A Bigger Table
A Bigger Table
Luke 14:1, 7-14
October 5, 2025 World Communion Sunday
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA
We continue to move through the readings from Luke’s gospel about the Kingdom. And guess who’s coming to dinner? On this Sunday, Jesus offers up some straightforward advice about how to behave at meals, where to sit and who is invited to the have place at the table.
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’ then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Intro - History
This is one of my favorite Sundays in the church year. The idea originated with Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, pastor at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1933. Kerr and church leaders dreamed of bringing churches together in a service of Christian unity to lift up the global Church and to remember that by virtue of our baptism, we are connected to a worldwide community.
The idea grew slowly. It was during the Second World War that the Spirit caught hold because people were trying to hold the world together. World Communion Sunday symbolized the effort to work together and reflect Christ’s love and light throughout the world. Today, World Communion Sunday is celebrated by many churches and denominations worldwide. .
What does it mean today to have a place at this table? I want to celebrate our global connection of Christians, people who follow the ways of Jesus, various understandings of baptism and communion and Jesus and the Bible. The church and churches historically have different practices and beliefs. Yet, there are ways we can celebrate what we do share.
Many of us are struggling with what unity or shared faith means. It feels out of reach when some people are embracing Christian nationalism, dismantling separation between church and state, and asserting that there is one way to interpret scripture and follow Jesus.
So today while we celebrate our global family, we acknowledge these divisions and tensions. We choose to come to this table and listen for the good news offered here – news and truth that is both comforting and challenging.
In the scripture today is an important lesson when Jesus speaks truth to power. This is not a lesson from ancient Emily Post Book of Etiquette.
This is Jesus’ Guide to Dinner Parties and seating assignments — in which he offers advice to both guests and hosts at a meal. One of my favorite preachers and historians is Diana Butler Bass. She invites us into this story.
Biblical
Dinners, especially banquets, were incredibly important in the ancient world. Dinners were part of the economic system known as patronage. The wealthy and privileged issued dinner invitations to those with lesser status in order to secure their loyalty or some financial benefit; the recipients of such invitations would be flattered to receive the protection of the host. A dinner invitation obligated the guest to repay the host — in whatever way the host would see fit, including going into debt. There was a lot of political corruption around the table.
There would also be many religious expectations and rules about appropriate behavior, seating arrangements, cleanliness, and the preparation and serving of food.
In other words, dinners in Jesus’ day were subject to multiple sets of rules. The cultural and economic rules guiding the empire and the particular religious rules guiding each subgroup of Jews in Judea and Galilee.
In the first section of the passage, Jesus instructs guests not to take the best seats at a banquet. It is pretty clear this is an elite affair — the leader of the Pharisees seems to be a well-off and cultured fellow.
Jesus warned the other guests not to scramble for this position around the table. Not only is that rude, but you may have taken seats not assigned to you. And, in correcting the situation, the host may be put in the awkward situation of having to move you in the middle of the party — thus shaming you in public. If you hang back, however, the host might reward you and invite you to a better seat in front of the entire group.
In the second directive, Jesus tells hosts not to trade on invitations. Don’t just invite people so that you might be invited back. Instead, you should open your table to those who cannot repay your hospitality. A place at your table shouldn’t depend on the status of the receiver; rather, serve and feed all those outside the usual system of social interaction.
Jesus goes to a party and announces new rules, different values, different ways of seeing that dining table and the people who are seated there and those who are not offered a chair. Words can change the narrative.
Luke 14 is so much more than an advice column or an etiquette guide. It is a resistance manual to empire at the dinner table.
Today’s Context
I listened to many people this week from our church and community about their reaction to the words in the news this week - reaction to words about how some people in power see our country and our military and how people are to act toward each other.
What do we do? We listen to Jesus’ teaching against the Roman empire and religious leaders who kept certain people from taking a seat at the table.
The Ways of Jesus.
Jesus washed feet. Caesar sharpened swords.
Jesus built tables. Caesar built walls.
Jesus preached peace. Caesar practiced fear.
Maybe we can rethink this table and other tables. What does it mean to come to Christ’s table? In her book Take This Bread, Sarah Miles offers this reflection (edited)
In San Francisco, where I live, Sunday mornings are some of the most popular social hours in the week. Brunch lines spill down the sidewalk, and those of us with children...find ourselves fielding birthday-party invitations, sports events, performances, and sleepovers. And it makes a certain sense: we live in a hard-working, productivity-worshiping, packed-calendar city. Sundays are the last open prairie of otherwise unscheduled time, ripe for colonization. Unless, that is, you go to church.
The Bay Area is also an area that lives by a creed my husband noticed almost right away: “You should live better.” “You should live better” becomes shorthand for “you have the duty and the right to optimize your limited time on this planet…
But when I go to church, there is a different message at the communion table when I listen to what that table is demanding. I hear, I sense, the deep strangeness of the entire ecclesial project and my own ambivalence. “So come to this table,” says one of our pastors each week, “you who have much faith and you who would like to have more; you who have been here often and you who have not been for awhile; you who have tried to follow Jesus and you who have failed. Come. It is Christ who invites us to meet him here.”
We are issued an invitation, not an imperative. Someone is waiting, regardless of our response. We are no longer at the center. We find ourselves guests in someone else’s home, on someone else’s schedule, oddly powerless yet loved and honoured, strangers and sojourners but welcome nonetheless.
Church—especially the worship that takes place around the communion table—does not fit into any optimization scheme… it redirects us in surprising and life-giving ways.
This table and all the tables whether in the church building or home or café can be places of God’s presence. You are beloved. You are enough. A table where grace is served.
Jesus’ teaching here couldn’t be more clear: Bring everyone to the table. Give everyone a chance to enjoy God’s abundance. Make room. We will add another leaf to the table and pull up more chairs. Let’s find ways to be at the table together. You are invited. The feast is ready. Amen.
Resources
Diana Butler Bass, “Sunday Musings - Guess who's coming to dinner?” Aug 30, 2025 https://substack.com/@dianabutlerbass/p-172347368
Sara Miles, Eat This Bread: A Radical Conversion. (Ballantine Books: 2008)