Luke 14:1, 7-14 Sermon

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Shepherd of the Hills Ev. Lutheran Church (WELS)

Warnings from the Word Series: “No Room for the Proud”

Luke 14:1,7-14

1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 “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. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (NIV)

When you heard the Gospel read a short time ago, did you wonder?  Did you notice the jump from verse one up to verse 7 through 14 and wonder what happened in verses 2-6?  Though one could take what happened in those verses and treat it entirely in a separate sermon, at least knowing the background provides some context to the dinner party at which Jesus was a guest.  In fact, verses 2-6 tell us there was another guest at this dinner party.  And knowing that the guest suffered from dropsy, a severe circulatory problem, helps us understand why Luke felt compelled to inform us that it was a Sabbath: because, more than likely, the reason the Pharisees were watching Jesus carefully was to see how he would handle the situation on the Sabbath.  It was almost as if they had set up an experiment to see if they could catch Jesus.  On the one hand, was Jesus the real deal; would he even be able to heal the man with dropsy?  On the other hand, if he did heal him, would he break the law by healing him on the Sabbath? 

So how did Jesus handle it?  Masterfully.  He turned it around on the Pharisees, asking them if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath.  While all of them knew the letter of the law, that no work was allowed on the Sabbath, they also knew the spirit of the law, that love should reach out and help those in need, even on the Sabbath.  Their response?  There was none.  Their silence had spoken volumes.  Jesus had turned the tables on them and avoided their snare.  He healed the man and reminded the Pharisees, “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out” (v.5)?  Of course they would!  Now, having gotten their attention in such a powerful way, Jesus made the most of his opportunity to continue teaching them.  Class was now in session.  And his lesson for the day would be, there’s No Room for the Proud.

After the miraculous healing had taken place, it was time for the meal, and as the guests took their places for the meal, Jesus noticed something: “the guests picked the places of honor at the table” (v.7).  In Jesus’ day the guests reclined near the table, sometimes in a “U” shape, so the place of honor would have been the spot from which the one reclining was able to view all the other guests.  Not surprisingly, given that the Pharisees concerned themselves with receiving recognition for their righteousness, each of the guests was noticeably angling to get in and secure that most desirable spot, or at least one nearby. 

Jesus had something to say about their actions.  “When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “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.  If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.  But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests.  For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (v.7-11).

There would have been no second-guessing what was behind Jesus’ parable.  The application to the present situation was obvious.  His parable was illustrating exactly what the apostle Paul would later write to the Philippians: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (2:3).  Pride was on full display at the dinner party Jesus was attending.  Jesus’ warning was not that far off from an expression we use today: “pride goes before the fall.”  In vying for the seat of honor, the Pharisees ran the risk of being humiliated when/if someone more esteemed would be asked to sit in the spot in which they had reclined.  There’s No Room for the Proud.

It really doesn’t take much work to figure out what Jesus is teaching.  He is warning against pride.  He is pointing out that humility is much more desirable.  What may not be as easy to figure out is the answer to the question “Why?”  Why is Jesus spending his time using this teachable moment to warn against pride?

We know why he wasn’t doing it.  He wasn’t doing it to show the other guests at the dinner party what was necessary for a right relationship with God.  He wasn’t advocating that a more humble life increased their chances of salvation.  Neither was Jesus pointing out another practice by which they could improve their image before others – if only they were more humble, they’d come off looking so much better to others.  And, Jesus wasn’t preaching the law to them with the ultimate goal of just making them feel bad, as if the goal was to make them squirm and put them in their place.

No, Jesus’ goals are always more lofty.  In fact, the purpose behind his parable, the reason he wanted to direct the Pharisees toward humility instead of pride, was to open their eyes to how impossible such perfect humility was to achieve.  And it wasn’t just humility that Jesus was concerned about, but that perfection in general was impossible to attain.  Remember he had just healed the man of dropsy and showed how too often the Pharisees’ hearts were more concerned about keeping the letter of the law than abiding by the law of love.  There, too, he was showing them that they haven’t loved perfectly.  And when he addressed the host specifically about the guest list at a party, he preached the law to point out that motives were not always pure, but often based on what a person gets in return, or how it makes him look to host such a grand party among the socially elite.

Jesus’ motive in warning us that there’s No Room for the Proud is the same.  He’s not telling us to seek humility because doing so will make us better Christians and improve our chances with God; rather, he’s commanding us to seek humility at all times and in all situations so that the light bulb goes on and it becomes clear to us that achieving perfect humility is impossible.  He wants us to evaluate our behavior and motives so that we see how foreign humility is to our hearts.  He wants us to see that generous giving, if only for the sake of impressing others, is still pride.  He wants us to see that even humility itself, if practiced to make a show of it for others, is nothing more than veiled pride.  It’s been written, “humble we must be if to heaven we go; high is the roof there, but the door is low.”  Indeed, the door is so low that we could never enter it on our own because our pride has disqualified us.

But again, Jesus doesn’t point that out this morning with the intent of making us feel bad and then leaving it at that.  No, instead he wants us to know that apart from him we’d have no hope.  Without Jesus and his work on our behalf, not just pride, but any sin would exclude us from heaven.  So Jesus’ warning, there’s No Room for the Proud, is intended to lead us to Jesus for his help and eternal hope.

In Jesus’ case, pride is one of those sins of which he was never guilty, along with every other sin for that matter.  Do you recall when the devil attempted to pull pride out of Jesus’ perfect heart?  At his temptation in the wilderness, Satan offered Jesus worldly riches and recognition, he appealed to his divine nature and called on him to let his pride make a stone edible.  But there was no pride to be pulled from his heart.  It didn’t exist, not at that time, nor at any time in Jesus’ life.  Not even as the incessant mockery of soldiers rang in his ears at his suffering and crucifixion did pride manifest itself.  There was no thunderous divine act of vengeance, showing those worthless wastes of space who he truly was.  At no point in his life did Jesus fall prey to pride, which was absolutely necessary in order for his perfect slate of righteousness to be credited to our accounts.  His righteousness, which is our righteousness, would not have been possible had Jesus not kept pride at bay his whole life.

But in addition to his giving us something – his flawless record of perfection; Jesus also had to take something away from us – our sin of pride.  So it was necessary for Jesus to offer up the perfect sacrifice on the cross.  Yes, he avoided pride on our behalf, but he also paid for our pride with his life.  His perfect record of righteousness would be of little value if our own pride remained lingering in our hearts like plaque.  When Jesus spoke the words, “It is finished,” he meant that our sins of pride and false humility had been paid for.  He meant that our salvation is not a matter of our going out and making sure that the remainder of our lives is filled with more humility than pride, but rather that our pride, past, present, and future, has already been forgiven.  When pride gets the better of me, Jesus already got the better of it and smothered it with forgiveness.  So the more I hear of that forgiveness, the more I remember it through my baptism, the more I taste it in the Supper, the more I become aware that Jesus, and not myself, is my pride and joy.

At the close of the Civil War, preparations were being made for the final grand march of the army.  Typically in such a procession, a general could expect to march at the head of his own corps.  However, in this case the commander-in-chief appealed to the Christian faith of General Howard and asked if he would graciously allow another general to march at the head of his corps.  Since the commander-in-chief had appealed to General Howard’s Christian character, he humbly obliged.  Then Sherman, as commander-in-chief, ordered that General Howard ride by his side not just at the head of a corps, but at the head of the whole army.  And in this way, having humbled himself, General Howard was exalted.

So it will be with you and me.  Jesus’ humbled himself and became obedient to death on a cross for you and me.  In doing so he has thrown open the storehouses of grace and given to us the best of all he has.  He has paid for our pride with his blood, purified our hearts and, planted the seeds of humility in our spirits, which he then nurtures and fertilizes our entire lives through his Word and Supper.  It is then his humility that we see at work in the lives of believers, which will be exalted, if not in this life, not on this earth, then in heaven, where through Christ we will be honored to be guests forever. Amen.

                                                              

“For the freer confidence is from one’s own works, and the more exclusively it is directed toward Christ alone, so much better is the Christian it makes.” (Luther)