If we are not going to take up the sword, then how do we engage in the struggle for justice? Jesus, like the prophets before Him, talked about the great banquet of God. The true power of the kin-dom comes not from weapons, but from a radically inclusive shared life that invites people to this banquet table, so that through celebration, gratitude, and joy, we can dismantle transactional justice and end the distortions in the world brought by power, wealth, and fear.
The Great Call of the Banquet
Isaiah 25:6-9
6. In this mountain, Yahweh of Armies will make all peoples a feast of choice meat, a feast of choice wines, of choice meat full of marrow, of well refined choice wines.
7. He will destroy in this mountain the surface of the covering that covers all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations.
8. He has swallowed up death forever! The Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from off all faces. He will take the reproach of his people away from off all the earth, for Yahweh has spoken it.
9. It shall be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God! We have waited for him, and he will save us! This is Yahweh! We have waited for him. We will be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”
This idea of the holy banquet didn’t begin with Jesus. In Isaiah 25:6–9, the prophet reveals the grand vision of the end of days, when all are invited up onto the mountain, and God prepares a banquet for all people. At this banquet, God will destroy the shroud that has fallen over them. They will be free from the illusion of their separateness and united in their diversity. It is not just the chosen people of God that are up on the mountain at the banquet, but all nations and peoples. There they find eternal life and understand that the salvation they waited for was always coming.
Jesus takes this image and tells us that eternal life is now. That banquet is happening now. We don’t have to wait for some far-off future. All we have to do is come together intentionally into communities of choice, destroying and undoing all of the illusions that have kept us apart. All we have to do is hear the voice calling us to solidarity and to take those steps of mutual aid, care, and support to climb the mountain.
The vision of Isaiah functions as the great call. It invites us into Via Positiva, the first path. It is the awe, wonder, and delight, the spectacle of the great unfolding of the cosmos that tells us that we are all one, one unified people divided by the great shroud that overcomes us.
The mountain that we see in Isaiah’s vision is the work of this second path, the Via Negativa. It shows us that we are all on the same mountain, though we believe that we are scattered, separate, and alone. It removes the illusion from our eyes and reminds us that life is now. Living with God is now. Living God is now. And no matter what we say or believe about others, we are all part of one human family, one family spread out throughout the earth.
The Invitation in Luke’s Gospel
Luke 14:12-24
12. He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back.
13. But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind;
14. and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”
15. When one of those who sat at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is he who will feast in God’s Kingdom!”
16. But he said to him, “A certain man made a great supper, and he invited many people.
17. He sent out his servant at supper time to tell those who were invited, ‘Come, for everything is ready now.’
18. They all as one began to make excuses. “The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please have me excused.’
19. “Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go try them out. Please have me excused.’
20. “Another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I can’t come.’
21. “That servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.’
22. “The servant said, ‘Lord, it is done as you commanded, and there is still room.’
23. “The lord said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.
24. For I tell you that none of those men who were invited will taste of my supper.’”
In Luke 14:12–24, Jesus invites everyone to the meal. He tells us not to just invite people that we love, who we think we will get something back from, but to invite everyone, especially those who cannot repay us. He goes on to tell a story about how people react to the invitation to the great banquet of God and who responds to the call to join the kin-dom. Through this story, we learn about the nature of power and wealth and how they corrupt. We also learn the nature of the kin-dom and how we must call everyone together.
Jesus is talking about what we should do when we invite people to a luncheon. These banquets were a large part of Greco-Roman society and had found their way into Jewish practice at the time. Like the salons of later periods, its host would gather people together, providing a lavish meal, and they would discuss various topics and show their wisdom and camaraderie. This was a common way for religious and spiritual conversations to take place in the first century. Jesus tells us when we invite people, don’t just invite those that we feel we might get an invitation back from, but to invite everyone, especially those that you would never see at such events. Everyone would benefit from the food that is offered, but also from the community and the ideas that are being shared at such events.
He goes on to tell a parable about a man throwing such a meal and how the rich and the powerful are so entwined with their own interests that they send their regrets that they cannot come. The host is not deterred and sends the servant out again, this time inviting the kinds of people that are normally not invited to such events. And yet, there is still room at the table. He then sends the servant out a final time to invite anyone who will come to the table, only to point out that the ones who were initially invited were never going to taste the food.
All are invited to the banquet of God, especially those who have the resources to help the most people. But in their hearts, they turn away and stay fixated on their own issues, ambitions, and goals. So the invitation goes out to all because the host of the banquet wants everyone to sit at this table, not just a few. And he laments that the ones that were first invited, the ones most capable of the change needed, do not come.
When we look at this story, the host is God. The invitation that goes out is the gospel, and the excuses are all of the reasons we have not to be doing the good work. The banquet is life itself, the meal to which everyone is called and no one is excluded. The empty are those who have isolated themselves from this communal work, preferring their own self-interest to that of the community.
The Banquet of The Living God
The story invites us to see the kin-dom as a banquet to which all are called, especially those who have the means to support the works of the kin-dom. It shows us how self-interest, greed, doubt, and fear can interfere with this calling and prevent us from seeing this work that we do together and isolate us, refusing the ability to join together in the mutuality that is necessary for true change.
The streets are all of the paths that we can walk in this life. Sometimes we crawl, sometimes we sit alone, huddled against the cold. But the servant, the slave, is one who is utterly possessed by the work of the kin-dom, someone who is living God, fully embodying that nature of love, compassion, wisdom, and mindfulness that goes out tirelessly to call the people in.
It reveals the work that we are called:
To call people to the table and
To dine at it.
This story can easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood. When I was growing up, I remember being told this story and how it insisted that those of us who were in church were superior to those who are outside because we answered the call. This is not a story about institutional allegiance or membership in a club. It is a story about how we respond to the radical call of life to live in solidarity with one another, expecting nothing in return. To eat together, to be together, to discuss together for the benefit of everyone. When we do those things, we move towards justice and justice-making, the glorious world where we can celebrate life and have it more abundantly.
Delight as Defiance
When we look at the story, we see how people refuse the call to the table. They are so busy checking on their lives and the little moments in it, their personal interests rather than the interests of others, that they do not hear the call and instead send their regrets. They separate themselves from the delight that they could have at the table and the gratitude for the invitation.
Notice that we are not told that those who are invited in find awe, gratitude, or delight in having been invited to the table. That is taken for granted because, of course, everyone is invited. As we walk down our own path through this journey, we have to not develop a certain smugness about how we had the compassion or the mindfulness to answer the call, but instead live in awe that the world itself is this luscious banquet where we can all feed, drink, and be merry.
We must remember to be grateful for the cosmos that made all of this possible: the sun, the moon, the stars, all in their proper alignment so that life could exist on this planet, and all of the many intricate systems that work together in concert with people, plants, and animals to bring food to the table. We must never forget to delight in the joys of life, no matter how simple they are, because when we partake of them, we are sitting at the most holy divine banquet, partaking of the sweetness of life.
It can be easy to lose this, especially as we struggle for justice. But keeping that delight and learning to savor it gives us strength to push on even through the darkest hours of our lives. We do not live in a world of scarcity. We are tricked into believing that it is so, so that fear will cause us to obey. Through the simple act of delight and savor, we defy that fear, and we reveal the illusion of that scarcity, that all are welcome, all have a place, and all can sit at the great table of God.
Releasing the Gate
The hardest thing for us to do when we arrive at the table is accepting the presence of those there, recognizing that everyone has a place at this table if they’ve heard the call and received the invitation to be there. We have to let go of this idea that we are somehow gatekeepers in this process, that we can say who belongs at this table and who doesn’t.
We have to refuse our preconceptions that we don’t sit with those who are racially or ethnically different from us, who may practice a different faith or no faith at all, and even those who have philosophical differences from us. If we are all truly sitting at this table and consuming the divine banquet that is there, living in this kin-dom life, then we are aligned.
Yes, the story already considers the wealthy and the powerful who refuse the call because their greed, their fear, and their ambition insist that they be about their own work and not join in the solidarity and mutual care, aid, and support that we build at the table. They either self-select out of the group, or they try to own the table and take it from the hands of God. They out themselves. We do not have to do that.
Once we let go of our preconceived notions about who will sit alongside us and learn to trust one another while dining at this great feast, we can accomplish anything in this world together. Strength arises through trust and mutual action. Without it, every movement fails.
Building What Replaces Harm
The next part is hard for a lot of people to hear. As we move from path two into path three and awaken our creativity, we have to realize that protesting is not enough. Standing up and saying no is never sufficient to topple the powerful and bring about real change. It is necessary in that it is a controlling valve on those in power, many of whom, out of the fearfulness of their own hearts, will shrink away from the rising numbers standing against them. Unfortunately, though, it is not enough to win and to achieve victory for the world to come.
In order to achieve that victory, we have to build new things to supplant those that are doing us harm. The labor unions that rose up were required to stand against and give rights to the worker over the capitalist interest that controlled them. The medical networks and research groups that arose to fight the AIDS crisis were necessary in a world that didn’t care if queer people died. The Green Book and the network of support and mutual aid of Black-owned businesses that helped people in the Jim Crow South get through the tyranny and violence that was being done to them.
Only when we erect these counter systems and these countervailing institutions that are actually working for our own good and benefit, with the intention of them supplanting and replacing the broken systems that are controlling and putting us down, can we actually get to where we need to go. Here in path three, the work is to imagine what these new structures and institutions should look like. What should they do? How can they operate? How can they actually bring about the change that we need, protecting people now in the corrupt and broken system and grow into something sustainable that will carry us on into the future?
We don’t have to have all the answers upfront. We have to have enough to be able to get the work started so that it can grow and evolve, because we will not come up with the perfect or the right answer on the first draft. There will always be revisions, changes, and evolutions that come because that is the true nature of life.
We can see this on the international stage with groups like Doctors Without Borders, whose delivery of aid and solidarity with the poorest and the most trodden down is seen as violence and a threat to the authoritarian regimes in the region. As with everything, we start where we are. What talents, what tools, what abilities do we have that we can lend to the cause? How can we shape them together through mutual aid and support to care for our communities and protect them through the dark times? That is where we start, but we do not end there. We push on and push forward until we have found ways to change the governing order so that these better ways are left in the wake of our protest.
Living Justice Together
As we step onto Path Four and bring these wonderful visions and ideas that we’ve had in Path Three into the world, we understand now that only through solidarity and mutual aid, care, and support will we be able to bring about the change that is necessary for the world to come. These first steps may feel small, but through networking and joining together and sharing ideas and collaboration, the best ideas, the ones that work for the people, spread and grow.
This is why we transform our anger into a fire that allows us to build and change things. We take it into the forge instead of into our fists. It is hard to argue with someone about how their fundamental beliefs need to change. It is much easier to show them.
It is one thing to say that we need to change the way that we do medicine and deliver care in this country, and to discuss it in polite, philosophical, and theoretical ways. It’s another thing to bring clinics to the people that show them a way forward where they don’t have to worry about going broke to get basic care, where they don’t have to wait until they’re almost dying before they reach out for assistance. When you show people a different way, and they experience it fully in their lives, lives change.
If you’ve only ever known one way of doing things, not doing it that way is terrifying. But when invited into a different way of doing things where you can see it in action, working, making the world a better place not just for them over there but for all of us, it is a revelation. Justice is something that we live together, not something that is imposed, argued, or enforced. The Via Transformativa, the fourth path, is not about the ideals that we bring to the struggle. It is about living them to the best of our knowledge and building something better so that people can see, taste, and experience the goodness that is possible in life and reconnect with it. That’s what brings real and lasting change.
Acts 4: Shared Abundance Made Real
Acts 4:32-35
32. The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.
33. With great power, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Great grace was on them all.
34. For neither was there among them any who lacked, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold,
35. and laid them at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made to each, according as anyone had need.
In the vision of the apostolic community that we find in Acts chapter 4, verses 32 through 35, we see the community living fully in the kin-dom of God. There is no poverty or lack because no one is hoarding their resources, and everyone is sharing with the whole of the community so that everyone is uplifted. True justice and equity only arise through shared abundance, and that word shared matters a lot here.
The members of the community understood what they were doing and gave freely from their hearts. If we are going to build anything like this, even remotely resembling this in our lives today, that is the place that we have to get people to, a place of shared solidarity and mutual support. Forcing people to give breeds resentment.
Acts reveals to us how, through this shared community where everyone was uplifted, they learned to live in this joyful celebration where all were taken care of. The benefits were clear and manifest. They weren’t theoretical or sentimental. The functional structure of mutual aid, care, and support helps people to understand that hoarding their wealth, land, and power did not make their lives or the lives of others better. It brought risk, scarcity, and trouble to the world.
If we are ever truly going to live at this divine banquet, then we have to ensure that people understand how leaving anyone behind, allowing harm to happen to anyone, diminishes us all and threatens us all. That solidarity is the cornerstone of everything that we must do to bring the kin-dom to Earth.
Justice, Not Charity
The justice that we are talking about is not charity. Charity implies two distinct roles in the operation: the giver and the receiver. Justice and equity require mutuality. What is given to the community helps everyone within the community.
The distinction can be hard to see. In a charity context, you have benefactors and patrons who give often out of a sense of their own goodness or in order to get a tax deduction. Charity is more often done for public relations than out of actual care and concern for those who would be helped.
In moving from a mindset of charity to one of mutuality and solidarity, we are identifying as one people. We are understanding that anyone left in poverty, homeless, hungry, thirsty, or in need of medical care is a harm done to the whole and to every individual within it. Charity uses words like helping the unfortunate. Solidarity does not make such distinctions. It does not bring pity or benevolence to the table because those are not required.
When we work through mutual aid, care, and support, we understand that the help we are giving is to everyone, including ourselves. It is a reflexive giving where we understand that in supporting others, we are supporting ourselves, that we are both the object and subject of the action being done.
This is the clearest and easiest way for us to understand God and how God interacts in the cosmos, as this kind of mutually interactive verb. There is no distinction between benefactor and benefited because both sides are aided, supported, and cared for through their mutual aid, care, and support and the solidarity they have to be together.
Celebration and Suffering
Celebration is, in and of itself, an act of engaged enjoyment. It is about bringing joy into the body, which is something that we all require if we are going to get through our burnout, grief, anger, rage, and loss. Celebration can be cathartic. We can take the emotions that we have and go out to the dance floor and extend them through our bodies and allow them to pour out of us.
If you’ve ever been on a dance floor sobbing, moving with the beat together with everyone out there and letting your heart pour out, you can understand that cathartic cleansing that happens within. Our society has abandoned catharsis, and we are much the poorer for it.
Celebration is not a retreat from life or a denial of its trials and tribulations. Celebration is the conscious choice to work that out in nonviolent, peaceful means, whether that’s on the dance floor, in singing, in playing an instrument, in going to a play, or watching a movie that makes us cry. Anything that purges these feelings for us so that we can find clarity, that catharsis is necessary if we are going to have the stamina that we require to do the work.
Emma Goldman famously said that she could not be a part of any movement that refused to dance. If we don’t take time for healing, for purging and cleansing ourselves, for recuperation, then we will break down and collapse. Celebration is necessary to keep us going.
What We Refuse
When we choose this life of celebration and justice, we are refusing isolation, greed, fear, and the lust for power. If we are going to dance, we cannot care what others will think about us as we move and live inside our bodies. If we are going to sing together, we have to welcome the flaws and imperfections in our voices and others’. If we are going to celebrate anything, it has to be the joys that come into our lives and those of others without telling them to be quiet or to reject them because of the seriousness of the moment.
To everything, there is a season. There is a time to be serious, and there is a time for joy. And if we do not have both, then we’re just going to drain our batteries and be incapable of action.
Hearing Matthew 11:12 Anew
As Jesus said:
Matthew 11:12
12. From the days of John the Baptizer until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.
Up until John, the kin-dom has suffered violence, and the violent have tried to plunder and seize it. We are not counted amongst their number. We are the ones that heard the call to the banquet, the ones that have gathered around the holy table to eat together, to live together, and to be on the holy mountain.
You do not have to seize or plunder what is freely offered and given. The violent are the ones who were initially invited, but were too busy, self-interested, or afraid to attend the banquet and sent their regrets. Out of those regrets, they looked and saw the joyous celebration and shared life of those at the banquet and desired to have it, and sought to seize it for themselves.
They forgot that they too were invited to the banquet and just had to show up and take part in the glorious feast. You can only partake of the Holy Feast if you join in the celebration. If you keep yourself on the outside, it will look strange, unmanageable, and in need of a firm hand to control it. On the inside, you see and feel all of the invisible hands that are supporting everyone, keeping everyone going and working towards a beautiful life of justice and equity.
No one has to storm the gates when they are already open. They just need to walk in and accept their place in the beloved community.
A Concrete Practice
As with everything that we do in Creation Spirituality, we always start where we are, finding one concrete and communal practice so that we can embody what we are saying in the here and now. And again, this can start off so small.
If you knit or crochet, make something for a neighbor, a hat, some gloves, a scarf. Give it to them, and do not accept any financial reward for doing so just because you thought they would like it. If you cook, maybe bring food to a neighbor. Maybe it’s someone who is protesting. Maybe it’s someone near you who’s going through some hardship.
Whatever you have in you to give, whatever talents or skills you have, find a mutual aid network that you can tie into. Find others in your field who have the same interest in helping others as you do and ask concretely, what can we do now to make people’s lives a better place?
I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all answer here because everyone has different talents, abilities, and access to resources. This is going to look different in rural communities than it does in cities. And because of the various cultures of our many cities, it’s going to look different from city to city. That diversity is our strength.
The most important thing is that you find something concrete and helpful that inches us, even if it’s the slightest little nudge, towards the better world that we want to see. Find what that thing is and start doing it.
Watch the full discussion here: