Come
and Join the Party, Every Day!
Hey hey, hey, come right away
Come and join the party every
day. [i]
That’s the refrain from The Golden Road to Unlimited
Devotion, the first song on the first Grateful Dead album. Which pretty much
sums of the 15th Chapter of Luke: Come Join the Party! Jesus is
telling stories to a crowd of outsiders, including tax collectors and sinners.
The Pharisees and Scribes grumble and do not approve. Story one, a shepherd
loses one out of 100 sheep, and leaves the 99 to find the one, returns home and
invites his neighbors to a celebration party. Story two, a woman loses one
coin, sweeps out her whole house, every nook and cranny, until finally she
finds the one coin. And what does she do? She throws a block party for the
entire neighborhood. Finally, a story we call The Prodigal Son, as if somehow
this profligate spend-thrift son deserves top billing. It might better be
called The Story of Two Sons, since stories of older and younger sons is a
common tale throughout the Bible: think Cain and Able, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau
and Jacob, Manasseh and Ephraim, in which the younger sons end up supplanting
the older sons. This may be why Jesus is always talking about the last becoming
the first?
This third parable could be called The Parable of the Loving and Compassionate Father. I cannot help but think, however, that it is The Party theme in all three that becomes the central character of this story – once in Jerusalem, Jesus will initiate a party we call The Last Supper, of which perhaps this parable offers insight and foreshadowing! For what this party represents is what my dear late friend and mentor, N. Gordon Cosby calls a Grace Party:
When we hear the invitation to claim our membership in God’s family, it’s like we’ve stumbled onto a Grace Party. We can hardly believe our good fortune. The sights and sounds of it are pure delight. Abundance characterizes the whole shindig. The most delectable manna is falling everywhere, and wine overflows as though from an Artesian well Everyone is eating and drinking endlessly, yet not being harmed because this food and wine are not of the world but New Life.
And get this: Everyone’s invited! That’s the really good news. No one has to crash this party, there’s no limit to how many of my friends I can bring along with me. Or, my enemies for that matter. It’s such a blast that I want everyone to come – those with wealth or not a penny to their name, those who are down and out or who thought they had some power. I do notice, though, that the so-called nobodies seem to be having the most fun. It takes others a while to lay down everything they brought with them and start to play.
What are people doing at this party? That’s the funny thing – We’re not ‘doing’ much at all. We’re just being. We’re being our real selves, relaxed and eager to help out with whatever the host asks of us. Love is flowing all over the place. Whatever you need, we’re ready:
Do you want someone to listen? We’ll hear whatever you need to say.
Are you bleeding from wounds of the past? We’ll soothe and
bandage your wounds.
Do you need to be held for a while, just being quiet in a
safe place? Not a problem. We have all the time in the world.
Looking for respect, even reverence? You’ll get such a dose
of it you’ll wonder if you can take it all in.
In fact, there’s so much peace and joy at this party that it can be hard to absorb. Some of us just aren’t able to let in this much unimpeded Love and Goodness. That’s right. The host isn’t pushy. We can come and go as many times as we need to until we can handle this much joy.
This is simply the nature of a Grace Party. None of us is here because we deserve to be. We haven’t earned any of it. And although some of us might keep turning down the invitation, the host will never stop inviting. And neither will we who have decided to stay. We’ll be spreading the news of this unbelievable Feast everywhere we go. Come to the party! It won’t be the same if you’re not there.[ii]
The older son refuses to join the party. We can suspect the Pharisees and Scribes agree with him. And we may as well admit it, his reasons are justifiable: his eventual inheritance has been significantly reduced by his younger brother’s “dissolute living.” But we also know that this rather self-centered point of view is completely at odds with everything Jesus has to say about living here and now in the Kingdom of God: where the last will be first; where love of neighbor, outsiders, and even enemies is the absolute measure of our love; and where ultimately, we are all going to give it all away when it is all said and done! This is what Jesus was trying to say to his disciples when the night before he died, he washed their feet, and gave them a sacramental meal of bread and wine, his own Body and Blood, as a reminder that the love he is proclaiming is meant for others - all others, not, as the older brother assumes, for ourselves alone, or just those like ourselves, no matter how good and righteous we think we are!
Come and join the party every
day!
[i]
The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion, on The Grateful Dead (Warner
Brothers:1967)
[ii]
N. Gordon Cosby, Church of the Saviour, Washington, D.C.
[iii] L. William Countryman, Good News of Jesus (Cowley Press, Cambridge, MA:1993) p.105.
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