A Place for Everyone
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 31, 2025
Pastor Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
A place for everything,
and everything in its place.
It’s so simple,
so proverb-like,
so beautiful of a sentiment.
Words to live by.
It’s no secret that I like things neatly organized.
If we had projection screens in our worship space,
I could have prepared a whole slideshow
to accompany this sermon –
with before-and-after photos
of the pastor’s vestry, the church office,
even our church database –
and that’s just a starting point…
A place for everything,
and everything in its place.
So maybe I’m a little obsessed
with order.
Order pervades our public spaces too.
We’re used to clear boundaries
and places of honor and distinction.
In corporate workspaces, there’s a difference
between the corner office and an ordinary cubicle.
At restaurants, when given the choice,
we’d rather sit at the window booth or on the patio
than at the table with the wobbly leg by the restrooms.
Airplane seating, a relic of a different time,
is still arranged by class –
although one could argue that on most commercial domestic flights,
there’s hardly a difference between the seats
in front of the little curtain and the ones behind,
except a few hundred dollars in ticket price and priority boarding,
but I digress…and still, you get the point:
There are clear places viewed more highly than others.
All of which helps us to understand
the premise behind Jesus’ parable.
He’s invited to the house of a prominent religious leader,
for a grand meal with elite guests,
all of whom are competing for the best seats,
closest to their host,
where they can be seen and recognized.
Meanwhile, Jesus,
quietly observing all this from the side,
offers a parable:
Actually, don’t take the best seat.
What if someone more important comes along?
Well, that would be pretty embarrassing for you, wouldn’t it?
Instead, take the lowest seat.
And as if that weren’t enough,
Jesus goes on to critique the guest list
of the very party he’s been invited to:
Don’t invite all these “important” people,
people who can invite you back and repay you.
Just the opposite:
Invite the ones who can’t pay you back,
the ones with no social standing,
the ones you would normally overlook.
But this isn’t just a lesson in table etiquette.
It’s not a story about place cards or table reservations.
The point isn’t even about who sits where.
This is a story about humility.
Humility.
It’s a strange concept.
Humility wasn’t exactly considered a virtue in Jesus’ day,
and it’s not exactly the most intuitive in our own time either.
Humility is often seen as the opposite of pride –
and we like to take pride in our identities and our achievements –
and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Maybe we need a better definition of humility.
As you might know,
if you’ve ever spent more than a few minutes talking with me,
I lived in Chicago for a while,
where I grew accustomed to the peculiarities of public transit,
as a daily train and bus passenger myself for several years,
though the scene is certainly not unique to the Chicago Transit Authority alone.
Picture it: A crowded bus or train car at rush hour.
An elderly man, or maybe a pregnant woman, gets on –
not a single seat to be found –
when all of a sudden, a fellow passenger –
apparently in search of a gold star – gets up,
so graciously and publicly making a display of giving up their seat
so this other person can take it,
so that everyone can see what a “good” person they are.
That’s not humility.
Instead, I want to suggest that humility
is something more like standing up before that person gets on –
making a place for others before they show up.
Humility acknowledges
that there are others who are not at the table.
It doesn’t ask us to consider ourselves as less valuable
and to take the lower place for its own sake.
But humility does invite us to be aware of others
who don’t always get a place at the table –
and to make space for them,
even if we don’t know who they are,
even if they’re not here yet.
Humility is the grace to live in community
and to embody the kind of extravagant welcome and hospitality
that Jesus showed us when he dined not just with prominent Pharisees
but with “tax collectors and sinners.”
Still, there’s sometimes this…hesitation
for those of us who have always had a place of distinction –
a place of privilege – at the table.
And I think that hesitation boils down to fear:
Is there going to be enough –
enough space, enough food, enough what?
Whenever I’m at a large conference or gathering
with a meal that’s being served buffet-style,
I seem to have a knack for either choosing or being assigned
to one of the last tables to be dismissed to get our food.
I’m also not exactly known for being the most patient person –
as I keep eyeing the line and the buffet tables,
letting my anxiety get the better of me:
Surely they’ll run out of food before it’s my turn.
And yet, in all my years of buffet meals,
there has always been enough.
Of course there is enough.
At God’s banquet table,
there is a place for all
and enough for all.
That’s Jesus’s point.
I don’t think he really cared
about who sat where at dinner.
Instead, he’s showing us what the reign of God looks like:
A place for everyone,
and everyone has a place.
There are no reservations required,
no cost,
no dress code.
There are no prerequisites
to share in this meal.
We don’t even have to all agree about what we believe
to share this meal.
We just have to be hungry –
hungry for a word of grace
and forgiveness
and wholeness.
Christ invites us to the table,
whether we think we belong or not.
Christ invites us to this table,
where all are welcome,
where no one is turned away,
where there is enough for all,
and where no one lacks for food.
