Sermon: Pentecost 12, Luke 14:1, 7-14

August 31, 2025 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

Here’s what I think is a fundamental malady of American culture and society: we, collectively and often individually, yearn and then strive to be the biggest, best, most powerful, the wealthiest, the most popular, the most famous. The celebrity idol. The star of the show. The center of attention. In short, we want to be exceptional. Or at least to associate ourselves with those who are. 

Or another way of putting it in the language of today’s gospel reading: we want to choose the places of honor at the banquet, or party, or big event, or wherever we happen to be. 

Lest I pronounce judgment on and denounce others, I confess to you that I have done and still do my own versions of seeking the places of honor. Here’s a recent example: at our Churchwide Assembly earlier this summer here in Phoenix, I more or less invited myself to the special dinner to honor and welcome our ecumenical and inter-religious guests, most of whom are prominent leaders in their traditions. And this was a dinner hosted by our Presiding Bishop. It’s not that I just showed up for a seat unannounced. But I made some effort to seek the invitation. In essence, I did a version of what Jesus advocated against: I sought to take my seat at the place of honor.

Now that I have made this confession, admitting that I am part of the problem of seeking to be exceptional in my own ways, I feel that I am in a position to observe that wanting the places of honor is an ailment of our whole society. Here’s another current and common example from the realms of social media. People produce and post videos with the hopes of going viral and being viewed by millions of people who maybe will hit the like button. Another example: people want to be the next rock star or professional athlete or influencer who leads the charts. Of course, it’s great to have aspirations, but in our current culture, as usual, we take all of this to extremes. 

Then there’s the inevitable disappointment when we don’t make it to the top as we had hoped, and we discover that we’re just average. Some in response feel disgrace and shame as if they were told to take the lowest place at the table, as in the parable Jesus told today. And even if people do make it to the top, many come to realize just how vapid it is to be alone in the upper echelons. Consider the many celebrities who end up committing suicide. In short, it’s a huge burden to always try to be the best. It’ exhausting to try to claw your way to the top, to the highest place of honor. How do we find freedom from these burdens, from the weight of striving exceptionalism? 

Our very brief reading from Proverbs today gives us good, practical advice as a starting point: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” 

Jesus may well have had this scriptural wisdom in mind when he told the story about the wedding guests who took the best seats in the house only to be disgraced by being told to take the lowest seats. Then Jesus concluded: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” In short, the antidote for what ails us individually and as a whole society is nurturing in ourselves a greater sense of humility. Humbling ourselves is a key to relieving our anxious striving.

But how do we make ourselves humble when true humility seems so contrary to mortal, sinful human nature, tending as we do to focus on ourselves, our needs, our desires, our worth? 

Jesus Christ, of course, is the one who can help us and in whom we discover humility. Christ not only taught about the way of humility, but he fully embodied and enacted the humble way. Christ humbled himself by going to the cross on our behalf. Or as the Apostle Paul writes to the Philippians giving voice to a hymn to Christ: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-80)

But humbling himself was not the end of the story. The hymn Paul sings goes on: “Therefore God also highly exalted [Christ Jesus] and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)

In short, Christ’s death on the cross was the full embodiment of true humility. And Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the way in which God exalted him.

In this – Christ dead, Christ raised – is our freedom from the burdens of exceptionalism and the anxious striving to be first, to be greatest. When we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, we too enact the dynamic of finding ourselves humbled and then also exalted by God. What happened to Jesus happens to us. 

And this begins in the waters of baptism. Baptism plunges us into the humble depths of our mortality and sin. But then Christ who led the way from death to life, pulls us up out of the humbling abyss to new life in him.  When Jesus pulls us up out of the water, he essentially says to us, “Friend, come up higher.” And Christ then seats us next to him in a place of sacred, exalted glory – and this not by any merit on our part, but as a free gift of God’s grace and love. 

Then, too, when we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness, the same thing happens. When we name our sins, we find ourselves humbled. When we hear God’s word of grace in Christ and are forgiven, we find ourselves exalted. As if Christ says to us, your sins are forgiven; friend, come up higher!

And Christ is not finished with lavishing on us exalted grace. This sacramental table is the wedding banquet where Christ says to us yet again and again, Sunday after Sunday, “Friends, come up higher.” Then we join him at this high altar table where Christ as host honors us at this feast with the fullness of his presence, and all the blessing and glory and exaltation that goes with his presence. And we recline with Christ here at the highest place. 

This experience of finding ourselves humbled and at the same time exalted by God in Christ through the Spirit working in the means of grace is the dynamic of the Christian life. And again, it is the spiritual food that helps us combat the malady of our arrogantly needing to prove ourselves. 

The Sunday assembly is our school that cultivates in us the spirit of humility. For here we learn in honest forthrightness the realities of our humanity. And it all goes back to the fact that we are created out of the dust of the earth. We are humus – rich, nutrient laden earth, fertilized soil. That’s what it means to be human – it is to be humus. 

And this opens the door to recognizing our common humanity, that we’re all made out of the same dust. And this nurtures our capacities to be humane with one another. And to have a sense of humor about it all as we laugh with each other – not at each other – about the foibles of being human, of being humus. 

In this spirit, there’s no more room for anxious striving to be the best and to seek the place of honor.  We don’t need to prove our worth any longer. For God lovingly, graciously gives us the gift of a seat at the table and a place in the banquet hall where we join in the dance of the holy Trinity at the marriage feast of the Lamb. 

And God’s work in and among us is still not finished. Our humble-exalted place at Christ’s table strengthens our faith, our trust in the sufficiency of God’s grace, which restores and reanimates the created goodness of our humanity. 

Then we grow to trust each other again. And with this renewed trust we are invited to be host to others in loving service of our neighbors. And we do as Jesus instructed: when we host our banquets, at our best, we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (cf. Luke14:13).

And in keeping with the wisdom found in today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, we “let mutual affection continue, not neglecting to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that we entertain angels without knowing it” (cf. Hebrews 13:1-2).

The paradox is that in Christ, the lowest place becomes the highest place; the humble place becomes the exalted place. And that’s where we discover the face of Christ in our neighbors, especially the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. In short, the least, the last, and the lost.

And in these sacred discoveries of humble exaltation is the Christly cure for our anxious striving. For our striving to be at the top reveals the voids of self-doubt deep inside of us individually and as a whole nation. Christ fills those empty voids with the fullness of his presence ever and always saying to us lovingly, graciously, mercifully, “Friend, come up higher.”

Oh, Christ, humble us, and in our humility, exalt us by your mercy. For the healing of hearts, individually and communally, let it be so, Lord Jesus. Let it be so. Amen.