Reaching Out and Receiving In

Abstract

This article examines the contrasts found in the Lukan banquet parable (Lk. 14.12–24). While most scholars tend to focus on the role of the banquet host or on the role of the guests, many interpreters forget the role of the servant in the parable. This article re-considers the equally important roles of the inviting host, the invited guests, and the sent servant for a paradigmatic relation between a trinitarian theological paradigm of hospitality and a trinitarian church’s hospitable identity and vocation in a contemporary world of hostility. It is argued that a trinitarian church must embody the Trinity in its twofold inseparable move of reaching out to the other by crossing their cultures as a metaphorical reflection of external Trinity and of receiving them in by making a hospitable space for the other as a reflection of internal Trinity.