Inviting

When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.” Luke 14:13-14

I woke to the basketball slamming into the rim of the hoop each morning. Each and every morning—without fail—Steve would miss his first toss of the day. BAM! With this welcome to the day, I would troop out to the kitchen and start the coffee. This was my ritual while I worked in West Virginia. I was the Volunteer Coordinator, and a volunteer, thus had housing in the same building as the high school and college students who rotated through the Volunteer Center each week. I did have my own apartment, which helped provide some escape.

But I could never escape Steve’s game of “horse” or “pig.” If I wasn’t being asked to be a part of the round the clock game, I was listening to the shouts, slams, yelps and dribbling of the game.

Steve was not a volunteer. He lived in the community Habitat served. His parents were gone—either they had died or abandoned him—I never quite knew. He lived with his grandparents. He was deaf and lived with a few other birth defects. Thankfully, one of my co-workers knew sign language and this gift added communication to what otherwise could have been painfully silent and frustrating months.

Most of my time in West Virginia was spent cleaning up after a flood that had ripped through the river valley. Steve’s home which sat right near the river, had been, by most of our standards, a shack . It was insulated with stacks of old newspaper and cardboard boxes. A smoky wood stove heated the room. It had plastic sheeting for windows. When he wasn't shooting hoops, Steve slept at the Volunteer Center during the day. Each week we needed to tactfully explain to the new groups that it wasn't that he was extraordinarily lazy, but that at night Steve stayed awake armed with a bb gun to shoot the rats that ran through the house. He said it was hard to sleep as they climbed over him and he wanted to keep them off his grandparents.

Everyone in town knew of Steve. Most didn’t want to get to know him.

One night the volunteers and my co-workers were invited to the home of local family for dinner. We loaded into vans and headed “in to town” a few miles away. We were showered and excited to be in a real home with real food that we hadn’t made. It was a simple, yet blessed treat. We were graciously welcomed. We were given appetizers and comfortable couches to settle into. As we were laughing and chatting about the past days work, the doorbell rang. Our guest opened it to find a person she had probably never even thought to speak to, let alone host in her house.

She audibly gasp and just stood there. It seemed like a bad movie or at least bad acting. My heart dropped and I looked at my co-worker. John whispered that he had told Steve where we were going for dinner. Steve must have misunderstood and thought that he had been invited to dinner as well.

While it seemed like we all sat there for hours waiting for our host to say something, it took her a minute to catch her breath and ask, “What do you want?” Of course Steve did not completely understand her words—although there was no misunderstanding her body language.

Then in the most gracious of acts, a young high school woman jumped up from across the room and swooped in. “Welcome, Steve,” she said as she took his hand.

Looking at our host she said, “This is my friend Steve. I invited him to dinner, too. I hope you don’t mind.” She gave a beautiful and sincere smile to our host and walked Steve into the living room.

“Invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you”, we are told. It seems to me the poor, the maimed, the lame; the blind are not just other people. We too fit those categories. Not only have we all had social moments when we feel desperately out of place and un-welcomed, we are also broken people—mind, body and soul—we long to be welcomed and loved.

With gracious love God has swooped in and saved us. We are claimed. We are loved. We are forgiven.

To a world that may at times, seem harsh, mean spirited, and out to get us, God has told the world, “This is my friend, this is my child. I invited them to the party. I will take care of them.”

Thanks be to God that the world does not play host…God does and does so in the most gracious of ways. God invites all to the party—knowing full well we could never repay the hospitality given to us. We cannot repay God but I think we could respond as Steve did to his host.

As Steve received the Coke someone handed him and slowly sat down in plush, warm chair, he looked back up at the young woman, and with his eyes, his hands and his mouth, said “Thank you. Oh, thank you.”