Open Table
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
September 7, 2025
There was a quid pro quo to Roman banquets. You were invited because your presence benefitted the host in some way. And your value to the host was demonstrated in the hospitality you were offered. Pliny the Younger was a Roman official whose letters are a source of information about first century history and customs. This is what he wrote about one particular host:
Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the company; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He had apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wine, but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice: on the contrary, that they might not choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of lower order ( for you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality); and the third was for his own freedmen and mine. [1]
Jesus is at a meal where attention is being paid to those kinds of social layers and rules, although Jesus’ host is not likely to move at the level of Pliny the Younger. Jesus is nothing if not an interesting dinner guest, so he pokes the bear. He calls out the guests for taking the best seats, for assuming that the best seats or the best wine is intended for them. He tells them that a better strategy is never to assume, but to take a lower station, so that when the host invites them to a better seat, it will be a public honor. But if they take the better seat without being told to, they may get demoted.
It's a simple message and nothing new. Humility is better than arrogance because it keeps you from embarassing yourself. It wasn’t even new in Jesus’ time. He was quoting from Proverbs 25.
Dr Robert Coles is now 95-years-old. In his working years, he was a child psychiatrist and Harvard professor. He became known for his support of Ruby Bridges who was the first black student to attend a formerly white-only school in New Orleans, accompanied by federal marshalls.
But before that, when Dr. Coles was a medical student, he volunteered to work at a Catholic Worker House, a ministry with the poor founded by Dorothy Day. Coles He was a
Harvard graduate. He was in medical school. In our society, that’s pretty high status. He knew that. He was proud of it. He was also proud that as this person with all these credentials, he was volunteering to help the poor. It was the kind of thing that people would take notice of.
Well, Coles arrived at the building to volunteer and asked to see Dorothy Day. He went right to the top. He was told that she was in the kitchen. He went into the kitchen and saw her
sitting at a table talking to someone. The man looked like a drug addict. He was disheveled. He appeared to be someone who lived on the street. Dorothy Day was sitting at a table with him, listening intently to what he had to say, giving him her full attention. So she didn’t notice Coles come into the room. He stood beside the door, waiting for her to finish. When she finished the conversation, she stood up and then noticed Coles. Then she said, "Do you want to speak to one of us?"
Coles was astounded. Dorothy Day was famous. She was like the Mother Theresa of her time. This man with her seemed like a nobody, a derelict. And Dorothy Day said, "You wanted to speak to one of us." She never assumed that anyone there would only be waiting to speak to her.
Coles had never seen anything like that before. What he was seeing was humility. Humility that identified so completely with another person that it removed all the distinctions between them, all the categories that our society sets up to separate use from one another. There were just two people at that table, brother and sister, and the sister was concerned about the brother. Robert Coles said that it changed his life. He said he learned more in that one moment than he did in four years at Harvard.
So Jesus gives advice to the guests at this party – be humble, don’t try to seem so important and then people may end up honoring you more. He says “ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
That sounds like a variation on another one of his sayings “The last will be first and the first will be last.”
We can make a big deal about being humble, can’t we? One time I heard about a big denominational meeting where all the clergy were to process into the gathered assembly. The lay moderator was trying to get things started, but there was a delay because the most splendidly dressed representatives were maneuvering and bickering about who would go last --because the last one in was considered the most humble and therefore the most important. So the moderator stuck an usher at the end of the line and got the procession started.
False humility is not humility at all. True humility is quiet confidence. It is trusting, like the child in our book, that we are enough, that it is enough to just be ourselves. To be humble is to know our worth because we are made in God’s image, and so is everyone else. I was told that Alcoholics Anonymous has a relevant phrase. They say “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.” Let me repeat that “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.”
Jesus says those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. There is a reversal of who is honored and who is shamed, but the system doesn’t change. With a simple reversal, unequal power structures remain in place, only the characters change.
But Jesus goes further. He proposes a guest list that breaks the cycle. He tells the host to invite people who don’t get invited to anything because they can’t pay it back. One scholar says “For people of higher rank to invite people who are poor and who have disabilities, the problem is not only a loss of personal honor; they also risk losing their social standing and being cut off from their social networks if they are seen at table with such people.”[2]
Jesus’ guest list extends the table. It enables people to set aside their social capital or in today’s language, to surrender our privilege. Because the culture of privilege, the culture of power robs us of our impulse to be neighborly, destroys our humanity and may literally kill us.
I said that our children are brave to start a new grade every year. That bravery is probably tested most often in the cafeteria. Where will I sit? Who will I eat lunch with? These are scary questions.
We Dine Together was started in 2017 by a high school senior named Dennis Estimon in Boca Raton, Florida The whole purpose was to make sure that none of his classmates ate lunch by themselves. So he started by recruiting three of his peers from different social groups in the school. They met up before lunch and in the cafeteria, they just made an effort to approach people who were sitting by themselves and sit and talk with them, introduce themselves regardless of what social strata they belong to in the hierarchy. And that group of students quickly ballooned into about 80 who were all trying to welcome each other. Dennis immigrated from Haiti when he was in first grade. “There was a language barrier. . . I felt isolated. I felt lonely. And so I still remember how I felt not being able to speak to fellow students.” he said. [3] As Dennis got older, he adjusted and made friends, but he was not content to exalt himself as a popular student, instead he made space for others to find their own welcome.
Jesus’ alternative vision of welcome and inclusion, of sharing the table is so simple. We already know this. It seems ridiculous to still be preaching about it 2,000 years later. But it was threatening to those who seemed powerful in Jesus time and it is still threatening to them now. When diversity, equity and inclusion are being dismantled, we hold to Jesus’ alternative vision of a beloved expansive community. When the Department of War is being elevated, we hold to Jesus’ alternative vision of peace for all.
I couldn’t sleep last night and I did the thing you’re not supposed to do. I looked at my phone. I woke up several times and every time, I saw a clip from a different city – Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Austin. There was conflict. People yelling, being threatened, shoved, pepper sprayed and arrested. Those with power are pushing away black and brown bodies from the tables of opportunity. People who speak a foreign language or those who speak English with an accent are rudely dis-invited from the common good. Not a good thing to see in the midst of a sleepless night.
But I also saw masses of people, all across the land humbly and forcefully asserting themselves to say that it is the arrogant and abusive, those who curry favor with the rich to the destruction of our communities, they are who are not welcome here. Whether they know it or not, these protestors are holding up Jesus’ alternative vision. I am frightened; I am heartsick; I am angry. I know that you are also these things and more, rightfully so. But I also see the powerful welcome of God in the actions of neighbors standing with neighbors and I am encouraged. I hope you are too. May God grant us wisdom and courage for the living of these days.
[1] Pliny the Younger, cited by R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 286.
[2] Barbara E. Reid, OP and Shelly Matthews, Wisdom Commentary: Luke 10-24, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2021), p. 425
[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/high-school-senior-creates-group-dine-student-eat/story?id=46172969