I want you to imagine this for a moment. You’re at a wedding reception. The music is playing, the tables are set, and everyone is trying to figure out where to sit. You know how it goes: people glance around the room, wondering who they’ll sit next to—maybe near the head table if they’re lucky or maybe in the corner by the kitchen doors. Seating charts can make people anxious because they reveal something about who’s considered “important.”

It was no different in Jesus’ time. At meals, where you sat said everything about your status. And so, at this dinner in today’s Gospel, people were scrambling for the best places. Jesus notices this and tells a parable that flips the whole system upside down: “Take the lowest place… for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

But Jesus goes even further: “When you give a banquet, don’t just invite your friends and rich neighbours. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” In other words, don’t make relationships into transactions. Don’t love only those who can repay you. Instead, create space for those who have no seat at the table.

This brings to mind the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He said there are two ways of relating to people: “I–It” and “I–Thou.” An “I–It” relationship is when we treat someone as an object—something to be used, or someone who exists to make me look good. But an “I–Thou” relationship is when we meet the other person as a sacred “Thou”—a child of God, someone with dignity, someone in whom God is present. Buber reminds us that God is not found in things but in relationships. And in every genuine encounter of “I–Thou,” we meet God Himself.

That’s exactly what Jesus is asking us to do: to resist “I–It” relationships—where we climb the social ladder or look for what others can do for us—and instead to embrace “I–Thou” relationships, where we honour the other person simply because they are beloved of God. That’s what Jesus is talking about. The table becomes a holy place when we make room for those who cannot repay us.

The rabbi and writer Harold Kushner, in his book A Life That Matters, writes  “God is filling the space between us so that we are connected, not separated. Both love and true friendship are more than a way of knowing that we matter to someone else: they are a way of mattering to the world; it is bringing God into a world that otherwise would be a vale selfishness and loneliness.”  In other words he says that when we look back at our lives, what will matter is not how much we owned or how many achievements we racked up. What matters is whether our being here made the world better for someone else—whether someone else’s life was lifted because we were part of it. A life that matters is a life that blesses others.

Isn’t that exactly what Jesus is calling us to? To live not for status or self-gain, but for relationships that reveal God’s love. To live in such a way that others are better, freer, more hopeful because we were here.

As we come to the Lord’s Table this week—the Eucharist, God’s great banquet—let’s ask for the grace of humility and generosity. Humility, to take the lower place and not worry about honour. To ask for the generosity, to set a bigger table in our homes, in our parish, and in our daily lives. Because when we welcome others—especially those who cannot repay us—we encounter Christ Himself.

And in the end, that is what will make our lives matter.