Honoring Others
Text: Luke 14:1-14
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Of all the very obvious and easy-to-see-through phenomenon that people use to elevate themselves, perhaps none is as transparent and even laughable as the humble brag. You’ve heard it before: In a job interview, a candidate may say that their biggest weakness is that they work too hard and care too much about their job. Someone fishing for compliments may talk down about their work, prompting others to praise it. A student will remark that they feel guilty for doing so well on a test because they barely even studied for it. People try to glean honor from others by at least superficially lowering themselves, at least with their words. But it’s always just a back door to being praised or gaining status.
Our Lord does not teach any such self-promotion, obvious or thinly veiled. Rather, He tells us to not presume too much when it comes to our estimation of our own honor and glory. We’re to consider others as more important than us, not only with words or with the hopes of being raised ourselves, but in deed and in truth. In our reading today, Jesus was dining at the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees. When He noticed how the guests were jockeying for the places of honor, He said to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus is not teaching us a secret, counterintuitive track to having higher rank or gaining respect. Remember, He’s teaching this lesson in the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. He knows full well that we self-focused and honor-hungry mortals need no help in coming up with backdoor ways of self-promotion. No, He fully intends for us to think more highly of others and humble ourselves.
In order to have no doubt that Jesus really is teaching a lesson of emptying ourselves of any hope for worldly repayment or exaltation, He goes on to teach another lesson, this time to the hosts of the dinner. “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” There will be no worldly honor, no marks of esteem, no reward, no repayment, until the resurrection of the just at the end of time. This is no secret path to worldly power, influence, or honor. This is a simple giving of ourselves and our resources to those who cannot repay in this life, ever.
Why does Jesus set out these hard lessons that make our inner natures scream out in protest? It’s certainly not to belittle us or to make us think of ourselves as worthless. Remember, this is the same Lord who has given you talents and skills that He wants you to acknowledge and use to His glory. This is the same Lord who has given His life for you because He values you so highly. No—to see the reason why He’s giving these lessons that fly in the face of our world and fallen natures, take a look at how our reading begins. “One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.” That is, they were looking for a way to place themselves above Jesus, to see how He would slip up, so that they could honor themselves for their fastidious keeping of the Law and traditions of the Pharisees, so that they could rank themselves as higher than this teacher from Nazareth. “And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy;” a sick man, an outcast whose disease would have sidelined him from doing any kind of work that the world would deem praiseworthy or lucrative. “And Jesus responded to the lawyers and the Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?’” According to the strict rules of the Law, and the many protocols that had been set up as fences around the Law to keep people from even coming close to breaking it, no work was allowed on the Sabbath. If a man’s work was as a healer or physician, he wouldn’t be allowed to practice his craft on the Sabbath. But now the rules were intersecting with life. What would be greater, what would be more important: mercy and grace to heal a man of this debilitating and even deadly disease, or another tally in the number of rules they had kept and thus distinguished themselves from the unwashed masses? In response to this question, they were silent. There was no good answer they could give. So then, Jesus “took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, ‘Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?’ And they could not reply to these things.”
The lessons Jesus is giving—taking the lowest seat instead of a seat of honor, inviting and being generous to those who cannot repay you—these are all about seeing what Jesus is doing to rescue humanity. Humbling yourself is about not thinking of yourself as beyond the need for rescue—not thinking of yourself as saved by your works of the law or your inner goodness, as the little Pharisees in our hearts would want it.
For Jesus Himself has come to our house of doom, our fallen world, and He did not take a seat of honor. He was born to a virgin of no high social status. He wandered as an itinerant teacher and preacher. He surrounded himself with fishermen and tax collectors and lepers and prostitutes, not the cultural elite or socially powerful. He washed the feet of His disciples, even though He was their Teacher and the greatest among them. He was ridiculed, slandered, tortured, and even killed in a travesty of a trial. He died the lowest, most humiliating death possible, reserved only for the worst of criminals that Rome wished to make an example of. He gave freely to all—to the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind—neither receiving nor expecting any repayment. He gave of Himself so fully, valuing us more than His own life. He gave Himself in exchange for us, telling us “Friend, move up higher,” giving us a seat in the presence of God, at the Lord’s own table, a feast spread before us, a rich and holy Supper of His own body and blood, shared with all of us poor, crippled, lame, and blind; broken, grieving, confused, and sinful; that is, we who could never repay Him.
We can’t repay, but we can share it with others. For we have received so much that there’s plenty to give to those who don’t have His treasures yet—treasures of this world and the next. Jesus did not instruct those who would be His disciples in some set of fictional works done in His name. He really wants us to share what we have with those who are in need, to share His gifts with them, even without the hope of repayment in this life. We really are to think more highly of others so that we give them seats of honor among us. If someone is need of help, we are not to find ways of avoiding it, any more than we would avoid pulling a child or animal out of a well.
We don’t do these things because these works will save us. We don’t do them because they’ll get us a higher place of honor. Remember, Jesus has already given us a seat before God’s throne, at the Communion rail, before His cross and altar. We do it precisely because Jesus has already done this for us, because of all He’s given us. We do it because He’s always giving us more. We have a Lord with infinite goodness and generosity; with limitless gifts to give us. So as we share these, even if we might never be repaid by those we serve, we’re restocked by the Lord’s generous hand. And that generosity, that satisfaction and abundance of gifts is only the beginning of what He will bestow on us in the resurrection of the just. In the name of Jesus, who has humbled Himself and honored us, Amen.
