choose the best seat. It may happen that someone more important than you has been invited, and your host, who invited both of you,
will come and say to you: ‘Please give this person your place.’ What shame is yours when you take the lowest seat! Whenever you are invited, go rather to
the lowest seat, so that your host may come and say to you: ‘Friend, you must come up higher.’ And this will be a great honor for you in the presence of all the
other guests. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Reflection

There is a pecking order among this group.
Obviously, each of the guests apart from the party
of Jesus are conscious of the hierarchy among them.
And so, the jockeying for the position of honor is evident.
Jesus and His disciples may have arrived early enough
to observe what is going on. There are no markers to
indicate where the guests arriving is to sit. And so as a
guest enters he would look for the most honored spots
at the table. For where one sits in reference to the host is a
public advertisement of one's status. This preoccupation for
the choice seats happens too with Jesus' own disciples,
James and John. Their mother tries to intervene for
them so they would have the preferred places in seating
order in the Kingdom of Jesus, one on his right and the other
on his left (Matthew 10:21-23). In the end, the initial honor
went to two thieves. For the choice seats in heaven
is not conferred based on our individual merits and
human achievements. It is a gift bestowed by God.