Luke 14:1, 7-14

⁷ When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table,he told them this parable: ⁸ “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. ⁹ If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. ¹⁰ But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. ¹¹ For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

¹² Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.¹³ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴ and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus seems like a great dinner guest—until you invite him. We love it when he critiques arrogant religious leaders and welcomes the humble. But imagine him at your Thanksgiving table, calling out your family's tensions, sibling rivalry, or challenging your uncle's politics. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus attends six meals and sparks controversy at every single one of them. He rebukes the Pharisees, receives a tearful anointing as a woman dries his feet with her hair, and dines with tax collectors, such as Matthew, and sinners. He corrects his distinguished hosts. After today's Sabbath meal, the next meal Luke records is the Last Supper, where Judas leaves to betray him.

Why is Jesus such a difficult dinner guest? (In fairness, that is only six bad dinner parties in a lifetime. He might have mostly been the life of the party.) The context of the dinner in Luke 14 is the Sabbath meal. This meal isn't just a banquet, but the beginning of the Sabbath ritual. Extended family and guests would attend. At sunset, women light the oil lamps to mark the transition from ordinary time to sacred time. Next, the head of the household would bless the wine and bread with the kiddush prayer:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe,
Who creates the fruit of the vine and the grains of the fields.

After the blessings, people would eat the most abundant meal of the week together, followed by a time where a rabbi or head of the household would teach from Scripture, and discussion would ensue. Jesus' words about Sabbath practice, etiquette, and status-seeking are within the bounds of what occurs at the Sabbath meal.

However, the first sentence indicates that this is not a friendly community gathering. In English, it says he was being carefully watched. Have you ever been in a situation where you were at dinner and felt that every move was being scrutinized? Like when you are meeting your fiancés parents for the first time. The Greek verb here can imply malicious scrutiny, like you are being spied upon, or a trap is being set.

Jesus could have played it safe when asked for his opinion and offered words about the wonders of God's creation, the steadfast divine love, or volunteered to deliver the children's sermon. Instead, he addresses the elephant in the room —the status-seeking and hierarchical nature that exists even at the Sabbath meal. At first glance, this teaching isn't a huge rebuke. There are no charges of being hypocrites or a brood of vipers. Jesus' words are a simple wisdom teaching, much like Proverbs 25:6-7, which reads:

6 Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence
or stand in the place of the great;
7 for it is better to be told, "Come up here,"
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.

Jesus finishes off this wisdom teaching with the phrase, "The humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled." This phrase occurs throughout Scripture, most dramatically in the Magnificat, which is Mary's song of celebration during her pregnancy. Urging humility is standard teaching in Christian history. You won't find many sermons urging that the church could use a little more hubris.

But here is the problem. We don't seem to be very good at noticing when we lack humility. Pride and hubris have been among the most damaging vices to the church's reputation for centuries. How can a spiritual organization preach humble Jesus to others, while siding with Empires, wealth, and power? Or acting morally superior while hiding clergy sexual predators? When we are insiders, we hardly notice the ways we set one person higher than another.

We may philosophically believe that all people are created equal, but we often rank and compare, even within the church. Early congregationalism wrestled with this tension. On the one hand, we were defined by believing that every person had a connection to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and therefore should have a voice in how the church practiced faith. (Of course, they still meant men only!) Early Congregationalists fled the hierarchical Anglican Church and refused to have bishops, even creeds that established orthodoxy. But colonial America was quite hierarchical. At early Congregational colleges like Harvard and Yale, class lists and seating arrangements reflected not academic merit but family rank—right down to where students sat in chapel and the dining hall. So, you knew every moment where you stood in the social order by where you sat. This ranking carried over to church, where the front pews belonged to high-status citizens, and you worked your way back.

Do you wonder what the sermons were like when Luke 14 was the topic of the day? On the one hand, early Puritan preachers condemned pride as the greatest sin, and humility the most essential virtue. But it didn't occur to them to conclude that it means we should change the seating arrangements at church. They didn't notice the hierarchical church arrangements any more than a fish notices water.

So, I wonder if I would notice these failings in myself. I have heard teachings about humility my whole life, and I try to make some effort as a straight, white male to be aware of how a little arrogance slips in with social status. But I was at a clergy meeting recently and found myself subtly mentioning that I was chair of the Maine Conference Personnel Committee, to bolster my point. I didn't need to do that, but a little ego crept in. I may have the big, obvious kinds of hubris under control, but that doesn't mean the subtle ego games don't matter.

But Jesus giving us more than personal spiritual advice. He's describing a posture that reshapes community and upends our seating charts entirely. Jesus wants our internal spiritual work to move us to take concrete action. What action does he want? He encourages us to be willing to take the low seat. This means a willingness to see that life is like at the end of the line, the bottom of the heap. It means a willingness to treat people at the margins with dignity and respect, equal to your family and social class.

Getting our ethics right all starts with getting the proper seating for the Sabbath meal. Eating the Sabbath meal together is a metaphor for the Kin-dom of God, the Beloved Community. Luke uses a very clever wordplay in Greek to make this point. The word eschaton means the end. When applied to time, it means the end of times. Whenever the Bible says, "In the last days," the word is eschaton. Eschatology is the study of the end times. But eschaton has a different meaning when applied to space. It could refer to the farthest away place or the lowest status position. When Jesus advises taking the lowest seat, the Greek phrase suggests taking the eschaton. So, the meaning here is that if you want to experience the eschaton, you must sit at the eschaton. If you wish to be part of the Beloved Community, take the low place. Or when you take the low place, you will enact the beloved community.

This creates profound new meaning to Revelation, which says, "Jesus is the first and last." He is the eschaton, meaning either that his way is the ultimate goal, or he has come as the lowly one. So, how do we take the low place?

I'll bring an example from a concert we hosted last night for Overdose Awareness Day. Between songs, a woman shared the heartbreak of losing her daughter. Unable to find a support group for grieving parents, she started one. That group has grown into three, with over 100 people on her email list. But her most sacred act? On the anniversary of every overdose death, she sends a personal email and posts a memorial—what she calls their "Angel-versary."

She didn't wait for a seat of honor. She chose the seat of sorrow and turned it into a sanctuary. She made room for those the world had forgotten—spoke names that others had let slip away. That's what the Kin-dom looks like: humble presence, small faithfulness, and an open table for those on the margins.

And this isn't just a spiritual practice. It's relational, communal, even political. It reshapes who has a voice, whose grief matters, and how a community holds one another in love. To move down is to challenge the seating charts of a world obsessed with rank and reward.

So here's the question Jesus leaves with us: Where is he calling you to move down, so that someone else might rise?

What table might you sit further down at?
Whose voice might you amplify instead of your own?
Whose pain might you honor by simply being there?
Because when we sit lower, Jesus rises among us.

This week, take the eschaton seat. Sit low. Listen deep.
See who else is sitting there.
That's where you'll find Jesus.
That's where the Kin-dom begins.