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Last Sunday's Sermon is printed below.     (August 29)                          

Sunday, Septemer 5th - Fall services begin - 9:00 a.m. at Eady, 10:30 a.m. at Coldwater.

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Luke 14, 7-14 -  August 29, 2010

Whenever you watch movies and there is a scene showing a family at the dinner table, you’ll notice the father is always at the head of the table, in a big chair with armrests. In the not too distant past – before we all started gathering as families around the TV for meals - it was common for the father of the household to have this place of honour at the table. My father still has his chair that we all insist he sit in for family dinners.  If one of the kids comes along and sits in that chair they’re quickly ousted, or “put in their place,” like the Bible story refers to. Except that in our case the ousting is usually done, and taken, in a good natured way.

In biblical times, where people sat at a banquet table was a much more serious matter. People’s value as a human being was determined by their place in society and there were all kinds of outward signs and social mores that demonstrated and reinforced people’s standing. In biblical times, anyone who would be hosting a dinner at their home would be a person of wealth and high social standing; someone who could afford to provide meat and wine to a large number of guests; it was probably someone with significant influence and prestige.

The places of honour at a banquet such as this would be the seats closest to the place where the host would preside, with the person seated at the host’s right hand being the most distinguished of all the guests. Those who would be seated close to the host would be persons he wished to be closely associated with; they would receive more of his attention and would be privy to his supposedly important opinions as they ate and conversed through the evening. So, where you sat at the table indicated your importance in the eyes of this influential person who was the host; so people would compete to have places of honour at the table, so that they could feel and be perceived by others as someone important.

In this text it says that Jesus was at one the Sabbath banquet in the house of a leader of the Pharisees – so someone quite important, for those who thought He only ever hung out with prostitutes – and He was watching people closely; and it says He observed how the guests were vying for the places of honour at the table. They were trying to promote themselves by taking the highest seat possible; but then the host would be obliged to come along and correct them, “put them in their place,” in order to make sure that those of higher rank were not forced to take a lower seat. This effort at social positioning would only end up causing discomfort to the host, and humiliation and shame to the guest, because the host would have to exercise care to honour guests according to their proper rank in society.

            So Jesus tells them that when they are invited to be guests at a celebration such as this, they should go and sit down at the lowest place; that means that they should treat every other guest present as more important than themselves. Now, because we are told in verse 7 that this is a parable, we know that Jesus was not just giving lessons on proper etiquette or on how to get ahead in the world. He is using this very human situation to teach by contrasts the results of pride and humility, and about the standards of the Kingdom of God, about a holy banquet where God Himself is the Host and all those who enter His Kingdom are His honoured, invited guests. And we find out in verses 12-14 that God doesn’t invite those who are self-sufficient, who think they can earn the honour; He invites those who are humble enough to know they are unable to ever repay His gracious generosity.

Pride, however, can be like a drug to us; we can come to crave that feeling of being recognized, valued, and considered important in the eyes of other people. We all want to feel we’re important at least to somebody; it is very human to feel that way. But Jesus is saying in this Biblical text that pride does not befit those who would enter the Kingdom of God; or that Holy Banquet where God is the host. Pride is believing that our host – God – has not given us as high a seat at the table as we think we deserve.

The Proverbs give us a good idea of how serious the question of pride is. Proverbs 16:18-19 tell us that “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.” And Proverbs 11:2 confirms, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” There are several proverbs that talk about the dangers of pride in our lives, and about the proud being foolish while the humble are wise.

In this parable from Luke, Jesus makes it clear that if we strive to exalt ourselves, God may have to ask us to step down. God has His loving ways of correcting our pride, because He knows that He can exalt us much better than we can exalt ourselves. What will God use to teach us humility? Well, probably not honours and victories and acclaim, right? No, if we have a problem with pride than God will teach us humility through opportunities to take the lower seat with grace, as an act of trust in God’s wisdom, as an opportunity to show that we are willing to accept the seat that our host has chosen for us. Are we looking to be the star of the show? Well, God will show us to our seat in the chorus, to see if we will perform that role as faithfully as we would have been the star.

Now, humility is not the same as low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is actually false humility, because people with low self-esteem tend to crave affirmation from others; that is, having other people recognize something of value and importance within them. Our self-esteem – as Christians – comes from knowing that we are forgiven and loved and accepted because of Jesus Christ, not because of anything we can do or be.

But we cannot receive God’s forgiveness and grace until we can be humble enough to admit that we need it, that we need God’s charity toward us. We don’t like the thought of needing charity, not even from God. This doesn’t mean that we go around beating ourselves up and telling ourselves we’re nothing, but acknowledging that without God we are nothing and that we do have worth, but it is worth that God, our gracious heavenly host, bestows on us. Why I matter, why I am important doesn’t come from anything within me – what lies within me is selfishness, pride, anger, and fear. Our worth comes from God, our host, saying, “You’re so important that I am willing to die for you.”

So, when we take a low seat for ourselves, God brings us up to a much better seat. Now, taking the low seat because one is humble is one thing; taking the low seat as a strategy for being exalted and flattered is another. The entire message would become a farce if there were a mad, competitive rush for the lowest seat, with all ears toward the host, waiting for the call to ascend to a higher seat. “Oh, no no no...I couldn’t possibly...well, if you insist!” False humility can be quite common in Christian circles, with people bending over backwards to prove themselves the most humble or to impress others with their humility. You can see the contradiction there, right? People can come to feel quite proud of their humility!

If, for example, God calls us to a leadership position, and we decline saying that we’re not worthy or qualified, then this is false humility because we are refusing to submit to the call of God, which means that we think we know better than God what we should do, and we think that we are the ones who have to accomplish the task, whereas it is only God who can equip leaders to carry out the task they are called to.

Christian humility means that we graciously accept the seat that God gives to us, no matter how high or low, trusting in His wisdom. It springs from gratitude and reverence toward God; It springs from knowledge that our sins are forgiven; and it is modeled on Christ’s own humility, who, as we read in Philippians, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 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.”

Christ, as we hear in the Philippians text, is our model of humility. He is God, but accepted the lower seat of a human; and as a human, he accepted an even lower seat, as the most despised and mistreated human.  But, as we are given this model of humility, we are also given in the Bible the promise that as God exalted Jesus, so He will exalt all those who believe in Him. That is what the text from Luke is saying. When a guest seats himself in the lowest place, saying that everyone there is more important than himself, then the host comes along and says, “Friend, move up higher.” Any seat he is given will be better, and he will be grateful for it. In this way he humbly affirms that the one who has the right to determine his importance is the host. And our host is God; and we already know that God has determined us to be important enough to die for.

            Notice one other thing, that the person who takes the lowest seat at the table in not necessarily saying I’m not worth anything. His worth is based on how the host sees him, and his importance in the eyes of the host is already determined by the fact that he has been invited to the banquet! He’s already in a pretty great place, even if he sits at the lowest seat.

We are all invited to God’s holy banquet! Even if we are the lowest of servants, nobody can take away our place as one of God’s honoured guests. He has already determined that He wants us at His table, and that He wants to share with us all that is His. When we humble ourselves before God and submit ourselves to His will, He then has the opportunity to exalt us and raise us up. We can work hard to be “good Christians,” but why be satisfied with just being a “good Christian.” If we humbly offer ourselves as servants of God, He lifts us up to be His children and co-heirs of His Kingdom with Christ.

Our value as human beings is not determined by our place in society, but by our place in the Kingdom of God, and because of the forgiveness given through His death and resurrection, all those who believe in Jesus have a place of honour at God’s table in God’s Kingdom.

Exaltation may not come in the form of praise and accolades from other during our lifetime. In fact, this world rarely rewards true humility or faithfulness to God. But imagine what it would be like to come before the Almighty God of the Universe, and have Him look at you and smile, and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” While we may never receive recognition from others in this life by exercising true humility, it will bear fruit for us.

The ability to submit to God in complete trust and dependency, the ability to follow Christ, produces in us the ability to receive God’s grace. If we come to God with our hands already full of our own accomplishments, of our own worth, of the praises of others, then God cannot give us anything. It is only when we come to Him empty-handed that He can fill them with all the good things He wants to give us. It’s like to beautiful hymn we often sing, “Just as I am without one plea” – that it, without any defence, without anything to offer – “but that thy blood was shed for me.” When we come before God recognizing that the only defence we have is the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, then we are humbly recognizing our need for His forgiveness and grace, and that is when He can lavish us with His grace, mercy, forgiveness, unconditional love. When we come to Him empty-handed, He fills our hands with greater things than we could ever achieve or obtain for ourselves.

The other benefit we will experience in this life when we exercise humility is that we will develop an ability to practice other-centred love. The best way to get over our low self-esteem and self-pity is to go and serve others, to attend to the needs of others, and to treat others as valuable, important people. What would happen if we took that approach? If, instead of struggling to prove our own worth, we struggled to affirm the importance and worth of each other in the eyes of God?

            But, of course, the greatest of God’s exaltations is certainly based on His exaltation of Jesus. Jesus submitted unto death, and was rewarded with resurrection and eternal life, and we have been promised that as God exalted Jesus, so will He exalt all those who believe in Him. Exaltation to resurrection and eternal life is not something that any one of us can earn and or deserve. And yet God wants to give eternal life to all those who will humbly believe in His Son and accept His death on our behalf, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, so can we. Is our pride really accomplishing anything for us? Does it improve our lives or relationships? Can it acquire eternal life for us? A proud person stirs up strife, the Proverbs say, but the one who trusts in the LORD will be enriched. Amen.