Four Tables

Finding our seat at four different tables

09/01/2019

Luke 14:1, 7-14 On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, 'Give your place to this man,' and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, 'My friend, move up to a higher position.' Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Then he said to the host who invited him, "When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Today I would like to tell you about four tables where people eat and enjoy food and fellowship. Specifically, I’d like to explain where we should sit at these tables and why we should sit there, in light of today’s gospel reading from Luke 14. The first table is a restaurant table, the second is the dining table at your home, the third is the table at church called the altar, and the fourth is the eternal table in heaven, where we all hope to find a seat one day.

In the seminary our rector gave us a class on going out to eat at restaurants and where to sit at that table. People usually prefer a booth or to sit by a wall for privacy. The honored dinner guests – that means the ladies – should sit with their back to the wall, which affords them a panoramic view of the whole restaurant. That means the gentlemen should sit with his back to the people. Why? Well, that gives the lady a commanding view of everyone else in the restaurant, and just as importantly, it gives everyone present a commanding view of the lady. Ladies go out to be seen, men go out to get a drink and not be seen.

Of course, it provides the lady a good five to ten seconds longer to remember the name of someone who approaches the table. She can see them coming from a distance. In other words, at a restaurant table, there is a sort of preferred seating arrangement, and the ladies should be shown to those better seats. The men, if they are chivalrous and not barbarians, should take the less desirable seats. Jesus said: in the gospel: “Do not recline at table in the place of honor.”

The second table is one I visit often each week: your family dining room table. In fact, most families don’t even eat at their formal dining room table unless the priest comes for dinner – so you’re welcome! It’s ironic how much I love coming to your home because growing up my family never invited the priest over to eat with us. We felt the priest was equivalent to Jesus himself, and our home was not worthy enough. You all know me so well, you never make that comparison.

But I am humbled at how much respect and honor you show me when I come over. I feel like the CEO who arrived late to a board meeting. He took a seat closest to the door rather than his usual place. A junior director said: “Sir, you should sit at the head of the table.” The chief executive smiled and said: “Son, where I sit is the head of the table.” When we act like that humble CEO, Jesus says “the host will come to you and say, ‘My friend, move up to a higher place’.”

The third table is in the church, the Eucharistic table, where I get to do the cooking for a change! Actually, Jesus is the head chef and I am his little sous chef. Our Lord prepares the greatest gourmet meal on earth of his Body and Blood. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in no. 1324 states without exaggeration: “The other sacraments, indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it.” Then it explains why the Eucharist holds such pride of place, adding: “For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely, Christ himself.” In other words, for Catholics, it doesn’t get any better than this, baby!

Yet tragically the prestigious polling firm, the Pew Research Center, released a study on July 23, 2019, that only 30% of Catholics believe the Bread and Wine actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. No wonder so few Catholics are eager to sit at the Table of the Eucharist every Sunday and instead go elsewhere to be fed, or nowhere else. It is interesting that Jesus’ parable is about a wedding banquet. Why? Well, at every Mass, Jesus the Bridegroom gives not wedding cake but his Body and Blood as a gift to feed his Bride (the Church). How sad when we don’t take either the first seat or even the last seat at the Eucharistic table, the table of the Bride and Groom.

The fourth table is the heavenly table where we hope to feast forever. Do you know how to get an invitation to that glorious banquet? Those invitations are held in the hands of the poor. In other words, how we treat the poor will be the criteria by which we will be granted entrance into the halls of heaven. Jesus makes that explicitly clear in Matthew 25 and the final judgement of the nations, where the righteous are rewarded for caring for the least and the wicked are punished for failing to love the poor.

Jesus also reiterates that criteria in today’s parable, saying: “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” When my uncle died in India, my family flew back to New Delhi and we had a memorial Mass for him at his house. But then we went to a leprosarium run by Mother Teresa’s nuns and fed lunch to the lepers there. Those lepers hold the invitations for my uncle to be able to enter the heavenly banquet and find a seat at the feast.

My friends, it won’t be long before you are seated at one of these four tables: at a restaurant, at your dining room, at the Eucharistic table, and hopefully at the heavenly banquet. Think about these tables and where you should sit at them and why you should sit at them. Only if we figure out how to find our seat at the first three tables here on earth, will we find a seat at the fourth table in heaven.

Praised be Jesus Christ!