Scripture Reading: Luke 14:1-14
One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” And they could not reply to these things.
Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
He Who Humbles Himself Will Be Exalted
A sermon by James Huenink
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus said, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The Status Games We Play
These are the words that Jesus said when he was looking out at the Pharisees and all the people who were at this feast, and everybody was scrambling to find the best seats—the seats of honor. He was reacting to status games.
What we mean by status games are games that human beings play to try to jockey for position in front of each other, because we all do that, don't we? We all want to climb the social hierarchy, to find ourselves as close as we can to the top, whether we do it with social media or in a small congregation, and try to find our way into positions of power and authority. It's the kind of thing that we all do.
A wedding feast is actually a perfect place to see the social hierarchy laid out, because even today, when the bride and groom set up the seating chart, who do they put in the front? You've got the head table with the bridal party, and then the relatives and friends and all the people who are the most important in the family—they sit up near the front, and then you've got them slowly until you get way in the back: the photographer and the band.
We still do that, whether it's at wedding receptions today or in our social groups. We still jockey for that hierarchy.
You can imagine what Jesus is saying. What would happen if someone came to a wedding reception today and everybody was filtering in, and the random guest—the plus one—decided she was going to go sit in the mother-in-law's seat? Oh, I heard that. You reacted. What would happen? Everybody's filtering in, they're all sitting down, and mom goes, "What?!" And the bride and groom would have to come up and send you back to sit with the photographer. Super embarrassing.
The Exhaustion of Always Competing
Jesus says, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The status games that we play—which we do every day of our lives—it's kind of a thing where we always are just trying to put ourselves a little higher, with our friends, with our family, in our congregation, in our communities. It's a need that just about everybody has.
And you know what? I think it sounds exhausting, don't you? Always jockeying for a position, always working to make sure that you are one step higher, that maybe you put your friends down just a little bit, or you gather in power for yourself in a church board, or maybe you share that secret bit of gossip just to make the other person look bad. It's exhausting, and it's work, and it distracts us from the things that actually need to get done. The amount of work that sometimes goes into these things can be pretty terrifying and sad.
I think the best example of this is when you watch those reality TV shows—these are the "Housewives of Wherever" shows. You've seen those, maybe "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." I haven't watched any of them because they make me tired even thinking about it, but I've heard clips in the background, and it is all about power and position.
The Futility of Self-Exaltation
The saddest part is not that these things are exhausting and pointless, but that they don't matter in the long run. Jesus tells us that when we exalt ourselves, we will be humbled—that for everyone who works their whole life on trying to build themselves up in power and prestige and honor and might, it will all come to nothing. Because on the last day, we will all be the same. We all die, we all end up facing the judge on the last day, and then it won't matter if you are the head of a committee, or if you told that little bit of gossip that made someone look bad and you look good. All of those things will be worth nothing. In fact, they end up being sins when we're jockeying for position.
That is why Jesus says everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.
Jesus: The Perfect Example of Humility
But he also turns it around: "He who humbles himself will be exalted."
Now the best example of this is Jesus Himself. Jesus was God who humbled himself to become a human being. As it says in Philippians chapter 2:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
What a beautiful thing our Savior did for us. God Himself gave up the honor and position of being God Himself and became one of us—and not a king, not a judge, not a general, but a servant, a wandering preacher who healed the sick, cast out demons and fed the thousands, and then died on a cross.
And we take this "dying on a cross" in the Christian church—we say it so much, we say it so often, that it ends up slipping past us for what it really was. It was the greatest insult, the most powerful way of saying, "You are worth less than nothing"—to be mocked, beaten, taken outside the city and nailed to a cross naked. When Hebrews says, "Let us take up this reproach," the reproach of Jesus, that's what it means. He was rejected.
Christ's Exaltation
But that wasn't the end. Philippians tells us even more:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This passage shows us that Jesus, who humbled himself, was then exalted through a life of service, through His death on the cross, in His burial in the tomb. He was then raised to perfection and new life—not just new life, but raised to be Lord over all of creation.
By giving up the status games, by turning away from power and pride, he brought salvation for us. And His path is the path that Christ calls us on: to be humbled, to be a servant, to follow him in the way of death and resurrection, so that on the last day, we too will be raised up and receive the honor that he has given as co-heirs in eternal life.
We follow the path of a savior by humbling ourselves, becoming servants, so that on the last day with him, we will have eternal life.
True Humility vs. Status Games
Now, of course, I think when people see the passage that Jesus says, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted," you think, "Hmm, I can game that. I can turn humility into a status game." You could say, "I am the most humble person on earth, way more humble than all of you out there."
Pastors have to think through this whenever we have a meal together, because you get the big potluck, and everybody gets together, and the pastors stand in there, and we pray, and the congregation says, "Oh, Pastor, you should go first." And then we think, "Jesus tells us to go last, doesn't he?" And we're like, "No, no, no, somebody else. Go first. Not me, not me." Until eventually, we pastors realize that if we put up too much of a fight, we're just stealing the joy of you all in the congregation.
We shouldn't turn humility into another status game, because that's not what Jesus did.
What True Humility Looks Like
Humility isn't about making yourself appear less. It's not even about thinking of yourself as less worthy. Humility is thinking about yourself less and thinking about others more. It's about seeing life not as a way to serve me, but to serve you.
That's what Christ did for us when he gave up his life to die on a cross so that you could have life. Gave up everything so you could live. And Jesus reminds us that this is the way of a Christian: to follow this path, not to seek status and play the games and do that exhausting thing, but to give up on that and to do the work and serve and love, following the path of our Savior.
"For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
In Jesus' name. Amen.
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