Is life just a potluck dinner?

Homily

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time B1

St. Ann Church - Prairie Village

31 August 2025

AMDG

Is life really just a potluck dinner?

The more I pray over the dinner stories in the Gospels, the more I think the answer is yes.  

What did Jesus do all the time?  Well, lots of things, but He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.  In today's Gospel, He's at a fancy dinner again, and observing things carefully.

What do priests do all day?  Well, we're just like the rest of you.  We live hand to mouth.  We gotta eat.  We survive meal to meal.  It's the one thing we all have to do.  How we do it, and with who, makes all the difference.  All of life and all of reality pass through dinner.  It's how heaven is described.  If you're paying attention, it's how Jesus set it up.  All of life and all of reality pass through this wedding banquet right here.

How do we do it?  Jesus says make sure you have the right four food groups.  Did you catch them?  Make sure you have the poor, the blind, the crippled and the lame.  Remember it's not only what's for dinner, it's who for dinner.  Make sure you're eating with people who can't pay you back.  Invite people who are broke, and sick, and stuck, and lost.  It shouldn't be that hard.

Life is just a potluck dinner, when you never know what you're going to get.  Jesus teaches us that we worry way too much about our rank and place at the table, seeking security in people who have the same status as us.  To hell with that, says Jesus.  Dinner is much more exciting when there is risk, vulnerability, and unpredictability.  

That's true for Mass too.  There has to be something at stake, some risk in it.  Ironically, the more dangerous it is to go to Mass in history, the more people come to Mass.  The more comfortable we are, the less we value Mass.  

That is not to say that we should be reckless or throw out all precautions for Mass.  Far from it.  We have entered a time when we will probably always be adding security to Mass.  I don't know if we can ever go back to the way things used to be.  

But if we let fear scatter us, then evil wins and has the last say. That can't be so.  There has to be some risk, and vulnerability and unpredictability to Mass, or it's not worth coming to.  

All of life and all of reality pass through this wedding banquet, and this sacred meal. Jesus set it up that way.  And in the end, He really just wants it to be a potluck dinner.

+mj