Table Manners

In Luke, chapter 14, Luke describes one occasion when Jesus was invited to a meal at a very prominent person's house. This person was a religious leader, an expert in the Law. Everybody sitting around this particular table was an expert in the Law. I'm not talking about attorneys or lawyers as we consider experts in the law but the Law according to the first five books of the Bible. They were rabbis. They were religious leaders. They knew their Bibles, and they would sit around tables like this and interpret the Law together. They would come up with how to apply it best in their lives. Jesus is sitting around a table of people who you would consider religious insiders, but on this particular occasion in Luke 14 there was somebody at the table who didn't belong.