Christ has a vivid parable which touches upon the rivalries of life. It is the story of a great feast to which many guests are invited. When the critical moment for the dinner comes the other rivalries begin to operate. One man, attracted by his possessions, “begs off,” to use the graphic phrase of the original. Another, occupied with the complex interests of business and busy with the affairs of trade, prays to be excused. A third is immersed in the joys and responsibilities of married life and he abruptly dispatches his “regrets.” It was not that they were unconcerned about the sumptuous feast, but that they were carried along by rival interests.
The feast in this parable plainly stands for the “true good,” the “highest blessedness” of life. It symbolizes the goal and crown of life, the full realization of our best human possibilities, the attainment of that for which we were made aspiring beings. The invitation is a mark of amazing grace and the recipient of it has the clearest evidence that the feast would satisfy him. But there are the other things with their rival attractions! Possessions and business and domestic life pull us in a contrary direction. We send our cards of regret and beg off from the great feast.
The real mistake lies in treating these things as rivals. If we only knew it, an affirmative response to the great invitation of life would prepare us for all the other things and would heighten the value of all we own, of all we do, and of all we love. Salvation is not some remote and ghostly thing that has to do with another world. It is the infusion of new life and power into all the concerns and affairs of this present world where we are. It means, as Christ said, receiving “a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.”
Nothing could be a more mistaken way than to regard human love as a rival to the highest of all relations, the love of the soul for God. One of the medieval saints said: “God brooks no rival”; but that phrase shows that the saint was caught napping, and in any case did not quite understand what love is. The way up to the highest love is not to be found by turning away from those experiences which give us training and preparation for the highest; but rather it is found in and through the experience of loving some person who, however imperfectly, is a revelation of the beauty and divineness of love. Not by some sheer leap from the earth does the soul arrive at its height of blessedness, but by steps and stages, by processes which bring illumination and richness of life. The man who has married a wife will do well to say when he answers the great invitation: “I have just married a wife and therefore I am peculiarly glad to come to thy feast, since fellowship with thee will make my love more real and true as that in turn will enable me to rise to a more genuine appreciation of thy love.”