Heavenly Etiquette
Luke 14:1-11
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Luke 14:11 For whoever exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… After hearing today’s Gospel reading, you might be thinking that Jesus is simply giving advice about good table etiquette. It could seem as if He is just outlining proper protocol for those who attend special meals or banquets. He says, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.” That’s good advice, that’s good manners. Not only might it keep you from embarrassing yourself, it might also cause you to be honored in front of others.
But Jesus is doing more than simply teaching proper etiquette; He is not the Martha Stewart of the early Church. He is exposing our sinful tendency to exalt ourselves. In Jesus’ day there would be a very clear ordering to the seats at a special meal, from the greatest to the least, from the highest to the lowest. Jesus spoke these words when He noticed how everyone was trying to get the best and most honored places for themselves.
I remember my high school days where the most important thing was not what was being served at the cafeteria (mostly because it was almost always nearly inedible), but where and with whom you’d end up sitting. Kids were always trying to get in line next to the right people and maneuver around to end up at the better table with the “in” crowd. You would try very hard to avoid having no one to sit with or, worse yet, sitting with the “wrong” people.
And, of course, those same desires remain in our hearts throughout our lives, though we are much more subtle in dealing with them as grown-ups. At a wedding reception or out with friends at a restaurant, don’t you want to be seated in the right place and be associated with the most-liked people? Don’t you desire to exalt and build yourselves up before others? In our text Jesus exposes and condemns this urge to put ourselves first and others below us when He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.”
In fact, this sinful urge is so much a part of us that we hear our Lord’s words and turn them against their intended meaning. We say to ourselves, “Oh, so that’s what I should do next time I’m at a special meal. I should choose the worst possible spot so that someone will be sure to invite me over to a better spot, and then I’ll look good in front of everyone.” But that’s just as bad, because then our humility is shown to be false. It is just another way to get where we really want to be. If nothing else, our lack of humility is revealed in the fact that we pride ourselves on being fairly humble people. No one who thinks he’s humble actually is. It’s like the old song, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way.”
Therefore, in our Gospel Jesus is calling you to true humility, the humility which St. Paul speaks of in Philippians 2 where he writes, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each consider others better than himself.” And in today’s Epistle we read, “I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness, and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love…” Jesus calls you to the kind of humility that is not only outward but from the heart, a humility that is modest not only before other people but also meek and lowly in the eyes of God. Ultimately then, Jesus calls you to the humility of repentance, of confessing your self-exalting sin, of acknowledging that you have no power to achieve real humility, and that you do not deserve any place at God’s table, high or low.
The humility which God seeks is a lowly and contrite and penitent heart, a heart which says, “There is nothing in me that qualifies me to receive anything from God or that requires Him to do any good to me. I am a beggar before Him, and my hope is in Him alone.” It is this repentant faith which God seeks and with which He is pleased: to humble yourself before God that He may lift you up, that He may say to you, “Friend, come to a higher place,” that you may receive your place at the table as a gift from the Master of the feast. And this is not because you have earned it or arranged it for yourself, but it is out of His great love and mercy that the Lord has freely exalted you, and it is He who has earned for you the privilege of sitting at the heavenly banquet.
Jesus earned this privilege for you by fulfilling His own words. He put Himself in the lowest place in order to save you. He who is the Almighty Son of God, having taken on your humanity, was born in a lowly manger, lived as a poor and humble carpenter, had no home of his own during His ministry, and had no place to lay his head. And finally, Christ died the way the worst of criminals died, by being executed on a cross. Christ did not claim glory and honor for Himself but allowed Himself to be made the lowest of the low.
And all this He did for you. He received the punishment your sins deserved so that you might be released from the punishment and guilt of your sins and be set free. Through God-given faith in Christ, the humble Redeemer, you now are forgiven, and Jesus has fulfilled these words for you: “He who humbles Himself will be exalted.”
In Philippians 2 St. Paul summarizes all this beautifully: “Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Our Lord Jesus is indeed the most honorable one at this feast, the one who took the lowest place and who has now been called to the highest place at the table by His heavenly Father. For this is Christ’s own wedding feast, the celebration of His holy union with the Church, His bride. And if He is honored, then she also is honored with Him. By faith in Christ, you are joined to Him in such a way that you now share in His exaltation. Even as Jesus took your death into Himself and destroyed it on the cross, so now by the power of His resurrection He lifts you up in His new life.
To you who humble yourself before God, who repent of your sins and trust in Christ, the Father says, “Friend, go up higher.” And He seats you with Christ in the heavenly places and gives you to partake of His glory, a reality that will be revealed in all its fullness at the close of the age. This is what Jesus means when He says, “He who humbles himself will be exalted.” You who in lowly faith follow Christ and share in His cross in this world will ascend with Him in the next and share in His everlasting life.
In the meantime, as you await that day, the Lord invites you to come to His table, to the foretaste of the eternal wedding feast to come. Here He bids you to take the lowest place, that is, to come in all humility before God as a repentant sinner. No one who comes to the Lord’s Table is any better or higher than another. All are unworthy, in and of themselves, to take part in the feast. All are as nothing before the King. To claim otherwise is to dishonor the King and to be cast away from His presence.
You are urged, then, to come to the Lord’s Supper as beggars, as those with nothing to give and everything to receive. Come as the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed. For here the Lord Jesus bestows upon you the greatest honor that heaven has to offer, to receive His true and living body and blood.
For here Christ comes to you personally and concretely to lift you up out of the pit and to raise you to heaven. Just as Jesus healed the man in the Gospel, so also in the Sacrament He heals all your ills of body and soul. Through His holy meal, He cleanses you of your sin, fills you with His life, and prepares your body for the resurrection on the Last Day.
God grant each of you, then, to have that heavenly etiquette of which Jesus speaks, that humbling yourself in and with Christ, you may also be exalted together with Him.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.