Readings: Philippians 1:18b-26; Luke 14:1, 7-11
When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor.
The tricky thing about today’s Gospel is that Jesus is not proposing a strategy or a technique to shape our behavior. Were I to choose the lowest place just to be called up higher, I might as well push ahead to take the seat of honor to begin with. It would be the exact same thing.
If I can simply be content with less than prestige, that would be moving in the right direction. I could be perceiving reality on its own terms, rather than our fictions about “honors” or “disgrace,” “entitlements” or “disenfranchisement.”
When I can look at both fortune or misfortune in the eye, not being carried away by either, and search out where God is in all this, well, that’s a treasure no one can take from me.