Background
My preparation for this talk started the day before we were to attend the wedding of my God son. I re-read the passage in the morning before we headed out to the church. You can imagine I was very careful where I sat in the church. Once you get to the reception there is nothing to worry about as there are always seating plans and name cards in every place, so I could relax and enjoy the company and the good food.Seating Plan
Jesus is only using the wedding as an example because he has observed the unholy clamour to find a seat at this dinner party. They did not sit around a table like we do, but reclined on couches leaning on their left elbow.
They sat round the table in a 'U' shape with the high status guests at
the top of the table and the hosts on their right. Lower status guests
sat on the other side where it was harder to talk to the hosts and less
comfortable to eat.
Jesus is clearly not impressed by what He has seen. He knows that He is there to be watched, evaluated, or even trapped, and is going to have His say, so He tells them the parable. He says they should take the seat that has the lowest position, so that the guests will see them promoted rather than being humiliated by a demotion. He ends by saying in verse 11:
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Hierarchy in the Classroom
[only if there are children present]I suspect that most of the time we know our place in the hierarchy. I remember hearing about a study that said each child in a class knew who was above them and who was below them. It range true for me. Is it still like that?
Well I suspect that it is – and that's not what Jesus wants for us, so what can we do about it?
Humble / Humbled – a definition.
[skip if there are children present]
Humble is a very badly misused word. It means
1. Marked by meekness or modesty in behaviour, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful.
2. Showing deferential or submissive respect: a humble apology.
3. Low in rank, quality, or station; unpretentious or lowly: a humble cottage.
Which is exactly the way it is used in the gospel reading.
Humbled is also badly misused. It means:
1. To curtail or destroy the pride of; humiliate.
2. To cause to be meek or modest in spirit.
3. To give a lower condition or station to; abase.
Humble: misuse
Humble and humbled are very often misused[common section]
So when some actor says that receiving this award is a humbling experience what they really mean is “Is this all I'm getting, I was expecting something better”
or when some dignitary after being knighted tells us what a humbling experience it was, they really mean they expected to be made a Lord, or even King.
No!, you were not humbled, being humbled would mean that your work is trashed, and the things you have are taken away from you. When Fred Goodwin (formerly head of RBS) and James Crosby (formerly head of HBOS) had their Knighthood removed – THAT was a humbling experience.
Here's how Paul Annet puts it in his blog entry 'Humble Misuse':
If you were at the top of your game but luck dealt you a bad hand and you ended up begging on the street, that would be humbling. If you were at the top of your game but you spent a few days on the streets to raise awareness for a homeless charity, you may find the experience to be humbling in a rewarding, learning-from-it sense.1
Humility for us
For Jesus, and therefore for us it is all about putting others first. This is what Paul said:Phil 2:5-8 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, 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!
So for us to be saved Jesus had to humble himself and be obedient to God.
Phil 2:9-11 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.
Humility will certainly be rewarded in heaven, it is also a good way to live on earth
Pr 25:6-7 Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among great men; it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here,” than for him to humiliate you before a nobleman.
If we are obedient to God we will consider others more important than ourselves.
Jim Carey – Bruce Almighty clip
Submission is an act of humility. If we don't submit to the will of God, then we will end up fighting with Him, and that can only end badly – with us being humiliated. It should be easy to be humble in front of our creator, but most of us find even that really hard.
There's more to humility than submission to God's will.
John Wesley and George Whitefield
I've spoken about John Wesley and George Whitfield before, they were two great preachers of the 18th Century. Here is a story from the two men's lives that illustrates what humility is all about:2John Wesley and George Whitefield had been great friends at Oxford, but they fell out over the Arminian/Calvinist debate.
The Calvinists say that God chooses us and the Arminians say that we are saved because we choose God
There was quite a bit of animosity between their followers.
Once one of Whitefield’s followers said to him:
"We won’t see John Wesley in the heaven, will we?"
To which Whitefield humbly replied "Yes, you’re right, we won’t see him in heaven. He will be so close to the Throne of God and we will be so far away, that we won’t be able to see him!".
What a lovely attitude Whitefield had. His humility was real despite profoundly disagreeing with Wesley, Whitefield recognized John Wesley as being a man of God. He shows us a basic humility that we can all try to copy.
Maximilian Kolbe
Some take it much further.A catholic priest, Maximilian Kolbe provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. On 17 February 1941, he was arrested by the German Gestapo and ended up inAuschwitz as prisoner #16670.
A protestant doctor who treated the patients in Kolbe’s block said that Kolbe would not let himself be treated before any other prisoners in that block. He sacrificed himself for the other prisoners. The doctor said about Kolbe: "From my observations, the virtues in the Servant of God were no momentary impulse such as are often found in men, they sprang from a habitual practice, deeply woven into his personality.”4
At the end of July 1941, three prisoners disappeared from the camp, the deputy camp commander, picked 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker in order to deter further escape attempts. When one of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!", Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
In his prison cell, Kolbe celebrated Mass each day. He led the other condemned men in song and prayer. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After two weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe remained alive. The guards wanted the bunker emptied and they gave Kolbe a lethal injection. Some who were present at the injection say that he raised his left arm and calmly waited for the injection.
Kolbe considered others more important than himself – even to the point of offering his life in exchange for another.
He is an excellent example to us. The doctor who treated the prisoners has seen something in Kolbe. Being humble is not part of our natural character. Like so many other things of God, it must be cultivated until it becomes part of our second nature – our spiritual nature.
If Kolbe can give up his life for someone else, perhaps we can start by:
Inviting the misfit to our birthday party
Inviting those who don't fit in to our church events, and befriending them
Jesus talked about inviting the rejects from society, the poor, crippled, lame and blind, because to be humble means that there can be no pay back. We probably treat the disabled better than they have ever been treated, but there is still a way to go. There are also those who are on the fringes of society, those who don't fit in.
After all Jesus invited us to heaven – and we were nowhere near being qualified for entry.
Conclusion
I'm going to finish with story that shows that pay back can come when you're least expecting it.Late on a stormy night in Philadelphia, an elderly couple walked wearily into a hotel. They approached the night clerk at the desk and practically begged him for a room. Apparently there were three conventions in town, and every hotel was filled to capacity. "Are there any rooms left anywhere?" the old man inquired.
"I’m sorry. All of our rooms are taken," the clerk said. "But I can’t send a nice couple like you out into the street and in the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It may not be what you’re used to, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night."
When the couple declined, the young man pressed it."Don’t worry about me; I’ll be just fine,” the clerk said. “Just take my room.” So the couple agreed.
As he paid his bill the next morning, the older man said to the clerk, "You know what?
You are the kind of man who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I’ll build one for you."
The clerk didn’t think much about that, and two years passed. The clerk had almost forgotten the incident when he received a letter from the old man. It recalled that stormy night and enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York, asking the young man to pay them a visit.
The old man met him in New York, and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. He then pointed to a great new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky.
"That," said the older man, "is the hotel I have just built for you to manage."
"You must be joking," the young man said.
"I can assure you that I am not," said the older man, a sly smile playing around his mouth. The old man’s name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure was the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
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