NOTES for Luk 14:1-11

Jesus clearly does not encourage the struggle for first place. What about the last place? It is not hard to imagine an amusing scene: good Christians, following their Teacher's instruction, racing one another to take seats farther away from the stage, platform, pulpit, or head table. But is this what Jesus wants from us? There is, after all, only one first place and only one last place. And He does not tell us to seek the last place instead of the first. He seems to call us not to care at all about which place we receive. Indeed, He will have no difficulty finding us wherever we happen to be. If we are asked to move closer to the stage, that is no problem: we will move. But then, at least, we will not have to fight for this place that is more prestigious in human eyes, wasting precious time on trifles. Jesus does not care where we sit: He already knows our worth. Indifference to places, meanwhile, helps protect us from a sense of our own importance, which can sometimes be quite dangerous. For ultimately it is precisely this feeling that makes us watch the people around us carefully during a prayer gathering instead of praying, and note their mistakes, or what we take to be mistakes, with a deep sense of religious self-satisfaction. Thus, imperceptibly, we leave the path of righteousness for the path of sin and judgment and, admiring ourselves, pass by the Kingdom that is close at hand.

It is striking that the Pharisees are silent in response to Christ's question whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. In fact, deep down they thought that doing this was not lawful. Whether healing is work, "doing one's own work," forbidden on the Sabbath, is a big question. The Pharisees thought that it was work, but their opinion was far from obvious. More importantly, the Pharisees believed that a person who had been sick for a long time could wait until the next day, so that no troubling situation would arise. After all, perhaps the Almighty would still consider healing to be work and, consequently, a violation of the commandment.

The Lord does not agree with this point of view. He compares the sick man who at last, at the cost of tremendous effort, has reached Him with an ox fallen into a pit, which must be pulled out immediately so that it does not die. Theological doubts and ritual recede into the background before the suffering of a person who has finally come before the face of God. This is exactly what makes Christian faith for us an answer to the question of life and death, not to the question of more or less sinful behavior.

If we do not read chapter 11 of the Letter to the Romans and take it as a guide for action, we will later sit at the end of the table and remember chapter 14 of the Gospel of Luke. And that is the mildest possible outcome. For example, God said to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse." And the Lord never breaks His word.

The meal in the house of one of the Pharisees, because of its rich symbolic meaning--a feast as the Messianic Kingdom--immediately gives Jesus material for new parables about the Kingdom He came to proclaim to people.

Fish, as the saying goes, look for deeper water, and people look for a better place. None of the invited guests wants to sit with a man disfigured by dropsy; let him come another day, since seeking healing on the Sabbath is a sin. Feasting is best with friends and neighbors whom you know, who smell pleasant, and who will not let your rich dishes disappear without return; they too will invite you to a "return dinner." And if you are a guest, it would also be good to sit at the head of the table, closer to the generous host.

This is ordinary human life, but for every situation Jesus finds the apt word, without moralizing or angry denunciations. He simply, as if joking, shows us, sitting with Him at table in the Pharisee's house, the whole absurdity of our normal life when one looks at it "from the point of view" of God's Kingdom.

When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how, a little over a century before the events of the Gospel, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus in the then independent Judea, those who took part in an uprising against the government and demanded that the authorities strictly observe the norms of the Torah in the country were crucified. The rebels wanted one thing: the Kingdom, the kind they knew about, of course. And for its sake they gave up everything. Their ideas about it bore little resemblance to what Jesus speaks of, but He holds up their determination as an example to His listeners. They truly did leave everything behind.

Not like the characters in Jesus' parable who refuse to come to the feast, for reasons that might seem perfectly reasonable, but still refuse and lose what matters most. Their places are taken by those who have nothing in this world and no reason to decline. Is it a matter of priorities? Yes, of course, priorities too, but not priorities alone. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a feast, of the first and the last, and of the places that many strive to occupy even at the risk of being driven from them.

The Kingdom is not a place, a structure or a hierarchy. The Kingdom is a state in which one can abide, but which one absolutely cannot, so to speak, fix in place, however much one may wish to do so. The desire to occupy better or worse places comes from this. For in the Kingdom there are, in fact, no good or bad places. There is only one criterion: is a person in his or her own place, in the very place God intended, or in one chosen personally because it seemed more suitable?

This also gives rise to the question: should one go to the feast or to the field just purchased? The wedding feast is a symbol of the Kingdom. If a person does not know which to choose, it means that he does not know what the Kingdom is. If he did know, it would never occur to him to compare the importance of the life he lives with anything he owns. Life is fullness, whereas a purchased field, possessions and even family are merely derivatives of that fullness. What matters here is not to confuse the part with the whole or the principal with the secondary. Only one thing can help us do this: the experience of the true life of the Kingdom, that very life which is salvation.

Today's parable of the wedding feast directly concerns the question of life, joy, and love. After all, we all strive for these things. We all need them. But one fine day, or more often than that, we face a choice: where should we seek life and joy? We can begin to build our own life and our own happiness, whether family happiness or some other kind. Or we can go to the wedding feast, a constant Gospel image of Christ's Kingdom. The choice is entirely free.

The Gospel of Luke gives us a lesson in humility. Humility is the opposite of pride: it is not fixation on ourselves, but attentiveness to others simply because they are more important. But it is not deliberate self-abasement either, which is also, at its core, turned toward one's beloved self. True humility is one expression of love, and how hard it is for us to receive it. That is, it is given easily, since it is one of the chief gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we accept it with enormous difficulty.