cannot give to us, and when we show courtesy and love to those who show none to us, we have stepped outside of the human logic of contract and exchange and adopted God’s logic of gift and self-giving. In St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus commands us: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The essence of goodness is to give of itself. Good wishes to share itself. Sometimes, the only way goodness can conquer is through that self-sharing.

There is no imbalance ultimately, Jesus tells us. God will settle all accounts; there is yet abundance in heaven for those who sowed here on earth and received nothing. In the meanwhile, we only need share ourselves – by His grace and depending on His power -  like He shares Himself with us.