Jesus is at table eating and drinking more times in Luke than in any of the other Gospels. In today’s Gospel Jesus is at the house of one of the Pharisees for a Sabbath meal. The parable which Jesus tells them concerns humility as he watched the guests take the places of honour at the table. The host in the parable is obviously the insightful one, one who is able to expose phoniness in the community. This doesn’t always have to be a negative, sometimes we need people like that to show us our weaknesses, to help us grow. In today’s world real humility can be interpreted as low self-esteem or even a false humility. Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said, “Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.”
Hospitality to the stranger is the next topic of conversation as Jesus urges those present to invite, not those who are known to them, but those who are poor, crippled in some way. Real hospitality is the second lesson of this story, to invite people in and to do so without expecting reward. Through real hospitality to the stranger, humility is there.
“If we only pride ourselves on our service record and nothing more, we end up going wrong…We have to be humble, but with real humility, from head to toe” Pope Francis.
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