At a first glance, Jesus’s parable in today’s Gospel (Luke 14:1, 7–14) about taking the lowest place might seem like an instruction on craftiness, on how to make yourself look better before others. Or perhaps it might seem like an admonition to put on a brand of humility that is timid and self-minimizing. But neither of these interpretations are correct.
What Jesus’s parable offers, more than anything else, is an invitation to live as God does: it is an admonition to act like Jesus Christ, who as Paul says did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, but rather … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil 2:6–7). In Jesus, God willingly chooses poverty, embracing our human condition and even becoming a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matt 11:19). And ultimately, Jesus chooses the lowest place of all, when at the Cross—which is, mysteriously, his own wedding banquet with the Church—he becomes like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and … held … in no esteem (Isa 53:3). Jesus chooses the lowest place, even unto death, out of love for the Father and love for us.
And what happens to Jesus, who humbles himself in love, even to the point of death? He is exalted and raised up to new life, and now he shares that life with us. So we, who are spiritually the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, have been invited to the wedding feast of Jesus, despite our complete inability to repay him for this gift. Today, then, let us ask for the grace of wonder at our God who so humbles himself in Christ, so that filled with awe, we might be moved to humble ourselves in love for others as well.