The Most Important Place

¹ One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely.

⁷ When Jesus noticed how the guests sought out the best seats at the table, he told them a parable. ⁸ “When someone invites you to a wedding celebration, don’t take your seat in the place of honor. Someone more highly regarded than you could have been invited by your host. ⁹ The host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give your seat to this other person.’ Embarrassed, you will take your seat in the least important place. ¹⁰ Instead, when you receive an invitation, go and sit in the least important place. When your host approaches you, he will say, ‘Friend, move up here to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. ¹¹ All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.”
¹² Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. ¹³ Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. ¹⁴ And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.”

Luke 14:7-14 (CEB)

I don’t know about you, but some people fight their toughest battles on a daily basis in the most unlikely of places: the grocery store parking lot.

I’ve witnessed it first-hand. People will drive around the lot, sneaking around corners, cutting through empty parking spaces instead of driving along the proper lanes, cut in front of people, sit in their cars and wait in the middle of the driving lane for another car to pull out, holding up other drivers in the process, and a host of other behaviors in the name of getting the best parking space.

I try not to do that. Sometimes I want to get a closer parking space for some specific reason, but generally I try to park and walk recognizing that there are other people who need the closer space more than I do. I must confess, however, that I have on occasion engaged in some of the aforementioned parking lot maneuvers in an effort to secure a more desirable parking space for myself.

The question is: Why? The Luke 14 text this week begs the question. What is it about the “place of honor” that is so attractive to us? Is it out-and-out wrong to desire to be the one in the most honorable position available?

Maybe it’s not so much a question of right versus wrong as it is a question of what one’s priority is. What is one’s ultimate goal, really? In this parable, Jesus strongly suggests that our ultimate goal should not be to sit in that one highly coveted seat, but that if we do the opposite, then we might get to sit in the seat of honor after all. He goes on to add some instruction about inviting people, the crux of which is to invite people who can’t offer you anything in return. What in the world is Jesus talking about, anyway?

The answer, at least for our purposes, can be found in what Jesus says in verse 11, “All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up” (Luke 14:11, emphasis mine). Notice that whatever the person is trying to do themselves, the opposite will be done to them by someone else. The people of first-century Judea were living under the captive rule of the highly corrupt Roman empire, an organization that was accustomed to taking what they want by one form of attrition or another. Jesus came teaching and preaching a radically different way of being in the world, starting with the famed Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus basically preached against the tyranny of Rome by telling people that the kingdom of God was completely different – that is, completely opposite – of what they were hearing from their captors. The reality of the world was not what it appeared to be: Taking care of oneself did not mean neglecting the other. Bettering oneself did not equate to trampling on someone else. The, “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine,” mentality was not the way people were meant to live because it emphasizes self-preservation and self-advancement as the priority to the exclusion of everything – and everyone – else.

Not so, says Jesus. To sit in the seat of honor is not ours to take for ourselves. It is the good gift of God that has already been given to us when we feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, and welcome the sinner. It is a seat of honor that does not match the description of it that we have always heard. Instead, it is a place of honor that can only be found in answering the invitation of Christ the Resurrected Lord to follow him into the world and walk alongside people that no one else wants to be associated with. We do not choose to sit in the seat of honor. We are invited to sit in a place that, should we accept the invitation do so, will change our perspective, allow us to see others less from a self point of view and more from a God point of view, and transform our hearts and minds…and our priorities.