NOTES for Luk 14:7-11
The Saviour's parable about the first and last places is sometimes interpreted quite literally: among Christians, one often even encounters a kind of rivalry for the last places, like the rivalry for the first places among pagans. Such an “interpretation” is very far from what Jesus means. He had no intention of turning the pyramid of the earthly order we know upside down, so that its summit became its base. He simply wants us to step outside it, to stop being guided by the frame of reference it sets—a frame that seems absolute when viewed from the fallen world. Jesus says: do not compete for the first places; sit where there is room, and if you are asked, move forward—you will be none the worse for it. But if you remain in the place you were given, you will be none the worse for that either, since it has no significance for spiritual life.
What is at issue here is humility, without which there can be no healthy spiritual life. Humility, of course, does not consist in taking the last places or considering oneself the least of all: there is neither more nor less self-assertion in this than in wanting to consider oneself first. It is precisely a matter of changing one's frame of reference, which is usually determined by the centre of gravity of the structure within which it exists. Applied to a person, we may say that their inner, psychological frame of reference is determined by where the centre of gravity of their soul lies—and that centre, in biblical language, is the heart. For the heart, in turn, the centre of gravity is whatever it values most, or, in the language of the Gospel, its treasure. As long as a person's treasure is bound in one way or another to the external world—a fallen world at that—they will never escape the pursuit of places, whether first or last.
To put an end to this endless and meaningless pursuit, the treasure must be moved into the depths of the heart, where the “breath of life” given to humanity by God at creation lies hidden. There, in the depths of the heart, at the true centre of every human person, the pursuit of places ceases—because there everyone finds their own place, the very place God has appointed for them. Accepting this God-appointed place as one's own is humility—not the ostentatious kind, inseparable from the struggle for the last places, but genuine humility, in which every place becomes equally suitable.