Trinity 17 The Sunday of Humility September 23, 2018
Trinity 17
Luke 14:1-11
September 23, 2018
“Humility Looks Like Jesus”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
C. S. Lewis says there’s a particular sin that every single person suffers from and yet hardly anyone ever thinks they have it. At the same time, he says it’s a sin that we very easily identify and find in everyone except ourselves. So what is this sin that we think we never have but we think everyone else does have? It goes by many names and phrases—arrogant, self-conceited, “full of himself”, “thinks the world revolves around her”, stuck-up, “high on his horse”, “thinks she’s better than everyone else”, “in love with himself.” Christians simply call it what the Bible calls it: PRIDE.
My wife had a pastor that would say the things we find the most annoying about other people or the sins of others which bother us the most—these are very often the very same annoying sins that we ourselves perpetrate most. This is definitely true with Pride. The very sin of pride that we always notice in others is the very sin that we don’t notice in ourselves.
So then God must deflate us. He must humiliate us. As Jesus says in the Gospel reading today, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” The English words humble and humility and humiliate all come from the Latin root humus which means ground or earth or dirt. When we are humbled, we are “brought back to earth”. We are “lowered to the ground”. Or, in more Biblical terms, we are returned once more to the dust from whence we came. We are dust and to dust we shall return.
God often brings us back down to the dust, back down to earth, in order that we may be humbled and once more believe and trust in Jesus Christ. Pride comes before a fall, the Scriptures say. Yes, God must often humiliate us, make us fall, to break our pride and strengthen our faith in Jesus.
After Noah, great man of faith, built the ark and saved his family, God humiliated him with an embarrassing night of drunkenness and nakedness. After Jacob stole the birthright and blessing from his brother Esau, God humiliated him by making him run for his life away from his family and over to his uncle Laban’s. On the way back home fourteen years later, God humiliated him once again when Jacob was scared to death of meeting his big brother Esau again. When Joseph was prideful about his dreams and his colorful coat, God humiliated him by sending him in to slavery in Egypt where he would learn faith and trust in God.
When King David became a mighty warrior in Israel, God humiliated him by sending him running for his life from King Saul, hiding in caves and dodging flying spears. That’s when David wrote a great many of his Psalms, his songs of faith in God.
What you and I must learn is that being humiliated is good. Because being humbled is the only way we will truly believe in Christ and be strengthened in faith. If we’re way up here in the clouds, walking around in our pride thinking we’re on top of the world, then we’ll never turn to God or realize our great need for Him. We must be humbled. And God does that in many and various ways. But it’s a hard lesson for us to learn that being humiliated is for our good. God must bring us back down to earth, to the dust, that we may again look up to Him in faith.
But you don’t like being embarrassed or humiliated. Of course not. Because we’re prideful and self-conceited. Of course we don’t like to be humiliated when somebody catches us in our sins, or when our friends or family find out something we’ve done, or when we flat out fail at something, or when we say something stupid and regret it for the next week. But every single time you’re humiliated or embarrassed or brought back down to earth, rest assured that it’s for your good.
Here’s the truth: humiliation is being a Christian. “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” That’s what Jesus says. If you’re going to follow Jesus and believe in Him, then get ready for humiliation. Not that you will be humiliated in public all the time. But you will be humiliated. It might be every morning before God in your prayers when you ‘fess up to what you’ve done. But one way or another, humiliation is being Christian.
And that’s because we follow Jesus who was humiliated. It’s funny—if I ask you if you want to be humble you’ll probably say “yes”. But if I ask you if you want to be humiliated you’ll probably say “no”. Well, sorry to all of us, but the two go hand in hand. Humility comes from being humiliated. And if you want to be humble, then you’ll follow Jesus who Himself was humiliated for us.
In fact, we call it His humiliation. That’s what happened when He became one of us. It was humiliating for Him. “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made!” How humiliating for this God of God to become us! To become our dust and ashes. Yet He did that for you.
And His humiliation didn’t end there. He was a little baby in a manger. He was running for His life from King Herod. He was a toddler in Nazareth under Joseph and Mary. He was tempted by Satan. He was tested and tried by the religious leaders of the day. And He was finally arrested, tried, mocked, beaten, nailed, crucified, and buried. He literally was humiliated down into the dirt of the earth for you and me on the evening of Good Friday. He died and was buried.
But this now is where we learn that humiliation is good. “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” God brings down so that He can raise up. Jesus humbled Himself for the good of the entire world so that God could raise us all up in Him to forgiveness and eternal life. Humiliation leads to resurrection. It leads to exaltation. And now Jesus sits at God’s right hand where He rules over us in grace and mercy, bestowing out forgiveness of sins in His Word and Sacrament.
I started out by telling you about C. S. Lewis and how he said everybody’s full of pride but no one admits it. Well, actually in that quote C. S. Lewis says there are some people who admit their prideful. And that’s Christians, he says. True Christians, like all of you here today, will admit that you are full of pride. We are. And we’re not afraid to say so because that’s part of our humiliation. Part of our humbling. And we know that humiliation is good. Confessing our own pride leads us to trust in Jesus’ forgiveness for us. And when we die with Jesus, we rise with Jesus. And not only that, but we also know that being humble means being like Jesus and living in Jesus.
So let’s now get as specific as we can. Christians want to be humble. You don’t want to be prideful, arrogant, self-conceited. Well, Jesus and St. Paul tell us what humility looks like. And it looks like Jesus. First of all, Jesus tells us a parable about humility. When you go to a feast, He says, don’t sit yourself down right away in the best seat. But rather sit in the lowest first. Put others before yourself. Count others more important than yourself. This is a hard lesson. Intuitively we sinners walk in a room and think we’re the most important one there. But that’s our pride. Rather humiliate yourself just as your Savior Jesus does. Take the lowest place. He took the lowest place of all—came as one of us and took all our sin to the cross. And God exalted Him to His right hand. You and I also should take the lowest place, considering others to be more important and more significant than ourselves.
Then Paul gives us a whole list of what humility looks like starting with gentleness. Jesus was gentle. Now we know there were times Jesus wasn’t what we would consider gentle. At times He was harsh with those who led people astray from the truth. But don’t think of this word here “gentle” as being a wimp or being soft. Gentle comes from words like gentleman which all goes back to the Latin idea of someone of nobility and high character. One dictionary of the Bible says that gentleness is the strength to bear with another’s weakness. Gentleness, then, is the strength that we have through faith in Jesus Christ—so that we may gently bear with others who are weaker. We don’t consider ourselves better or more important than another, but show gentleness.
Next Paul says humility is patience. Jesus was patient as He bore the sins of the world and obeyed His Father’s will. If you’re full of pride, then it’s very hard to be patient. We’ve all seen the person in the line at the grocery store or the person in the traffic jam who gets angry that he or she has to wait and thinks their time is more important than everybody else’s time. Patience is a virtue of humility.
Next humility is bearing with one another in love. This is especially one I wanted to give for your consideration today. When you’re full of pride, you don’t have any allowance for other people because you think it will reflect badly on you. But love and humility don’t mind being embarrassed or humiliated. That’s being a Christian. So if bearing with someone else’s weaknesses makes me look bad in some way, all the better. That’s bearing with one another in love. If my neighbor has become public enemy #1 in El Paso or Gridley, I may need to remember that it doesn’t matter if I’m embarrassed or ashamed to be seen in public with them. I don’t care about my pride. Pride is evil. But humility looks like Jesus, who wasn’t afraid to be seen around with sinners and tax collectors. He was bearing with them in love. And that what humble Christians do.
Finally, Paul says humility is eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. If you look for it, you’ll notice that Pride always like to divide people. Pride wants to take sides and be better than the other side. But humility strives for unity. Jesus united us all in His death on the cross. As His people, we are eager to maintain that unity of the Spirit. In other words, we don’t like things that divide us and we work to alleviate them. Now as it was with Jesus, some simply refused to believe in Him and be united with Him. That will be the case for us too. Some will refuse to unite with us in the truth. But we are always eager for unity in the Spirit.
Pride may be the one thing that all of us sinners have in common—but humility is the one thing Jesus has for all of us. We’re not afraid of being humiliated. Because whoever humbles himself will be exalted. And humility looks like Jesus—putting others first, showing gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, and eagerly striving for unity. God grant us all humility in Jesus Christ. Amen.