Sermon: “Humility: The Pound God Uses”- August 31, 2025

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Rev'd Ezgi Saribay Perkins, Rector 

Transcript

In the film adaptation of Tolkien’s Return of the King, the final scene is a coronation in a magical place called the White City. Banners in this place adorn every wall. Trumpets answer each other from heights. Crowds pack the streets because a king is to be crowned.

Up the long steps to the palace courtyard stand four small hobbits, the sort of country folk who look more at home in a garden than in a throne room. Their clothes are worn. Their hands are cut and rough. They are not used to ceremonies. They have no titles to announce them. They have simply done what needed doing when dark days came.

When the new king receives the crown, the cheering rolls. The four hobbits step forward, uncertain and unsure of the rules. They do the safe thing. They humbly kneel.

Then the king does something no one expects. He leaves the high place and walks down the steps until he is face to face with these hobbits. His eyes look kind. He says, “My friends, you bow to no one.” Then he kneels.

A wave of surprise moves through the crowd. Soldiers lower their spears. Courtiers sink to their knees. Citizens kneel on the stones. All eyes rest on the smallest people in the court who are honored without asking. These smallest people never sought the high seat. Tolkien shows us  that the measure of greatness is not based on how high we sit, but whom we are willing to honor while maintaining posture of humility. That takes us right to today’s parable from Jesus. Jesus teaches the Pharisees an important lesson about the meaning of humility.

The point of our great story from today is this: Humility is the pound God uses to measure the worth of our life. Status, position, or reputation are worthless on his scale. He looks instead for the humility that reflects the character of Christ himself.

Which leads us to our first point: Humility is rightsizing our ego, and it begins by assuming the position of the least in a crowd.

Luke sets the scene in vivid detail. Jesus, seated at the table of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, notices guests scrambling for places of honor. In that culture, banquets were stages of social hierarchy. A triclinium was the formal dining room of a wealthy Roman household in antiquity that had  u shaped dining table. It placed the most honored near the host and pushed the less important to the edges. To sit near the host announced importance; to sit at the far end accepted insignificance.

Jesus saw beneath this shallow etiquette. He told a parable that sounds at first like practical advice: do not rush for the best seat, lest you be embarrassed; instead, take the lowest seat and perhaps be called forward. 

Earlier, Jesus had healed a man with dropsy at this very meal. Dropsy is a sickness that swelled the body with fluid, leaving its victims thirsty and yet bloated. It is also a great image for pride, which leaves our egos swollen with self-importance yet parched for real life. Having healed the man’s body, Jesus points out the spiritual sickness of his dinner companions.

What is humility? Humility is a sober awareness of who we are before God and who we are not. It is a confession that our worth does not come from recognition, rank, or repayment, but from God alone. It expects the great reversal of the kingdom, where the first are last and the last are first. To assume the lowest place at a situation is to be humble, and join Christ where he sits, for he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Humility is not false self-lowering. It is Christlike imitation.

We see this humility when someone with every credential still stacks chairs or stays last to clean up after a church supper, when a person of influence is comfortable giving credit to others rather than to themselves at every opportunity they get. Those things cannot be easily faked. True humility chooses the lowest place when the world tells us we have earned the highest. And it is there, in that quiet posture, that the recognition of God comes.

Secondly, true humility is marked by hospitality and generosity toward those who are unable to return our gift.

After addressing the guests at the banquet, Jesus turns his gaze to the host. The first lesson was about where to sit, but the second lesson is about whom to invite. In the world of the Pharisees, meals were about reciprocity. You invited those who could invite you back. You honored those who could honor you in return. Hospitality was often not about generosity at all, but about securing influence and maintaining status.

Jesus disrupts that logic. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner,” he said, “do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, lest they invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed.” With these words, Jesus struck at the heart of the honor-shame system of his day. A meal, the most basic expression of community, had become a currency of status. Jesus reclaims a meal with him as a foretaste of the kingdom.

Notice the groups Jesus names: the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. These were not just socially marginalized. They were also excluded from priestly service under the Law, and in some Jewish communities even barred from table fellowship. To invite them was not only socially unprofitable, it was spiritually radical. Have you ever noticed that Jesus loves to take what had been a symbol of exclusion and makes it a symbol of welcome? He tells us that in God’s kingdom, the table is not a mirror of privilege but a sign of grace.

Benedicts taught: Humility is not merely thinking less of ourselves. It is thinking more of others, especially those who cannot repay us. Pride asks, “What do I gain from this?” Humility asks, “Whom can I bless?” Pride clings to circles of power wanting us network upward. Humility intentionally moves downward, seeking out the forgotten, the voiceless, the overlooked. It is there we find   the humility of Christ, who sought not the company of the greatest in the world, but of fishermen, tax collectors, children, lepers, and sinners.

And the reward Jesus promises is striking. Those who give only to be repaid have already received their reward. But those who give where repayment is impossible will be repaid at “the resurrection of the righteous.” In other words, God himself becomes the host who honors those who have shown humility in hospitality. The blessing may not come in this world, but it will come as God’s blessing in heaven.

Think about how countercultural this is, not only in the first century but also today. We live in a world where relationships are often treated as transactions. Even in church, it is tempting to favor those who are most like us, or those who make us feel comfortable, or those who can contribute the most. Belonging to a certain church in a small southern town is often a status symbol, isn’t it?  Jesus cuts through this. He tells us that true hospitality is not measured by how much we impress our community via social media, via projects and impact reports, but by how much we resemble him and his Father. 

So what does this look like among us? It looks like a teacher who sits with the lonely special needs student in a cafeteria, a person who invites those to holiday dinners who have nowhere else to go, a church that builds ministries not around attracting the most influential but around serving those who are considered underdogs. Each of these actions pushes against the world’s economy of reciprocity and bears witness to God’s kingdom economy of grace.

Humility, then, is not only about where we place ourselves. It is about whom we seek to enfold, whom we honor, whom we make space for. To live humbly is to live hospitably. And to live hospitably is to make our lives a sign of God’s great dinner, where all are honored guests, not tolerated outsiders. Humility says those undeserving folks truly considered our people, and refuse to be ashamed of them. Humility says they become our kin.

Lastly, Christ himself gives the perfect example of taking the lowest place, becoming servant of all, knowing that we are unable to pay him.

The banquet parable comes full circle because we see it represented by Christ himself. Jesus did not simply teach humility. He lived it par excellance. The one who told others to take the lowest place is the one who left the highest place of heaven and took upon himself the form of a servant. As Paul writes, “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

Christ did not sit at the head of the table demanding honor in this world. He knelts at the feet of his disciples, washing them with water, showing that in his kingdom the greatest is the servant of all. He did not not invite the strong and the righteous who can repay him with status or influence. Instead, he drew near to the poor in spirit, the sick, the sinner, those with nothing to offer in return. His cross became the ultimate banquet paradox. The Lord of glory took the lowest place, crucified outside the city, shamed and rejected, so that we might be welcomed to the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Conclusion: At the Pharisee’s table, Jesus noticed the scramble for honor. At the Father’s table, Jesus himself gave up all honor so that we, who could never repay, might be seated as honored guests. Humility is not only our duty; it is a way of living that marks a Christian life.  We, too, are the folks who are poor, lame, blind, and the spiritually crippled who have no way of repaying his invitation. Yet Christ took our character and physical defects upon himself and gave us the way back to God with his ultimate sacrifice of life and love.

And this is the hope that carries us forward: “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” We take the lowest place here, but we will be seated at Christ’s table in heaven. We live in humility now, but we will rise to join him in his exaltation then.

One day, all our tables will be gathered into one great feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Then, we won’t see any fighting for position, or scramble for the best seat. On that day, the least worthy in the world’s eyes who sought to live a Christlike life will be seated in places of honor. And we will discover, to our amazement, that the One who takes the lowest place is none other than our Lord himself, who girded himself to serve.

Humility is the pound with which God weighs the worth of our lives. At every table, the question is the same: will we grasp for honor, and respect or will we let God seat us where he wills? Will we serve those who can never repay, or only those who reciprocate with invitations of their own?

Here is where the Tolkien returns to us.  In The Return of the King, King Aragorn stepped down from the high place during his coronation, looked at four small hobbits, and said, “My friends, you bow to no one.” Then he knelt. The city followed. The smallest were honored. That is indeed the banquet logic of Jesus. Our Host calls up those who did the right thing for the right reason because of their love for God.

The challenge is for us to live as if we are already at that banquet, to keep choosing to take the lowest place with joy and to welcome those who cannot repay. For when the great Feast begins in all its fullness, the only words that will matter will be these: “Friend, move up higher.”

Today, after Fr. Patrick says, “The Gifts of God for the People of God,” make these prayers your own: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but speak the word only, and I shall be healed.” “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”

To that humble and inclusive banquet Christ richly invites you. In a moment, as you approach the altar rail, hear him speak to you: “Friend, move up higher,” and receive the invitation to be exalted to sit right next to Jesus, the lowly man. Just accept the invitation to come near him who will gently say: “Friend, move up higher.” That is just where you might meet him face to face. AMEN.