Jesus holds open the gate to the kingdom of God and offers an urgent but costly invitation to enter in; not least to the people of Jerusalem. But in the kingdom of God things are not as they might first appear. For there will come a time when those who thought they were automatically in God’s kingdom will find themselves thrown out of it, and many who thought themselves to be out of God’s kingdom will instead be drawn in to it. Those who sit down and eat the feast of God’s kingdom will indeed be a surprising and perhaps even ‘shocking’ group of people – people with all kinds of moral, social, ethnic, cultural, ethical and physical backgrounds. And this is simply the result of the strange workings of God’s grace.
• ‘All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted’ (14.11). Why do you think the kingdom of God operates on principles like this?
• In your experience what reasons do people give for not accepting the invitation to share in God’s kingdom?
• How could you help people to accept God’s invitation?
• In what ways is the invitation to enter God’s kingdom a costly one?
