Luke 14:7-24

Revised Standard Version

Humility and Hospitality

⁷ Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, ⁸ “When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; ⁹ and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. ¹⁰ But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. ¹¹ For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

¹² He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. ¹³ But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴ and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

The Parable of the Great Dinner

¹⁵ When one of those who sat at table with him heard this, he said to him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” ¹⁶ But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many; ¹⁷ and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for all is now ready.’ ¹⁸ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it; I pray you, have me excused.’ ¹⁹ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; I pray you, have me excused.’ ²⁰ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ ²¹ So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then the householder in anger said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.’ ²² And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ ²³ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. ²⁴ For I tell you,^[a] none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”