Parable of musical chairs

This is interesting. I've never before thought of parables as needing to represent something else.

The parables read here (vv. 7-11) and the ensuing exhortation are connected by their common context in a meal of Jesus. The parable looks like a piece of prudential advice on how to behave at a dinner party so as to avoid embarrassment.

But since it is a parable, it must not be interpreted as a piece of worldly wisdom or even as a lesson in humility, as usually understood. It deals rather with an aspect of one's relationship with God.

God, in the person of Jesus (see verse 8), is inviting all people to the messianic feast. The only way to respond to this invitation is to renounce any claim or merit of one's own.

The Pharisees expected the best seats as a reward for keeping the Torah, but, like the outcast, they have to learn that salvation has to be accepted as an unmerited gift— exactly as we interpreted humility in the first reading.

The ensuing exhortation is likewise not a piece of worldly advice but a kind of parable, its point being that people's final acceptance at the messianic banquet depends on their acceptance of others now.

In other words, forgive and God will forgive you.

Thus, humility in the Christian sense is not purely a passive virtue; like faith, to which it is closely akin, it is highly active.