Luke 14:7-14

The Voice

Jesus: ⁸ Whenever someone invites you to a wedding dinner, don’t sit at the head table. Someone more important than you might also have been invited, ⁹ and your host will have to humiliate you publicly by telling you to give your seat to the other guest and to go find an open seat in the back of the room. ¹⁰ Instead, go and sit in the back of the room. Then your host may find you and say, “My friend! Why are you sitting back here? Come up to this table near the front!” Then you will be publicly honored in front of everyone. ¹¹ Listen, if you lift yourself up, you’ll be put down, but if you humble yourself, you’ll be honored.

Jesus: When you host a dinner or banquet, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors. If you do, they might invite you to a party of their own, and you’ll be repaid for your kindness. ¹³ Instead, invite the poor, the amputees, the cripples, the blind. ¹⁴ Then you’ll be blessed because they can never repay you. Your reward will come from God at the resurrection of the just and good.