“Someone asked him, ‘Lord, will only a few people be saved?’

He answered them,

‘Strive to enter through the narrow gate,

for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter

but will not be strong enough. 

After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,

then will you stand outside knocking and saying,

‘Lord, open the door for us.’

He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’

And you will say,

‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’

Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from. 

Depart from me, all you evildoers!’

And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth

when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

and all the prophets in the kingdom of God

and you yourselves cast out.

And people will come from the east and the west

and from the north and the south

and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. 

For behold, some are last who will be first,

and some are first who will be last.’”

One of the major themes in Luke’s gospel can be called the reversal of fortune. It is a key, perhaps the key, to understanding the good news according to Luke. It appears time and again throughout the gospel. In Mary’s prayer of praise to God, called the Magnificat, she recognizes that God has looked with favor upon his lowly servant that she should be the mother of the messiah. She was young, a woman, and poor, vulnerable in this world, but humble and open to believe the impossible promise of God. She then prays, “He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.” In several parables, we hear that this reversal will take place. Think of the rich man and Lazarus, a poor man, when after they both die, everything has changed in their relative fortunes. Even in Jesus’s resurrection, Luke understands it as a corrective reversal of evil, that God acts to make right the wrong of Jesus’s crucifixion. 

While the other gospel writers see the resurrection as more of a completion of the paschal mystery, Luke definitely has reversal in mind. In the Acts of the Apostles, written by the same author, when Peter gives his Pentecost sermon, he states, “Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.” You killed him, but God raised him up, a reversal of fortune. 

In today’s gospel, we see it again. Those who have power, privilege, and status will be left out, but those who are currently excluded will be welcomed in. What does that say to us? Some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last. How do we make it through the narrow gate? It hinges on whether we rely on our own strength or are, instead, humble and open like Mary who said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word”?