Divine Preparation and Human Refusal: A Reflection on Colossians 3:4-11 and Luke 14:16-24 in light of Isaiah 40:2-5, 28-31 for the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers
The Sunday of the Holy Forefathers stands at the threshold of the Nativity, looking backward to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob while looking forward to the Incarnation. Isaiah’s proclamation—Comfort, comfort my people—echoes across the centuries to a people who have been waiting, who have been promised, who have been prepared. Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain made low. God is making a way through the wilderness. But here’s the question that cuts through both Colossians and Luke’s parable: What happens when the preparation is complete, the invitation is extended, and we refuse to come?
Paul writes to the Colossians: When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. The entire cosmos is waiting for this revelation—not just information about God, but God Himself manifesting in flesh, making divine life accessible. The patriarchs waited for this. Abraham saw it from afar and was glad. The prophets spoke of valleys filled and mountains lowered—the entire structure of reality being reshaped to accommodate divine presence dwelling with humanity. The Incarnation is the ultimate dinner invitation: God preparing a feast, making everything ready, and then sending the announcement, “Come, for all is now ready.”
And in Luke’s parable, everyone makes excuses.
The Terror of Receiving What You’ve Been Waiting For
One guest has bought a field and must go see it. Another has purchased oxen and needs to examine them. A third has just married and cannot come. These aren’t trivial excuses—they’re the substance of ordinary life. Property, livelihood, family. Good things, legitimate concerns. But here’s what you need to feel: the terror underneath the excuses isn’t about being too busy; it’s about the cost of actually receiving what you’ve claimed to want.
The dinner represents full participation in divine life—theosis, the patriarchs’ ancient calling restored, the direct encounter with God that Abraham knew at Mamre and Moses experienced on Sinai. The Incarnation makes this accessible to everyone. God has done the preparing: Isaiah’s valleys are filled, the mountains lowered, the way made straight. All the obstacles humanity imagined—”God is too high, too holy, too distant”—have been removed. When Christ who is our life appears, the chasm is bridged. Divine life becomes available not as distant promise but as present reality.
And that’s precisely what terrifies us.
Because if you actually accept the invitation—if you come to the feast—you cannot remain who you’ve been. Paul knows this. That’s why immediately after announcing Christ’s appearing, he issues the command: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. The invitation to the feast is simultaneously an invitation to transformation. You cannot participate in divine life while clinging to the false self you’ve constructed, the strategies you’ve used to avoid feeling your pain, the defenses you’ve built against intimacy.
The guests in the parable aren’t rejecting God because they’re hostile to divine things. They’re rejecting the invitation because accepting it would require letting go of the life they’ve carefully arranged—the field, the oxen, the marriage. These represent the structures of control and predictability we build to insulate ourselves from vulnerability, from transformation, from the terror of actually encountering the living God. The child you once were—before the wounds, before you learned to perform and achieve and justify your existence—knew how to receive without calculating the cost. But now you’ve got a field to inspect, oxen to test, a new marriage that demands your attention. Now you’ve got reasons.
What the Forefathers Show Us
The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are remembered on this Sunday not because they were perfect but because they said yes to the invitation when it came. Abraham left Ur not knowing where he was going. He had plenty of legitimate reasons to stay—property, family, security. But when God said “Come,” Abraham went. He didn’t have the theology figured out first. He didn’t wait until he felt ready. He heard the invitation and responded.
This is what Isaiah means when he says those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles. Waiting here doesn’t mean passive delay—sitting around until you feel spiritually mature enough to respond. It means active receptivity: the stance of a person who knows the invitation is coming and has already decided to say yes, regardless of what it costs. The patriarchs waited like this. They built altars at thin places, watched for divine presence, kept themselves ready. When the Angel of the Lord appeared—the second divine figure who would later be revealed as the incarnate Christ—they didn’t make excuses. They bowed down. They received.
And the Incarnation vindicates their waiting. What Abraham glimpsed at Mamre, what Jacob saw at Bethel, what Moses experienced on Sinai—Christ makes this permanently accessible to all. The patriarchs’ waiting wasn’t in vain. The valleys have been filled. The mountains have been made low. The crooked has been made straight. The feast is ready. The only question is whether you’ll accept the invitation or inspect your field instead.
The Shadow in the Excuse
Here’s what needs to be faced: the excuses in the parable aren’t random. They reveal what we’ve been using to construct identity, to feel secure, to avoid the vulnerability of genuine encounter. The field represents achievement and acquisition—”I am what I own.” The oxen represent productivity and competence—”I am what I accomplish.” The marriage represents relationship as possession—”I am who I’m attached to.”
These aren’t evil things. But when you use them to avoid the invitation to transformation, they become idols. Paul names this directly: covetousness, which is idolatry. Idolatry isn’t bowing to statues. Idolatry is organizing your life around anything other than communion with God—using created goods to fill the space only divine presence can fill, constructing an identity around achievement or relationship or control because the alternative (receptivity, vulnerability, dependence on grace) feels like death.
And it does feel like death. That’s the point. Paul continues: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. The false self must die. The strategies you’ve used to manage your terror, to justify your existence, to earn love and approval—these must be laid down. Not improved, not refined, but put to death. This is why the invitation feels so threatening. It’s not an invitation to add spiritual practices to your existing life. It’s an invitation to let that life be transfigured from the ground up.
The childhood wounds underneath the excuses need to be felt, not analyzed away. The terror of not being enough, of being exposed, of losing control—these must be acknowledged. You learned young that vulnerability led to pain, that your needs were burdensome, that love was conditional on performance. So you bought a field. You tested oxen. You married someone who wouldn’t demand too much. You built a life that insulates you from the very intimacy you most deeply long for.
And now the invitation comes: “All is ready. Come to the feast.” And you realize that accepting means feeling what you’ve been avoiding. It means descending from your head (where you’ve been rationalizing and managing and controlling) into your heart (where the wounds live, where the terror lives, where the longing you’ve been suppressing lives). It means letting Christ into those places—not as abstract theological concept but as living presence meeting you in your actual pain.
The Cosmic Pattern
But here’s the reality that holds all this: your personal transformation participates in cosmic transformation. When Paul says you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator, he’s not just describing individual moral improvement. He’s describing the entire universe’s movement toward God—and your inner work as participation in that cosmic pattern.
The Incarnation doesn’t just save souls; it redeems matter itself. When Christ takes flesh, He unites divine life with created reality. Your body—this flesh, these hands—is being transfigured. The cosmos itself is being charged with divine presence. What you’re being invited to through the inner work of shadow integration, through facing your wounds and bringing Christ into that darkness, is not separate from creation’s transformation. You’re joining what the universe is already doing: returning to God, being filled with divine glory, becoming fully itself by communing with its Creator.
The valleys being filled and mountains lowered aren’t just poetic imagery. They represent the entire structure of reality being reshaped to accommodate divine presence. The obstacles you imagine—”I’m too broken, too wounded, too late”—are the mountains being made low. The emptiness you feel—the void where love should be, the places where wounds have hollowed you out—these are the valleys being filled. Isaiah’s promise isn’t distant future. It’s happening now, in you, as you face what you’ve denied and let grace transform it.
And this connects directly to the patriarchs’ ancient calling. Humans were created as priests of creation, mediating between heaven and earth, bringing divine presence into matter. When Adam walked with God in Eden, this is what he was doing: participating in the cosmic liturgy where all creation communes with its Creator. The Fall distorted this but didn’t destroy it. The patriarchs kept the pattern alive—building altars, encountering divine presence, functioning as priest-kings of their households. The Incarnation restores full access to what they preserved: royal priesthood for all, direct encounter with God, matter as temple.
The Invitation You’re Avoiding
So the dinner invitation in Luke’s parable isn’t about attending a literal meal. It’s the invitation to participate in divine life—to let your false self die, to face your shadow with Christ present, to stop performing and start receiving. The feast is theosis: becoming by grace what God is by nature, growing infinitely into infinite God, experiencing the transformation the patriarchs pointed toward and Christ makes accessible.
And the Advent season holds this tension: we’re waiting for what has already come. Christ was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago—the Incarnation is historical fact. But we’re also waiting for His appearing in us, for our own participation in the divine life He made available. The cosmic transformation is real and ongoing; your personal transformation joins it but doesn’t exhaust it. Both are true.
Paul’s instruction to put to death what is earthly isn’t moralism. It’s realism. You cannot participate in divine life while clinging to the false self constructed around wounds and fear. That self must die—not as punishment but as prerequisite for resurrection. The old nature with its practices (the field-inspecting, oxen-testing, excuse-making self) gives way to the new nature being renewed in the image of its Creator. This is the same transformation Isaiah promises: those who wait for the Lord renew their strength. Not by trying harder, not by white-knuckling your way through, but by receiving. By saying yes to the invitation. By letting what needs to die actually die.
The master in the parable sends servants into the streets to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame—those who have no fields to inspect, no oxen to test, no carefully constructed lives to protect. These are the ones who can still receive because they have nothing left to lose. They’re not more virtuous than the first guests. They’re just more desperate. They know they’re broken. They haven’t successfully hidden their wounds behind achievement and acquisition. And because they can’t pretend to have it together, they’re capable of accepting the invitation.
This is what the inner work reveals: you are the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. The wounds you’ve been hiding, the shadow you’ve been denying, the childhood terror you’ve been suppressing—these are what make you capable of receiving grace. Not your strength but your brokenness qualifies you for the feast. But you have to acknowledge it. You have to stop inspecting your field long enough to feel your actual poverty. You have to descend from your head (where you’ve constructed elaborate justifications for why you’re fine) into your heart (where you know you’re not).
And then—this is crucial—you have to bring Christ into that place. Not as theological abstraction but as living presence. “Lord Jesus Christ, show me, broken and blind, Thy loving kindness.” Feel the terror. Acknowledge the wound. And simultaneously call on divine presence to meet you there. This is how transformation happens: not through analysis alone, not through willpower alone, but through theurgic encounter—grace acting in the depths while you face what you’ve been avoiding.
The Forefathers’ Vindication
The patriarchs’ waiting is vindicated in the Incarnation. What they glimpsed, we inherit fully. What they experienced partially—direct encounter with the divine presence, thin places where heaven touches earth, the calling to mediate between God and creation—Christ makes permanently and universally accessible. Their patience was not in vain. Their receptivity was not foolish. The valleys have been filled. The invitation has been issued. The feast is ready.
But you still have to say yes. The cosmic transformation is real whether you participate or not. Christ has appeared. Divine life is available. Matter is being transfigured. The universe is returning to God. This is objective reality, not dependent on your response. But your participation—your personal transformation, your theosis—requires your consent. God will not violate your freedom. The invitation stands. The master waits. But He will not drag you to the feast.
So the Advent call is this: stop inspecting your field. Stop testing your oxen. Stop using your carefully constructed life as excuse for avoiding transformation. The preparation is complete. Isaiah’s promise has been fulfilled. The Incarnation has happened. Divine life is accessible now, in your body, in your ordinary moments, in the very wounds you’ve been hiding. Descend into your heart. Face what you’ve denied. Call on Christ’s name. Sit in the affliction without fleeing into analysis or performance. Let the false self die. Receive the invitation.
This is what the Holy Forefathers teach: genuine encounter with God requires saying yes before you understand, responding before you feel ready, letting go of control before you see what’s next. Abraham left Ur. Isaac lay on the altar. Jacob wrestled through the night. They didn’t have it figured out. They just said yes.
And you’re being called to the same pattern. Not to understand first, then respond. But to descend first, understand second, descend more deeply third. To pray not as technique but as theurgic encounter—inviting divine presence into the actual places where you hurt. To face your shadow not through introspection alone but while calling on the name of the Lord. To let transformation happen not through your effort but through grace meeting you in the depths you’ve been avoiding.
The feast is ready. All is prepared. The valleys are filled, the mountains made low, the crooked made straight. Your brokenness qualifies you. Your wounds are not disqualifications but invitations. The only question is whether you’ll lay down your excuses long enough to say yes.
The Greater Horizon 