Wattles Brought Nothing and Ate Plenty

We have people to supper on the last Friday of the month and Deacon Wattles came to eleven of them in a row without bringing anything.

I know it was eleven. That is the whole problem with this story and it is the reason I am telling it, and if you have already worked out where this is going then you have been the one keeping a number too.

Everybody brings something. Nobody has ever said that out loud and there is no rule and nobody would ever mention it, and everybody brings something. Mrs. Ames brings the potato thing. Hollis brings whatever is up in his greenhouse that week. The Marsh children bring a drawing, which is the best thing anybody brings.

Wattles brings himself. He arrives on time, he takes the good chair without asking, he eats a very considerable amount for a bird of his dimensions, and he leaves at ten past nine having said several things about the state of the churchyard.

By about the fifth one I had noticed. By the eighth I had a number. By the eleventh I was watching the door when he came in to see whether his hands were empty, and they were, and something in me said, there.

That is the thing I would want written down. There. That little satisfied noise a person makes inside when somebody they have been counting confirms the count.

Toby said something in the kitchen afterward. He said Wattles talks about the churchyard because nobody else goes up there and somebody has to, and he said it not to correct me, he said it because he was thinking about churchyards.

I found out in the spring that Wattles takes a hot meal up to two houses on our lane every single week and has done for six years and has never mentioned it to one person, and that he does it on a Friday, before he comes to us.

He arrives at our table having already carried the food out.

Bucky, meanwhile, contributes nothing to any supper anywhere and eats whatever is within reach of the window, and nobody has ever kept a number on him, which tells you something about who a person audits.

The word underneath the instruction

Paul writes a long list of short instructions and one of them is about hospitality, and the verb is stronger than it looks in English.

Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

Given to translates a word about pursuing something, the sort of word used about chasing after a thing. The instruction is not be willing to have people, it is closer to go after opportunities to.

Which is an odd thing to be told to chase, and it puts the whole activity somewhere other than fairness. Nobody chases something while also auditing whether it is deserved.

You are being pointed toward pursuing rather than toward balancing, and Romans 12:13 uses a chasing word. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as freedom rather than as one more thing to be good at.

And the instruction directly before it is about distributing to necessity, which means need is the trigger in that sentence. Not contribution. Not reciprocity. Need.

You have not been given a scale to weigh guests on. The written word makes necessity the reason and never mentions what anybody brought, and His Spirit is what makes that a relief for somebody who has been counting.

What the counting does to the counter

There is a moment in Luke where a man throws a supper and gets told something about his invitation list.

When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. (Luke 14:12)

Read what is being warned against. Not meanness. The danger named is lest a recompence be made thee, which is to say the danger is that the whole thing becomes an exchange and everybody settles up and nothing has actually happened.

He is not against friends coming to supper. He is against a table that runs on accounts, and He says so at a supper, out loud, to His host, which took some nerve.

You are being kept out of a table that runs on accounts, and Luke 14:12 names the settling up as the risk. The Spirit of God is what makes that read as protection rather than as a rule about guest lists.

And the alternative He gives is to call people who cannot repay at all, with the reason attached that thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee.

You have been given something better than being repaid. Luke 14:14 makes the inability to repay the point rather than the problem, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a dinner party in Judea into a farm kitchen on the last Friday of the month.