Losers, Keepers

"For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 14:11)

For students of scripture, this is a familiar refrain. Luke makes it tangible in this Sunday's Gospel reading, in his parable of the wedding banquet: Far better it is for you, he cautions, to take the lowest place at the table and then be invited to be seated closer to the host, than to assume a lofty position without invitation and find yourself re-seated in a lowly spot.

But this proverb (indeed, Luke takes his cue from Proverbs 25:6-7, which concludes "for it is better to be told, 'Come up here,' than to be put lower in the presence of a noble") holds true in all walks of life. But because we demand immediate satisfaction in our busy lives, we may not be witnesses much of the time to the way that God's justice is served. At some point, though, it always comes to pass that the proud are humbled.

When we do observe this, we must beware of the tendency to say smugly, "She got what she deserved," because even that is a prideful statement that puts us in danger. I did not entirely succeed in my recent discovery that a local wheeler-and-dealer politician of sorts in a city I once lived in, who always seemed to have everyone's ear, get his way and come out on top, was eventually caught red-handed, sentenced for felony theft and spent some time in jail. We've all experienced such stories and they are continually in the news.

However, it is not public acts of betrayal that should be our main concern, but rather those small ways each day in which our unfettered pride condemns us to lowly positions--a word rashly spoken, an angry retort, a dismissal out of hand of someone who has come to us in need. Each time we commit one of these betrayals of our Lord and Savior, we are plunged into the lowest position at the table. In our arrogance we may not be aware of this most of the time because we quickly erect a fortress around our pain: "Well, he shouldn't have said that to me." "It's her fault, not mine." "How dare he put me in such an uncomfortable position."

We can grasp the larger context of Luke's refrain in his banquet parable by hearing it as an embellishment of the great truth Jesus utters in Mark: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and lose their life?" (Mark 8:35-36)

Merciful God, grant us the courage to lose our life every day so that we may gain it in you.