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Rev. Cary M. Richert

14^th Sunday after Pentecost (C)

Proper 17c

September 2, 2007

HUMILITY IN CHRIST

Luke 14:1, 7-14

            Remember country/pop singer Mac Davis?  He recorded one of those great sing-along songs we all loved:

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble

when you’re perfect in every way.

I can’t wait to look in the mirror

‘cause I get better looking each day.

To know me is to love me,

I must be a wonderful  man.

O Lord it’s hard to be humble,

but I’m doing the best that I can!

            We smile at the message of Davis’ song!  Yet, being truly humble can be hard, very hard.  It’s hard taking a lesser seat at an event where others measure you by how close you get to the important people there.  This is what the guests at a prominent Pharisee’s Sabbath Seder learned, as they scrambled for the places of honor at the table.

            The usual custom at formal banquets was to set up a series of couches on which guests could recline.  The best seats were the ones closest to the host, usually in the center of the banquet area, often the highest elevation.  There everyone got a clear look at the cream of the “who’s who” in attendance.  It seems like everyone in attendance – including the prominent host himself – thought of themselves as the cream of the crop!

            If there’s any area where secular culture and Christianity are on different wave-lengths, Quentin Wesselschmidt observed, it’s in the humility advocated and exemplified by Christ in this account in Luke. ⁽¹⁾  Jesus, divinely wise as ever, seized the opportunity to teach a lesson about true humility in God’s kingdom.  It begins with knowing who you are as a child of God:  When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. [v. 8]

            In our sinful nature we love to rationalize, even overlook, our faults, our weaknesses, our failures, all the things that remind us we’re not the perfect person we’d like to think we are.  In an effort to exalt ourselves in the eyes of others, we’ve learned to play the game well.  To be seen in the right places.  To be associated with the right people.  To live at the right address.  To shop at the right stores.  The list goes on in our scramble to get a seat of honor at the table, ahead of someone else.

            But Jesus teaches that things are entirely different in the kingdom of God:  everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. [v. 11]   Certainly Jesus isn’t advocating a false kind of humility for the real purpose of getting a seat of honor at the table.  Humility for show is simply thinly disguised pride that’s no more honorable and commendable in the sight of God than the blatant self-exaltation of the guests at the Sabbath Seder.

            Rev. Dale Meyer in a daily email devotional asks:  How do you be humble?  Put your head down and say, “Aw shucks?”  Wear threadbare clothes when you could wear better?  Walk around church with some pious look?  Meyer then observes:  You and I could do all that and more and still be full of ourselves. ⁽²⁾   There’s no more place in God’s kingdom for false humility than there is for pride and arrogance.

            OK pastor, I see the point.  I guess maybe I’m getting a little too full of myself.  I’ll try harder to be more humble.  Thanks for the reminder.

            You’re welcome!  But, as you might expect, there’s more to understanding Jesus’ Sabbath Seder teaching than a simple self-evaluation of your own humility!  Jesus, after all, was teaching an important spiritual truth about God’s kingdom, not simply how to get ahead in the world by being humble.

            The unspiritual air of holiness practiced by the Jewish religious elite … the ones who prayed on the street-corner so all could see, the ones who did their acts of righteousness to curry the envy and admiration of others, the ones who fasted in ways designed to bring attention to themselves … is what made them hate, and plot to kill

Ø      a Messiah who was humble as Jesus was

Ø      a Messiah who ate with sinners

Ø      a Messiah who healed on the Sabbath

Ø      a Messiah who criticized their empty, prideful piety.

            Jesus’ parable about seats at the banquet table of a wedding feast is a parable about our salvation by God’s grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ Himself.  As the poor, miserable sinners we confessed ourselves to be earlier, we are pictured as the ones deserving the lowest places at the banquet, the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind [v. 13], all understood by the religious elite as the outcasts of society.  All despised by them and rejected because of their physical shortcomings.

            We don’t deserve an invitation to any banquet table hosted by the Lord.  No seat is too low at the table for us.  On our own we mustn’t dare to even enter the home of the Divine Host.  Our unrighteousness has no place in the presence of His holiness, as we heard in the Old Testament Reading:  Do not exalt yourself in the presence of the king, and do not stand in the place of the great. [Proverbs 25:6]

            Our position of honor in the presence of the Lord God Almighty is the direct result of the humiliation of His Son, Jesus, FOR US -- IN OUR PLACE.  Jesus humbled Himself for us, by making Himself nothing and taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, [Philippians 2:7].  Jesus humbled Himself for us, by being born of a woman and positioning Himself in our place under God’s holy Law, [Galatians 4:4].  Jesus humbled Himself for us, by willingly becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross, [Philippians 2:8].  Jesus humbled Himself for us, by being buried in an earthly tomb of stone, [John 19:41-42].

            By God’s grace alone, each of us is united to Christ and His humility through the water and Word of Holy Baptism where, as Paul writes:  We were therefore buried with Christ through Baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life, [Romans 6:4].   In Christ’s own humiliation we find our true humiliation, which in the kingdom of God, becomes our exaltation, which becomes our invitation to take an honored seat at the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world, [Revelation 19:6-9].

            And as the Lord’s people here and now, we’re called upon to reflect in our lives the true humility of Christ into which we’ve been baptized, doing nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility considering others better than ourselves … looking not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others, [Philippians 2:3-4].