“The Great Reversal”
Luke 14:1-14
9/2/07
During my vacation in CO a couple of weeks ago I got
to visit my brother and his family in Montrose. I was really
looking forward to seeing him and his wife, but I especially wanted to
see their children - my niece Katherine and the twins, Andrew and
Elizabeth. Katherine is now four and the twins have just turned
one. And if you have ever had children, you know not only how
cute babies can be, but also how much attention they need. This
is something my niece Katherine was not ready for. After living
as an only child for the first three years of her life with all the
attention focused on her, she is now feeling like she’s being
neglected by her parents, since so much of their attention is now
focused on her brother and sister. In order to compensate for
this perceived lack of attention, Katherine has entered into a stage
now where she throws temper tantrums, where she has what we call
“melt-downs,” and she cries and screams for apparently no
reason at all. What she has learned from day one - that she was
the center of attention - must now be reversed, and she must learn to
share that attention with her brother and sister, who sometimes get
more attention than she does. And yet, this does not mean that
her parents love Katherine any less. It just means that in their
present state, the twins are in greater need than she is. And so
the lesson that Katherine is beginning to learn (and which she will
continue to learn as she grows older and matures) is that she must
consider others as more important than herself. Katherine will
have to learn to humble herself and place her needs below the needs of
others, if she wants to love the way Christ loves. Out of His
love for us Jesus humbled Himself, considering us as more important
than Himself, and this is what we must do for one another, if we want
to be His disciples.
And that’s the lesson that Jesus teaches us
here in today’s Gospel text: to humble ourselves before both God
and our neighbor, just as Christ humbled Himself for us and gave
Himself into death for our salvation. We reflect His love for us
when we live self-sacrificial lives for one another, considering the
needs of others as more important than our own. Humility is
putting our neighbor and his needs before ourselves and our
needs. In our sinfulness, like immature and uninstructed
children, we have learned to put ourselves, our needs, and even our
possessions before others. We have believed that in order to be
exalted, to be successful, to be honored and praised, we must exalt
ourselves, putting ourselves first. But this teaching must be
reversed, and we must learn to humble ourselves and put ourselves last
as our Savior did, so that God might exalt us.
Jesus begins here in today’s Gospel text by
reversing the notion that our possessions are more important than our
neighbor. Back then, possessions included working animals like
donkeys or oxen. Today we can see how animals, trees, and even
bugs have come to be viewed as more important and more valuable than
human beings. Let us hear of human beings being murdered in the
wombs of their mothers and there’s barely an outcry
anymore. But let us hear of dogs being beaten, electrocuted, and
drowned and all kinds of outrage is expressed. The Pharisees whom
Jesus addressed here would have helped out one of their animals if it
had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day - the Jewish day of
worship. They might have even helped a son or daughter in their
need, but when a stranger who was suffering from edema came to Jesus
for help, it was more important for them to keep the Law than to allow
Jesus to perform any work of healing on the Sabbath day.
But the Pharisees, in their zeal for keeping the
Law, were actually not keeping it at all, since the summary of the Law
is to love God and to love one’s neighbor. The Pharisees,
however, were pitting one against the other, as if you could love God
without loving your neighbor. But to love God is to love your
neighbor as well. You can’t say you love God but then treat
your neighbor with less respect than you’d treat an animal.
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other
words, the Law was given to serve man, not to enslave him.
It’s goal is love for one’s neighbor. But sometimes
we get so caught up in trying to obey the Law that we forget the goal
of the Law - love. To use the Law for any other purpose is to
misuse the Law. For example, if you are trying to use the Law to
get righteous before God, you are misusing the Law. If you are
trying to use the Law to gain rewards, honor, or praise from God, you
are misusing the Law. If you are trying to use the Law for any
other reason other than to live in love towards God and your neighbor
without any thought of how it might benefit you, then you are misusing
the Law.
And so, Jesus must not only reverse the notion that
animals and possessions are more important than people, but that we
ourselves are more important than others. At the banquet to which
Jesus was invited, He noticed that people were exalting themselves by
choosing the seats of honor at the table. He taught them that
instead of choosing to sit at the highest place at the table, they
ought to choose to sit at the lowest place. Then, instead of
being embarrassed by the host who might move them to a lower place,
they might be honored by all as the host (and not they themselves)
moved them to a higher place. And Jesus then ends His lesson with
the words, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and
he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus is talking about the way you view yourself
before God and your neighbor, whether you humble or exalt
yourself. And which one you do will affect your position not at
just any ordinary dinner table here on earth, but your position at the
Table of all tables - the Lord’s Table, specifically that
heavenly Table in His kingdom of glory where we will eat and drink with
Jesus face to face. The only worthy guest at the Lord’s
Table is a humble guest, one who confesses himself to be the chief of
sinners and nothing but a beggar on the receiving end of the
Lord’s gifts - His body and His blood given to him to eat and to
drink for the forgiveness of his sins. There’s no comparing
yourself with others at this Table to see how you stack up before God
as you try to comfort yourself with the belief that you are better and
more deserving of honor and praise than they are. There’s
no praying like the Pharisee who prayed in the temple about himself and
all the good things he had done. There’s only the humble
prayer of the tax collector who prayed, “God, have mercy upon me,
the sinner!” Such a person is declared righteous by God;
such a person is exalted and accepted by God. All others are
humbled and rejected, if they don’t repent.
But when we hear this, that God exalts the humble,
we even try to turn humility itself into a means whereby we try to get
ourselves exalted. But this is false humility. True
humility doesn’t think of itself or how it might be
benefitted. A truly humble person doesn’t think about
rewards or about what’s in it for him. A truly humble
person only thinks about the neighbor and how he might be
benefitted. A guest at the Pharisee’s table might have said
to himself, “Well, if taking the lower seat will gain me honor
and recognition, then I’ll take it!” But then, he
wouldn’t really have been humble; he wouldn’t have taken
the lower seat in order to give honor to the other guests. He
would have been doing it to get something in return. So also,
Jesus’ words to the one who invites the guests teach us not that
it’s wrong to ever invite our friends and family to dinner, but
that we shouldn’t be inviting people in order to get something in
return. We shouldn’t do good to people in order that they
might do something good to us. Instead, we should do what our
Lord did for us and do good to those who can’t do good to us in
return without even expecting a reward from God (even though a reward
is promised).
Jesus is our example. If we come away from
this text thinking that Jesus is only teaching us how to be humble,
we’ll miss the most important lesson, and that is that Jesus
humbled Himself for you, so that you who are humbled on account of your
sin might be exalted. This is the greatest reversal of all, that
He who was highly exalted made Himself nothing and emptied Himself,
being born under the Law, taking upon Himself the form of a servant,
being burdened with your sins at His baptism, giving Himself into death
on a cross in order to atone for your sins with His blood. And He
did all this not for His own glory. Jesus was not thinking of
Himself at all and how it might benefit Him to do all this. His
thought was only of you and how what He did might benefit you.
Now, on account of His work, all your sins, including your failure at
being humble as you ought to be, have been answered for by Jesus and
forgiven. Having been born again through the waters of your
Baptism and given a new heart, the Apostle Paul now tells you to
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others
more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only
to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have
this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ
Jesus...” The only way you can be truly humble before God
and your neighbor is if Jesus Christ works that humility in you.
It’s not something you can produce on your own. It’s
worked in you as God points you to Jesus Christ and His humility on the
cross for you. Then He will humble you as He convicts you of your
sins with His Law, instructing you that it was because of your sins
that your Savior was on that cross. Then He will also exalt you
with His words of Gospel, promising you forgiveness, life, and
salvation, seating you with Christ in the heavenly places, and moving
you to a place of honor at His Table - here in time at the Lord’s
Supper and then in eternity at the heavenly banquet to come. The
kinds of people Jesus invites to His Table are the poor, the crippled,
the lame, and the blind. And such were you when you were slaves
of sin, living only for yourselves. But things have been reversed
and you are now rich in Christ, with all His gifts and blessings given
to you; you’re no longer crippled or lame with regards to being
able to do God’s will, but you can leap like a deer in your love
towards God and your neighbor; and your eyes have been opened, so that
you are no longer blind to the truth in Jesus Christ.
And there is a reward for living humbly before the
Lord and one another. It is a reward that will not come in this
life, however, and it’s not a reward that you earn for your
humility. Remember, true humility is worked in you by the Lord
Himself. If anyone should be rewarded for your humility
it’s Jesus. But God does promise you a reward that He will
give you at the resurrection of the just. The “just”
are those who have been declared righteous through faith in Jesus
Christ, apart from their works. The reward of the just is sitting
at Table with Jesus Christ at the heavenly banquet in the age to
come. And you have a foretaste of that feast here at the
Lord’s Table today. You who come to this Table in
repentance, humbling yourselves before God and men, and receiving by
faith the very body and blood of Christ into your mouths for the
forgiveness of your sins, have the hope of a seat at the next Table in
heaven to look forward to.
So, it’s time to mature and grow up. A
great reversal has taken place, and we can no longer remain
children. Our exalted Savior has humbled Himself on the cross and
been exalted through His resurrection for us, so that He might exalt us
with Him who were humbled by sin. “Humble yourselves,
therefore, under the mighty hand of God” writes the Apostle.
Peter, “so that at the proper time He may exalt
you...” As Mary rejoiced, “[God] has brought down the
mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble
estate.” Amen.