"No matter what the circumstances are, I think everyone likes the feeling of getting a better seat somewhere than the one you were originally given...One time about twelve years or so ago I found myself in a situation where I ended up with a much better seat than I started with. I was serving a congregation in Pittsburgh, and one of my parishioners, who knew I had once lived in Egypt, sent me a newspaper clipping announcing that a Coptic Orthodox church in another community about 20 minutes up the road was going to be holding a special worship service to consecrate their new worship space," begins Phillip Martin, pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Richmond, Virginia. Martin went to the service. He says, "No one seemed to notice I was there, so I just went and sat in one of the back pews...I had only been sitting for a few moments when someone appeared at the end of my pew and asked me if I was their 'distinguished ecumenical guest.'...He then escorted me all the way to the very front pew...and [I was] sitting about 10 feet away from [the] Pope." In today's passage from Luke 14:1, 7-14, Martin says, "Even Jesus seems to understand the benefit of being asked to move up to a higher seat. We hear about this one time when he is invited to eat a meal at the leader of the Pharisees’ house and he basically gives [the following] advice: don’t insert yourselves into places of honor and dignity. It’s better not to self-promote. Take a place lower than you may even think you deserve and let that be how you start relating to people." How might we change our world if we listened to Jesus's advice and paid more attention to those "seated at the back, on the side, or alone"?

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