Reflections by The Rev'd Dr Deborah Broom

A place at the table

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.  When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”                                    Luke 14:1, 7-14

In Luke’s Gospel Jesus seems to spend most of his time at dinner parties – he’s either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.  We live in a society where many meals are eaten alone, or (even in a group) in front of the television, so we might we need to work hard to see how important Jesus’ table-fellowship was.  And when he talks about seating plans I perk up, because I’ve had a lot of experience with those.  In my time in our Embassy in Brussels I was continually doing table plans for various official lunches.  It sounds quite simple: position the host, then work out who was the most important guest and place them opposite the host, and then work outwards from there until those at the bottom of the pecking order were arranged at the bottom of the table.  It may sound simple – but I think in the 3 years I was there only 5 plans ever passed on the first draft.  And of course everyone who comes to the lunch knows how table plans work, so they can tell how important or unimportant they are to the hosts just by looking at where they’re sitting and who’s seated next to them.

When Jesus talks table plans he’s likewise speaking to a group of people who know how the system works: who know about pecking orders and formal seating, and what it would feel like to be shamed in public by having to move to a less important place.  He’s trying to tell his audience that human ego and jostling for position doesn’t belong in the kingdom of God.  But if people concentrate on Jesus’ comment that taking a lower place not only avoids embarrassment but may lead to being moved to a higher seat they could end up seeing this as a clever strategy for self-aggrandisement.  Then we’d end up with a mad scramble for the lowest place, while everyone keeps an eye out for the host advancing to invite them to go higher.  Taking the low seat out of humility is one thing, taking it as a way to move up is something else again.  And it’s the spirit of humility and not an attitude of entitlement that characterises life in the kingdom of God.  So perhaps the question for us isn’t where we sit, but how we show up — with humility, generosity, and a willingness to welcome those who can’t repay us. That’s the kind of table Jesus invites us to prepare.