The Food Was Not Wasted

Tonight is a pot of beans, and I have chosen it on purpose, because it is the one thing that is better tomorrow.

Onion and garlic gently in oil, a good while, until they are soft. Two cans of beans, drained, whatever you have, and a can of tomatoes, and a bay leaf if there is one. Salt, a lid, a low heat, half an hour. Stir it now and again. If it looks dry, put water in. It is finished when the beans have gone slightly creamy at the edges.

It costs almost nothing, it feeds six, and it is genuinely better on the second day, which is the reason I am giving you this one and not something else.

Because this message is for whoever made a meal for people who did not come.

You know the exact feeling. The house was tidied. The thing was cooked. There was maybe a text, or maybe not even that, and now it is twenty past eight and you are standing in a kitchen with all of it, and the disappointment is real but it is not the main event. The main event is the small hard decision forming at the back of your mind that says: I am not doing this again.

Yet there is room

There is a story Jesus tells about a supper where the invited people did not come, and I am going to take one line out of it, because that line is the one for tonight.

The servant has been out and gathered whoever he could find, and he comes back and reports, and this is what he says.

And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. (Luke 14:22, King James Version)

Yet there is room.

I have always found that a strange and beautiful sentence, and I notice that it is not a complaint. He is not saying the evening failed. He is standing in a house with food on the table and empty chairs, and what he reports is capacity.

There is room. Not there is waste. Not there is embarrassment. Room.

You are standing in a house with room in it, and an empty chair has never once meant that the table failed. Luke 14:22 has a servant report room rather than ruin in a hall the invited people did not come to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can change what a person sees when they look at a full pot.

You have made something that was received before a single fork was lifted, and the counting of guests has never once been the measure of it. Luke 14:22 has a servant report that there is still room and a table that goes on being filled, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives an offering that nobody sat down to.

The offering landed before the guests did

Now I want to say the thing I actually came to say, and I want to say it before we talk about anybody else.

What you made was received.

Not by them. I am not going to pretend the people coming was not the point, because it was, and I am not going to reframe your evening into something it was not. But there is a difference between what a thing is for and whether a thing counted, and those two have got welded together in your head tonight.

You cooked. That was an act of love done in a real kitchen with real hands and it is not contingent on a doorbell. It landed the moment you did it. God does not audit the guest list before He receives what somebody made out of care.

You have already given something, and it was received before one person walked through that door. The written word says the house was furnished with guests in the end and the master's supper stood, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an unreceived kindness still count as a kindness.

About the people who did not come

Now, the people. I have to be careful here, and I want you to notice me being careful, because this is where an evening like tonight goes wrong.

The pot is full and the kitchen is quiet and the mind reaches for a case. It starts building. They always do this. Last time it was the same. I would have come. And by half past nine you have a small prosecution assembled, and it is very satisfying, and it is going to cost you more than the meal did.

I am not going to tell you they were right. I do not know why they did not come and neither do you, not really, and Luke 14:22 never once puts the servant in charge of judging the absent, which is the Holy Spirit being kind to everybody in the story at the same time. What I will tell you is that most people who do not turn up are not indifferent. They are drowning somewhere you cannot see, and the invitation was one more thing they could not carry, and their not coming was about their week and not about your worth.

You do not have to decide that tonight. You just do not have to build the case.

You are free to leave that unbuilt tonight, and your worth was never sitting in anybody else's diary. Luke 14:22 has a servant standing in a room with empty chairs and reporting room instead of grievance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stops an evening turning into a ledger.

You are not holding a failure tonight, and a house with fewer people in it than expected has never once been a verdict on the one who cooked. The written word keeps the table open rather than closing it when the first guests decline, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a kitchen from becoming a courtroom at nine at night.