Last Equals First

“The last will be first, and the first, last.”

Human systems and organizations always create divisions and inequalities. Those who belong and those who do not belong. The good and the bad. The obedient and the disobedient. The patriotic and the unpatriotic. Those who can receive the sacraments and those who can't. The beautiful and the ugly. The sacred and the profane. The worthy and the unworthy. The just and the unjust. Holy and unholy. The saint and the sinner. The rich and the poor. The virgin and the prostitute. Friend and enemy. The native and the foreigner. The first and the last. There is no end to the categories that we humans have causing the “first” ones look down on the “last” ones: money, beauty, muscles, study, race, skin, age, smell, gender, abode, origin, street, piety, religion, culture, tribe, health, name, ordination, and so on. The list is endless and the difficulties that these prejudices cause are enormous.

When Jesus tells us that the last ones will be the first ones and the first ones the last, he doesn’t want to reverse people’s positions. He doesn’t want to put those who are standing in the front at the back. That would only perpetuate the differences. Jesus wants to abolish those differences. The first ones and the last ones are equal—regardless of age, race, gender, religion, or all the rest. In his vision we are equal as sisters and brothers, who are friends.

Our societies, churches, nations, orders, associations, castes, statuses, all of these create outcasts. These systems seem to thrive on exclusion and inclusion, creating more and more inequalities, which push certain people to the peripheries and throw them out of the system. There is a certain advantage if you are an excluded one: you don't have to live the lie that others live within the system. You are free from the lie and the disease within the system. That's why Jesus seems to say that the excluded ones, the least, the lost and the last, the underprivileged, and the outcasts have a head start in spirituality. "Blessed are the poor." If the system is a mess, then those outside of it are at a significant advantage.

What exist in life are not divisions, but mere differences. Differences are lines. They are not boundaries. And, every boundary is a potential battle line. That is, divisions create conflicts. Let us therefore give up the illusions of separations and divisions. We need to include differences. We need to celebrate differences. Because, no one is excluded in God's vision. Nothing is excluded in God's reign. Everyone belongs. Everything belongs.