“Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.”
(Matthew 22:9 ESV)
Love Welcomes Us
We all want to be loved and fear being rejected. Who hasn’t entered a room feeling tense and insecure because it seems like everyone else knows each other. Perhaps it was a new school or a new work environment or even a new church or small group. Whatever the context, we can relate to feeling like we don’t belong and fearing that we will not be welcomed.
George Herbert[1] begins this poem about divine love in that place of fear and uncertainty. The speaker enters a “party” and immediately draws back sensing that he shouldn’t be there. In the same way that we might suddenly feel under-dressed or shabby at a formal event, the speaker becomes aware that he is covered in “dust and sin” before God, or “Love.” The speaker feels painfully unworthy of attending this feast.
Divine love meets us—and welcomes us—in that moment when we are most aware of our unworthiness. God opens the door and makes us his guest!
Our pride and self-sufficiency tell us to hang back and to offer to serve (final stanza), but God’s love refuses to let us earn our keep. He makes us sit and eat the meat that he alone has provided for us. This “meat” is the body and blood of Christ which we remember when we share the bread and wine of communion.
This poem, Love III, could be read as a communion poem inviting us to the table where we trade our unworthiness before God for acceptance and honor.
John Calvin wrote[2] that “the best and only worthiness which we can bring to God is to offer him our own vileness, and unworthiness, that his mercy may make us worthy.” This is what God’s love does. It turns enemies into friends and rebels into children. It welcomes us in when we really do deserve to be rejected.
Have you ever struggled to imagine God welcoming you? Do you feel like to need to get things right before you can win his approval? Don’t be deceived, friend. You cannot make yourself worthy. You can only come with your dust and sin and let God make you his guest. His love waits to welcome you.
“LOVE III”
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.[3]
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:[4]
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you now, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.[5]
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.[6]
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Prayer: Father, you welcome me even though I come ragged and unwashed from my sin and weakness. You make me worthy of your love only by the blood of Jesus. Because of what he did on the cross, you accept me as your own beloved child and make a place for me at your table. Thank you, Father, for inviting me to this feast.
. . .
Sources
[1] George Herbert: George Herbert was born into a wealthy and influential Welsh family in 1593. During Herbert’s lifetime, King James sponsored a new translation of the English Bible, Shakespeare saw his plays performed in London, and Galileo gathered evidence that the earth revolved around the sun. Herbert famously left a career in academia and politics to become the pastor of a rural church where he served until his death in 1633.
[2] John Calvin wrote: See article here.
[3] Dust and sin: We are unworthy guests on two levels. We are creatures made from dust who are far below our Creator. Not only that, we have sinned and fallen far short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23).
[4] A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: In Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus tells a parable of a king inviting guests to a wedding feast for his son. All of the expected guests decline, and some even beat and kill the king’s servants. The messengers are then told to go into the streets and bring strangers to the feast. Later, the king identifies a guest who is not worthy of being there, and that guest is cast out. The parable concludes, “For many are called but few are chosen.” The point is that God must both invite us into his feast and make us worthy to be there by clothing us in Jesus’ righteousness. Reading Matthew 22 provides a helpful background to Herbert’s poem.
[5] Then I will serve: We often have a prideful impulse to serve rather than be served. We see an example of this in the Bible when Jesus offers to wash Peter’s feet (John 13:1-11). Peter is horrified at the thought of being served by his teacher and master. Jesus responds, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (verse 8). Only Jesus can provide the cleansing we need to be worthy of a place at his table.
[6] So I did sit and eat: We “sit and eat” every time we take the bread representing Jesus’ body and drink the wine or juice representing his blood. We will also sit and eat at the wedding feast of the lamb as described in Revelation 19:6-9.