Humble and meek like Jesus

Sermon for Trinity 17

Ephesians 4:1-6  +  Luke 14:1-11

In today’s Epistle, St. Paul urged the Ephesians—and all Christians—to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called. What is that “calling with which you were called?” It’s the calling of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel to become a Christian, to follow Christ. When Christ Himself called people to Himself, what did He say? Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. To follow Christ is, first, to come to Him in faith for that rest He promises, for the free forgiveness of sins and peace with God through Him. And then, to follow Christ is to take His yoke upon you and to learn from Him. What are we to learn? That He is meek and lowly, that is, humble in heart. And that’s just how Paul explained it to the Ephesians: with all humility and meekness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Even though Christ is greater than any creature in the universe, even though all men are sinners, He doesn’t look down on people as being unworthy of His care. He didn’t come into the world to be served by men, but to serve, to consider the needs of us sinful human beings before His own needs. His humility accomplished our salvation!

What a contrast with the attitude He finds among men—even the most religious of men, sometimes! We see in today’s Gospel the opposite of humility among the Pharisees and the guests at the Sabbath meal Jesus attended. And you’ll find that, even among those who claim to follow Christ, there is often a real hesitation to follow Him down to the meekness and humility that characterizes Him and is supposed to characterize all who follow Him. Listen to Jesus’ teaching today. Learn what true humility looks like. And humble yourselves before the Holy Spirit as He would mold you into the meek and humble image of Christ.

Our Gospel takes place toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, on His way to Jerusalem for the last time to humble Himself and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It was the Sabbath day, and Jesus had been invited to a Pharisee’s house for a meal. There was a man there who suffered from dropsy, the painful swelling of the legs or arms. A perfect opportunity for Jesus to serve, to heal that suffering man.

But should He? It’s the Sabbath day, after all. The Jews weren’t supposed to do any work. Just recently, just a few verses before our text, Jesus had had a similar encounter on a Sabbath day, not in a home, but at a synagogue! There He healed a woman who had been afflicted by a demon for almost 20 years. But the ruler of the synagogue actually scolded the woman who was healed for daring to be healed on the Sabbath—a backhanded way of scolding Jesus for doing the healing. But Jesus’ reply shamed that ruler and gained the approval of the multitude: Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath? So now, before healing the man with dropsy, Jesus gives the Pharisees and experts of the Law an opportunity to explain why He should or shouldn’t do it. But they’re too cowardly to even answer. So Jesus heals the man, sends Him away, and then puts the very reasonable question to them, “Which of you, if your ox or donkey fell into a pit, would not immediately pull it out on the Sabbath day?” But they couldn’t answer.

Why? The Sabbath Law didn’t actually prevent anyone in Israel from helping their neighbor on the Sabbath Day. And all of them knew it was perfectly good and right for them to help their own animals on the Sabbath Day. Why couldn’t they admit that Jesus was right to heal?

Because of their pride. Pride in how they had always interpreted the Law. Pride in their imagined superiority over their fellow Israelites for how well they kept the Sabbath Law. Pride that didn’t want Jesus to be right, because that would mean they were wrong. That pride obscured their understanding of the Scriptures. It made them irrational. It made them into merciless cowards who were more interested in holding onto their faulty interpretation of the Law and their own superior status than they were in seeing a fellow Israelite rescued from his pain.

In contrast, there was Jesus, the very God who had given Israel the command to do no work on the Sabbath, showing them that God didn’t establish the Sabbath day so that they could serve Him, but so that He could serve them with His Word, and so that they could serve one another with their works, without having to worry about working at their day jobs.

But the pride Jesus observed in those religious leaders He also observed among the other guests. He watched as each of them made a mad dash to take the place of highest honor at the table, maybe the place closest to the host, each one interested only in himself, each one thinking he deserved the host’s approval more than anyone else.

So Jesus tells a parable about a different kind of meal, about a wedding banquet, about the kingdom of God. And He helps His hearers to see how foolish it is to get wrapped up in yourself and to go seeking the place of honor for yourself. Because, sorry to break it to you, it isn’t your opinion of you that matters, or the other guests’ opinion of you. It’s the host’s opinion of you that matters. And the best way to gain the host’s favor is not by insulting him, is not by assuming he must think highly of you, but by lowering yourself, humbling yourself, taking the lowest place, allowing the host to deal with you according to his kindness, not according to what you think you deserve from him. If you take the highest place for yourself, you can bet that the host will come and take you down a few notches, so that you end up being shamed by him and shamed in the eyes of everyone else. But if you start out in the lowest place, if you think of yourself last and are content with the lowest place, then the host will surely raise you up. Because you didn’t insult him. You cast yourself before his mercy. You submitted to his judgment, trusting that it would be right. And so what, if your fellow guests look at you in scorn and contempt for a while as you sit there in the lowest place? When the host raises you up, you’ll be honored in their sight, too.

It’s very reasonable, isn’t it? The problem is, people aren’t thinking about the Host’s opinion, that is, God’s opinion. Or if they do think about it, they assume they know what He thinks instead of letting Him tell them what He thinks of them. It’s not safe to assume you know what God is thinking. It’s insulting to Him. He has told us all what He thinks of us. There is no one righteous, no, not one. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So it’s really very reasonable for anyone and everyone to take the last place in God’s kingdom. To humble himself or herself before God.

But then we have to listen to what else He says. He says that He sent His Son, Christ Jesus, into the world to save sinners, who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But He emptied Himself, taking upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in the form of a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. And why did He humble Himself? For us. Just as Christ is really the Good Samaritan of that parable, so He’s also the one at the wedding feast who came and humbled Himself in the kingdom of God and was then raised up to the highest place by His Father, so that sinners who humble themselves in repentance might be raised up along with Him and share in His glory. The Host of that heavenly banquet has already told us whom He honors and of whom He approves: To this man I will look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My word. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

But you can’t stop with humbling yourself before God in repentance. To follow Christ is also to make it your daily purpose to imitate Christ, and as we’ve seen, one of His chief characteristics is humility and meekness. He cared about needs of others. You, care about the needs of others. He didn’t think of Himself. You, don’t think of yourself. As Paul writes to the Philippians, Let nothing be done out of strife or conceit, but in humility let each esteem the other better than himself. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Let this mind be in you all, which was also in Christ Jesus.

That’s what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called. To humble yourself before God, and to trust that for the sake of Christ alone He will lift you up, and then to keep that same attitude of lowliness and humility toward your neighbor, not because he or she is “better than you,” but because your only focus is following Christ, imitating Christ, being like Christ, with all humility and meekness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Amen.