Inviting those who can't pay you back

The tension was clear.

Our friends explained their dire financial situation. Their landlord, who is prejudiced against Muslims, had bumped their already inflated rent another 25% in an effort to get them to leave. They used everything they had to pay her, and now could not afford food. Their teenage daughter (who had just started school for the first time) had to be pulled out of school to help them rush to finish the next batch of the wallets they make. Until the wallets are finished and the father goes on a trip out-of-town to sell them, they will not have money. And to make matters worse, the entire family has been sick with fever.

Why was there tension? Because the family had a desperate financial need, and knew we had money, but didn't want to ask. They had already taken a very small loan (American equivalent $5) from us the previous month. Now they couldn't pay back that loan. They wouldn't ask us for money again under those circumstances. For our part, we don't want to increase their indebtedness to us, and are afraid we might mess up the relationship even more if we start giving them money as gifts. So we didn't offer, and they didn't ask.

These decisions tear us apart on a daily basis.

We couldn't leave it at that. So as a small gesture, we invited them over for lunch the next day. We made a huge feast (by our standards), the biggest we've ever made in our little slum home. Though our cooking left a little to be desired, some of it turned out okay, and we had a nice time together with good conversation. It didn't solve any of their issues, but they got a high-calorie meal at a time when those are few and far between, and we got to have a good time together that strengthened our friendship rather than making it more awkward.

I don't know what the long-term solution is. But for now, I felt that we were able to love them a little bit.

After our friends left, I remembered Luke 14:12-14.

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Ironically, we had invited to our feast the very people who could not repay us. And I got an insight into Jesus's wisdom and love. A feast is something people share in together. It is not a soup kitchen or a food distribution. It brings the providers and the beneficiaries together, and as long as the host is gracious, can be a meal among equals even when the participants are not financially equal. It shows the trust and friendship involved in letting another person come into your home. It makes the experience about community, rather than about the provider or the beneficiary. A true feast shared together in a home adds dignity, rather than taking it away.

Jesus tells us that instead of inviting those who are already our friends or our relatives, those who are assumed to be in our own financial circles, we should invite into our homes those who cannot afford to have their own feasts. And from everything else that Jesus does and says, I have to believe this is done with the hope that those people will be added to those we consider our friends and family.