Text: Luke 14:1, 7–14
Date: August 28, 2022
Event: Proper 17, Year C
Luke 14:1, 7–14 (EHV)
One Sabbath day, when Jesus went into the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat bread, they were watching him closely.
7When he noticed how they were selecting the places of honor, he told the invited guests a parable. 8“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline in the place of honor, or perhaps someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him. 9The one who invited both of you may come and tell you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then you will begin, with shame, to take the lowest place.
10“But when you are invited, go and recline in the lowest place, so that when the one who invited you comes, he will tell you, ‘Friend, move up to a higher place.’ Then you will have honor in the presence of all who are reclining at the table with you.
11“Yes, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
12He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, do not invite your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or rich neighbors, so that perhaps they may also return the favor and pay you back.
13“But when you make a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. Certainly, you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”
You Are Exalted from Humility
Do you ever read advice columns? Be it in newspapers, magazines, or probably more likely now, online, the whole point of an advice column is that people have a situation in their life that they’re not sure how to handle and they seek out advice on what the solution may be. Perhaps it’s a social question, a work question, a family question, or even a question about the direction of their life. The one writing the response will do their best to give an answer with the limited information they’ve been given in the original note.
That’s seeking out advice, but have you ever received unsolicited advice? Maybe someone offered you some tips on your appearance or your health that you were not looking for. Maybe someone told you how to do you job differently than you were currently doing it, but the way you were doing it was working fine. Maybe your parenting or your relationship with your spouse was critiqued among a group of friends or by your in-laws, producing a really awkward situation that you did not ask for. And again, it would be advice given with very, very limited information.
In our Gospel this morning we hear and see Jesus offering some social and spiritual advice to the people at the meal he was attending, but it was not advice that anyone asked for. They were going about their business and enjoying themselves when Jesus launched into a brief sermon on humility and exaltation, a sermon that perhaps no one wanted to hear. Unlike the advice column or the unsolicited advice we might receive, though, Jesus is not speaking from a perspective of limited information. As God, he had all the information one could possibly need. And he uses that to direct his fellow guests not merely to better social graces, but to applying these principles to their spiritual lives as well.
There’s a bit of overlap in our Gospel for this morning and our Gospel from last week, where we heard Jesus talk about striving for the narrow door and the reminder that last will be first and first, last. But today’s focus is a bit different. Rather than focusing on the path one takes in this life, Jesus is zeroing on what people think about themselves. As he sat watching the guests at this dinner, he could see several people who thought very highly of themselves. They felt they deserved to be honored, and so took places at the table they felt that they deserved.
Jesus’ direction to his fellow guests, on the surface, is some social graces: “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline in the place of honor, or perhaps someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him. The one who invited both of you may come and tell you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then you will begin, with shame, to take the lowest place.” Jesus advises against taking places of honor without invitation because then you’re inviting shame. If the host of the dinner had a different plan for those places of honor, then you’ll be told to move, and with shame and embarrassment have to take a place that someone feels is right for you.
So, instead, Jesus says, take the lowest position. If you take the lower, more humble place, you may very well be “upgraded” to a higher position, to a position of prominence. And when that happens, you will have honor in the presence of all who are reclining at the table with you. And even if you aren’t moved to a higher position, at least you avoided the public shame of being told to move down to a more lowly place.
But Jesus is not merely focusing on social graces here. What he really wants to address is the attitude of the heart that would lead someone to assume that the place of prominence is for them. That same attitude might also lead them to do something like inviting people to a dinner party with the hope of getting repaid in-kind. Why should they get repaid? Because they deserve it! After all, what they did for the other people means they should be shown the same blessing.
Lurking under the surface here is the idea that getting ahead in this life is the most important thing. Success in business, in family, in hobby, in general recognition or notoriety. Not that pursuing excellence in any of those things is wrong in and of itself, but pursing it exclusively or more than eternal things leads us astray. To use Jesus’ imagery from last week’s Gospel, pursuing these things above all else will make us stop striving to enter through that narrow door.
And this attitude, to one degree or another, is present in all of us. Because it boils down to selfishness, which itself is the essence of sin. Sin is, at its core, believing that what I want is more important than what anyone else needs or wants—including God. I’m more important than anyone and everyone else. Ah, this place of prominence is for me because who else could it possibly be for?
You see the problem right away. And this may take different forms in our lives. Maybe it’s pride (I deserve the recognition), maybe it’s greed (I deserve these treasures), but really it can be anything that exalts us above other people.
That’s the attitude and issue that Jesus came to solve. Jesus, of all people, had the rights to the highest position. He is the Son of God after all. And yet, what place did he take? The scratchy straw in the manger doesn’t seem like a very exalted position. Living in the home of a humble carpenter’s family doesn’t seem to be very eye-catching. Traveling around Galilee, Samaria, and Judea teaching, but never having a home to call his own doesn’t scream, “Success!” And certainly, allowing himself to be condemned and executed without even raising a finger to stop it doesn’t really speak to his power or authority.
Why was Jesus so humble? Because he was taking your place and my place under God’s law. He didn’t come to this world to be the extreme, dominant force in the world, to garner the praise and adoration of the nations. No, he came to give his life as the only possible payment to remove our sin. We said last week that Jesus made himself last to put us first. And today we can see that Jesus humbled himself that we might be exalted. Jesus’ humble work on our behalf lifts us from the shame of our sin. Jesus puts us in the place of honor that we did not deserve and that we had no ability to claim for ourselves. And no one will tell us to go back. We will never face what we deserved because of our sin. We will not be sent to hell in shame for what we’ve done because the forgiving-exaltation Jesus gives is forever.
What is our response to the exaltation that Jesus gives? Do we walk around with chest out, proud of what we have, as if we deserve it or earned it? Walking that path will lead us to put our hope in ourselves, which is the exact problem Jesus came to solve. Putting hope in ourselves in for eternal safety leads to a infinitely more dire outcome than being embarrassed at a dinner party. Putting our eternal hope in ourselves and in our work will lead to hell.
So, no, our response to Jesus work is not pride; it’s gratitude. We rejoice in what Jesus has done for us. We live our lives in way that should reflect that joy, doing what God wants us to do, not to earn something from him, but to thank him for what he’s already given to us.
This leads us to another question: how do we view others who don’t know Jesus? Do we get angry at those who don’t share our hope and thus our moral values? No! As we approach our whole life with thankful humility, that humility reigns in our interactions with the people around us.
There’s an axiom that humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. To be humble does not mean hating yourself. Humility is prioritizing others ahead of yourself. Paul, when writing to the Christians in Philippi, compared the attitude of Christians with Jesus. He told them, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility consider one another better than yourselves. Let each of you look carefully not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Indeed, let this attitude be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:3-5).
When we consider our relationship to other people, we want to think, “How can I be a little bit like Jesus in this person’s life? How can I love humbly and selflessly?” Your humble treatment of a coworker may be what eventually opens a door to share Jesus’ humble service for them to forgive their sins. Your humble treatment of a fellow Christian may be the reinforcement and reminder of Jesus’ humble love that they desperately need in the moment.
Your sin meant that you deserved nothing good, and everything bad. But Jesus humbled himself to exalt you. You’ve been lifted from the pit of hell and placed in the seat of a child of God in the kingdom of heaven. Rejoice in that humility that saved you. Reflect that humility around you. My dear brothers and sisters, because you are exalted, rejoice with humility at all times. Amen.
