All Saints by the Lake, Dorval
August 31, 2025
My cousin Katie’s daughter Louise dancing with the bride at Tim and Brenda’s wedding.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour …” (and so on).
It’s a bit jarring, to me, to hear this teaching described as a “parable”. Most of us think of “parables” as allegorical stories with a cast of characters: the Good Samaritan, the man beaten by robbers, the priests who walked past, and the innkeeper; the Prodigal Son, his father, his elder brother, and the pigs. But this “parable” is just … Jesus giving some advice. And it’s not original advice: it’s basically a paraphrase of Proverbs 25:6-7. Granted, it expands and comments upon that passage, but this is not one of Jesus’ more startling, world-inverting moments.
This passage may not be as engaging as some of the most beloved parables, but it still counts as a parable if you take the word to mean “a pithy piece of content that references real life and makes you think.” After all, I suspect all of us have had the experience of arriving at a social event or gathering, and not being quite sure where we fit. Maybe we’ve tried to be loud and convivial in the hopes of being liked, or maybe we’ve sat in a corner hoping no one notices us. So this is a powerful way of connecting us to the deeper ideas Jesus is getting at here, about whom we should care about and what that caring looks like in practice.
At the beginning of July, as most of you know, I was in fact invited to an actual wedding feast: my cousin Tim, who has lived in Lima, Peru, for thirteen years, got married there on July 12. Since his bride, Brenda, is local, naturally about 80% of the guests were her friends and family, most of the rest were Tim’s fellow expat friends, and there were just a handful of us gringos representing Tim’s side of the family. Peruvian weddings are a lot less scripted, overall, than North American ones, and I didn’t have a date, so I spent much of the evening wandering around wondering what was going to happen next. At one point, we pretty much reenacted this parable because there appeared to be one more person assigned to Table #2 than there were chairs, so we were all trying to be very polite and move things around so everyone could be seated, but this was a challenge because Brenda’s older relatives speak about as much English as my uncles and I speak Spanish, i.e., functionally none.
On top of the language barrier, as soon as the dancing portion of the evening started, it was also deafeningly loud in the reception area (which was open-air, under a big roof, but that didn’t really help with the audibility issue). So you could either dance, or talk, but it was really hard to do both at once. I like dancing, though I’m not particularly good at it, but not having an obvious group to attach myself to, it was once again kind of awkward to figure out how to go about it.
After I gyrated vaguely on the edge of the crowd for a few songs, I noticed one of the bride’s many cousins, a woman about my age wearing a long dark blue gown, gesturing towards me, smiling, clearly inviting me into the circle that she was part of. She kept this up for most of the rest of the night: I would leave the dance floor to use the washroom, or sip from my cocktail, or just take a break, and when I went back there she would be, again, beckoning me back onto the dance floor. Between the noise and our lack of a shared language, the most we managed by way of conversation was that yes, I was la prima de Tim and she was la prima de Brenda, but that didn’t seem to matter much; the point was her welcome and my gratitude.
I am not inherently cut out for such situations; much of the time, I would strongly prefer not to be perceived if I can help it, but rather to remain an unobserved observer; and I’m also intensely embarrassed by not being able to carry on a fluent conversation. But la prima de Brenda (I never actually got her name) didn’t let that stop her; she wanted to make sure I knew she was glad I was there.
God’s welcome is much the same. If we are hesitant, uncertain, awkward, if we don’t have the right words or know the right moves, we need have no fear: we will be invited to go up higher. And we are to do the same for others, as and when we can.
Or perhaps we don’t even need to be invited up higher – maybe the party is just fine where we are, with the outcasts and misfits and weirdly assorted guests who don’t really fit in anywhere obvious. Maybe we’re having plenty of our own kind of fun, without needing permission or approval from those blowhards at the high table.
Jesus gave his directions for a world in which status, honour, and shame were everyday concerns that were openly acknowledged and could make all the difference for people’s daily lives. Today, we like to congratulate ourselves for affirming that all people are equal, but we still have a ways to go before we actually act like it.
How to welcome people – or whether to do so at all – is very much a present issue in today’s world. Whom do we welcome? How many? What if they come from far away, or don’t speak our language, or need government assistance, or look different from us, or practice a different religion?
Looking around the congregation at All Saints’ on a typical Sunday, I see people from all over the world. I see people who have been welcomed and who welcome others. I see people who sincerely want to help their neighbours, and who want to know and love the God who welcomes us all and who commands us, when we give a banquet, to welcome those who have nothing.
Welcome can be challenging. Sometimes we lack words, or the ambient noise is really loud, or we have to reach across a wide gulf of culture or personality. Sometimes we get it wrong; sometimes it takes months or years for the welcome to bear fruit; sometimes we have to try over and over.
But at its base, it may not be easy, but it’s really simple. We invite each other into our circles, to feast, to dance, and to rejoice together. And God invites us all, but in particular those who have been seated in the lowest place and need to be asked to come up higher. And the more we do that, the more our welcome will look like God’s.
Amen.
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