The Best Place or The Honored Seats on Luke 14,1.7-11

Illustration:

Let’s imagine that you seat on the wrong place! You are occupying a seat of honor to which you are not entitled to. Then an honorable guest arrives when all the choice seats at the table are taken. The host might ask you to give up your place and move to the ‘least honorable seat.’ You can well imagine the shame. In front of everyone, you must get up and move to the remaining seat at the end of the table.

Also, let’s imagine that you do the opposite attitude! Take the last seat, not the first. Let’s see this picture. What do you feel? By taking the lowest seat, the host’s reaction may be entirely different and the others guests also. He may ask you to take a better seat, and in doing so, rather than being shamed, you will be honored in the presence of all the guests.

Introduction:

What is the Lord Jesus teaching by this drama, especially to the Pharisees? Here, Jesus is not only teaching how to make a sensational, how to make a deal, or even how to be humble and better person. This message points to all of us who seat on the wrong places. Look at your chair! Is it for you or not?

The Best Places or the Honored Seats:

Remember that this is a parable. Parable about what? About Kingdom of God. All the best places or the honored seats are only in the kingdom of God.

Now look at the bigger picture that Jesus invites us the great banquet in His kingdom. He is the host and we are the guests. He will choose our seats. If you humble yourself, He will exalt you. And, if you exalt yourself He will shame you. The proud will be brought down and the humble exalted. The humble will lead us to the best places (Kingdom of God) and the proud will send us to horrible places (Hell or Kingdom of Satan).

Here, Jesus told us the way to gain it. Jesus shows us the way how to get a great pride and shame. Which way we would like to take? Being ended prideful or shameful, worthy or unworthy? This message points to all of us who seat on the wrong places. Look at your chair! Is it for you or not? What is kind of chair we seat now?

Let’s see and find what kind of chair Jesus take in His earthly life. That is a cross! Jesus ever told us that today His presence is in the midst of the poorest one, the weaknesses, the prisoners, the outcast. If you seat on the honored seat now, you would never meet them, give them a hand or touch them. Never!

The beautiful person He showed us today is His mother, Mary. These passages will be proclaimed on Oct 31st 2015. The day of closing Mary's month. As Jesus was invited to a banquet in the house of a prominent Pharisee, remember what Mary did when she was invited to attend  wedding feast in Canna, Galilee? If Mary seated on the honored seat that day, the great and the first Jesus’s miracle was never. But, Mary came to the kitchen! The kitchen is ‘the seat’ of the worker (although they usually never seat).

Now, in the Catholic Church and also in the Kingdom of God, Mother Mary was gifted a great place! So, let’s reach out the best seat in heavenly banquet in Kingdom of God by serving others and being humble.
God's help!