(Audio)
Rather, when you are invited,
go and take the lowest place
so that when the host comes to you he may say,
'My friend, move up to a higher position.'
Let's not seek the places of honor at the table. We prefer to sit where people can see us and acknowledge us. There are spots labeled 'Most Clever', 'Most Kind', and so on. Yet when we try to take these places we end up compromised and revealed as frauds.
'Give your place to this man,'
and then you would proceed with embarrassment
to take the lowest place.
We are called to the table. We are called to take a place among those who sit there, at the very same table with those jockeying for higher positions. We need to learn that it isn't the seats we take for ourselves that matter. It isn't how we rate or judge ourselves that is ultimately important.
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me (see First Corinthians 4:3-4).
We are called to sit at a table where other people are virtue signaling and trying to show off. We feel that if we don't engage in this same sort of competition we will be revealed to not belong at the table. We invariably see ourselves in competition with those who compete. But this precisely the inverse of the truth. When we seek are willing to be seen in the same hierarchy with these people and yet be seen as nothing our true value is eventually revealed. It is not something which comes from us or our efforts but rather from the host.
'My friend, move up to a higher position.'
Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table.
This is why Sirach calls us to humble ourselves the more than greater we are. The greater we seem to be the more we run the risk of our pride getting the better of us. We assume that we need to be smart, to solve all the problems of the table ourselves. But in fact, we can trust the host.
What is too sublime for you, seek not,
into things beyond your strength search not.
We need to learn that this feast is meant to be rooted and grounded and love and not in accomplishment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
The psalmist assures us that God has made a home, in his goodness, for the poor. If we allow ourselves to be poor we will share that home. We will invite not just those who seem worthy but all peoples, imitating the master who first invites us.
No, you have approached Mount Zion
and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and countless angels in festal gathering,
and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven,
and God the judge of all,
and the spirits of the just made perfect,
and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,
and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.
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