The highlight of this book is that it discusses a topic of high social relevance, based on a remarkably well-done exegetical study of a gospel pericope. Scholars in the field of scriptural studies concur that the right hermeneutical approach to the study of a biblical passage involves the interfacing of the text with the context of the reader or the student. That is done in an exemplary fashion by the author in this book.

The social issue at the heart of the discussion is the widespread practice of discriminating against people based on their status at birth. In our country large sections of people are relentlessly pushed to the periphery because of their perceived lack of respectability, as they are not born in families with high social recognition. When this deplorable evil is practiced in Christian communities, it becomes a blatant betrayal of our professed loyalty to Jesus.

The Gospel sequence that the essay focuses on is Luke 14:1-24, which depicts the episode of Jesus healing a man with dropsy, his subsequent teaching on humility and hospitality, and its conclusion provided by the highly evocative parable of the Great Dinner. What this text unit indisputably establishes is that conventional values such as being a stickler for the literal following of the law, norms of social living born of the honour-shame mental construct, the practice of balanced reciprocity and a skewed understanding of nobility built on superiority and exclusivism have to be wholly set aside to usher in the sublime values of the Kingdom such as justice, compassion, humility and solidarity.

What a perceptive reader will come to by reading the book is the quintessential conviction that what Jesus came to offer to the world is the vision of a society that stands out as a universally inclusive koinonia, where no one is excluded or pushed to the margins for the perceived lack of physical attributes or nobility of birth.

- Prof. Thomas Malipurathu, SVD
Emeritus Professor of Scriptural Studies at Jnana Deep Institute, Pune

Dr. A. Maria Antony is from the Catholic Diocese of Vellore, Tamil Nadu, South India. He has completed both his Licentiate and Doctorate in Biblical Studies at Gnana Deepa Institute, Pune. He is now teaching Sacred Scriptures at Sacred Heart Institute of Theology, Poonamallee, Chennai.