Welcoming, Hospitality, Parable of the Great Banquet

A man named Jim Haynes died last year at 87 years old, in Paris where he’d lived for decades. Jim Haynes was known as the “man who invited the world over for dinner.” Why? Because for more than 40 years, on Sunday nights he held informal dinners at his home where anyone was invited. People would squeeze into his apartment, shoulder to shoulder, strangers striking up conversations, balancing their dinners on paper plates and reaching over each other to press the plastic spout on a communal box of wine.

Absolutely anyone was invited - all you had to do was call or email and Jim Haynes would add your name to the guest list. No questions asked. At these parties, “there would be a buzz in the air, as people of various nationalities - locals, immigrants, travelers - milled around the small, open-plan (home). A pot of hearty food bubbled on the (stove) and servings would be dished out on to a trestle table, so you could help yourself and continue to mingle.”

At the dinners’ peak, Jim would welcome up to 120 guests, filling up his home and spilling out into the back garden. An estimated 150,000 people came to his dinners over the years he hosted them. “‘The door was always open,’ said Amanda Morrow, an Australian journalist who stayed with Jim for a year-and-a-half. ‘It was a revolving door of guests...Jim never said ‘no’ to anyone.”