Today we consider how do we translate a Bible story into modern times? One way to meditate on imagining a Bible story is to actually imagine how we would do the story in real life. In today's passage, a man prepares a great banquet and then sends his servants to let the guests know everything is ready. But the servants come back with excuses instead of guests and the master opens the banquet to everyone to ensure a full house.
Actually, I already translated this parable into real life a number of years ago...
It was a Christmas in the mid-90s. The boys were still very little, and I think Christmas day fell on a Monday. As we were approaching the weekend before Christmas day, we were planning to host the big holiday dinner and my whole family would be traveling to NJ to be with us. We started doing all the preparations and already purchased most of the food.
Then on Saturday afternoon we received calls from my sister, brother and mom that they couldn't make it to NJ for the holiday. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it to their place either. So on Sunday (Christmas Eve morning) I spoke to my minster and asked if he knew of someone that might be celebrating the holiday alone and would appreciate an invitation to Christmas dinner.
He said that he knew about a newly single mother and her two children... so we got their contact information and made the necessary arrangements. They didn't have transportation so on Christmas evening, I went to their apartment and picked them up.
It turned out to be a very enjoyable evening, and a great feast. Kristen overdid herself on the dinner. We purchased a couple of toys for her kids. They seemed very grateful for not having to spend Christmas alone... and we were grateful for the same.
It was a wonderful way to directly live Christ's teaching for an evening.
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