Taking One’s Place

Scripture: Jeremiah 9: 23-24; Luke 14: 7-14

Sermon: Taking One’s Place

Topics: wisdom, humility, pride,

Preached: July 1, 2007

Rev. Mike Abma

Jeremiah 9: 23-24

Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; ²⁴but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.

Luke 14: 7-14

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. ⁸‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

12 He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION THE PRIDE GAME

May the wise not boast in their wisdom,

nor the powerful boast in their might,

nor the wealthy boast in their wealth.

But if you are anything like me, you may be thinking — “That doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have a lot of any of these – not brains, or power, or money.” But here is the things we need to know. In the realm of pride, it doesn’t matter. Pride has the uncanny ability of compensating somehow. Pride has this way of making strengths weaknesses, and weaknesses strengths, all in an effort to get ahead and to look good.

I once read about this University that has a very strong academic and business program, but it has a notoriously lousy football team. Tired of being beaten again and again, the students started carrying placards into the stands that read: “You may beat us today, but you’ll work for us tomorrow.” Apparently, they even adapted the famous anthem by the rock group Queen as their cheer. They revised it from,

“We will, we will, Rock You”

to “We will, we will, hire you.”^[1]

Pride is a game everyone can play – the strong and the weak; the rich and the poor; the brainy and the not-so-brainy. In playing this game, most everyone knows that in-your-face arrogance is a bad strategy. We’ve learned this from all the teen movies we’ve watched where the villain is often the wealthy, attractive, athletic, stuck-up cheerleader or jock who ends up being brought down by the geeky, nerdy, athletically challenged Napoleon Dynamite-type character. What we don’t often realize is that they are all playing the same pride game — with the blatantly proud being brought down by the subtly proud.

We can play that same pride game with our Luke 14 passage. In this passage, Jesus notices that the Pharisees he was eating dinner with all scrambled for the best seat in the house. Jesus tells them not to go for the best seats in the house. Much better to take the worst seats and then, perhaps, the host may say, “Friend, I have a much better seat for you.”

Now if you are a player, programmed to always think of a clever way to get ahead, you’ll read this parable and think, “Great, I’ve got a new self-promotion strategy – just take the worst seat as a way to get the best seat!”

But is this what Jesus wants – a rush on the worst seats instead of the best seats?

PRIDE

What Jesus really wants is for us to put aside this pride game altogether.

To do that, we need to know what pride really is.

At its core, pride is all about making the spiritual center of our lives ourselves.

We become the ultimate object of our concern.

Pride lives by the mantra: “I’m doing what’s best for me, now.”

In putting ourselves at the center of our life, you can see why the medieval theologians called pride “the mother of all vices.”

With ourselves at the center

* we believe we are entitled to whatever we want in life – giving rise to greed, gluttony, lust.

* we are easily angered when we don’t get our way, or what we want;

* we are prone to envy whoever has something that we want;

* and we feel we are above doing many of the mundane things in life (sloth).

So what does pride look like?

It wears so many different faces, and finds its way into our lives in so many ways, that it is hard to capture the look of pride. But let me mention at least some of its symptoms:

There is the symptom of self-deception.

Many college freshmen are asked to fill in surveys and questionnaires.

On a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being the worst, 10 being in the best)

they are asked to rate things like their driving ability;

leadership ability:

athletic ability:

ability to get along with other people.

In these questionnaires, the vast majority give themselves 9 and 10’s. But this isn’t only the case for 18 year olds. Study after study shows that this is default position for all of us — we all have a self-serving bias. We all are prone to self-deception.^[2]

A second symptom of pride is the tendency to be self-absorbed.

Say you are on the phone with a friend or family member.

Who does most of the talking and who does most of the listening?

If we realize we’ve been dominating most of the conversation, do we say something like: “I’ve been spending all this time talking about myself.

Now it’s your turn.

What do you think about me?”

If that is the case, perhaps we’re a little too self-absorbed.

A third symptom is the tendency to always justify ourselves.

During the year, I drop off our son Aaron at the Middle School every morning. It involves driving all the way down to a cul-de-sac, dropping him off, then turning around and coming back. I do this with tons of other parents in cars. Most of us politely stay in line and wait our turn. But there are always a few drivers who, every morning, pretend there is no line, who pass by every waiting car, go right to the front, angle their car so nobody can move until they have dropped off their child and then continue on their way.

I have a feeling that if I were to ask them why they do this, they would be able to give me what they thought was a perfectly reasonable explanation — something like, “Well, I simply don’t have time to wait in line.”

A fourth symptom of pride is the need to be recognized.

We all know how some charities and institutions publicize a list of their donors. Sometimes they do it in categories –

there are the diamond donors; the gold and silver donors,

then, for the $5, $10 and $20 contributors, there are the rock, paper, and scissor donors….

Are we the type of person who is quick to check the list to see if our name is there?

Are we the type of person who would get all bent out of shape if our name was in the wrong category, or if it was forgotten altogether?

The need to be recognized …another tell-tale sign that maybe pride is a bigger challenge in your life than you think.^[3]

HUMILITY

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis points out that the first step in humility is recognizing the symptoms of pride in our lives. But there is a common mistake we make in trying to get off the path of pride and onto the path of humility. We tend to over-steer, to overcorrect. We think that the way to get rid of pride is

to hate ourselves,

to avoid any and all recognition,

to show little to no self-confidence,

to shuffle around with our head bent and our shoulders stooped.

This isn’t humility – groveling, maybe, but not humility.

The word “humility” comes from the same root that we get the word “humus” (soil).

In other words, humility is about being “down to earth.”

Humility is all about knowing who we are.

Humility is about being confident in who we are:

confident enough to admit our strengths

but also to admit our weaknesses and sins.

Humility is a virtue of strength, not of weakness.

Therefore, humility is not easily offended or insulted

if someone forgets our name,

or forgets to address us with Dr. or Rev. or whatever.

Humility is strong enough to realize

we are not defined by our financial assets or our IQ;

nor by our power or beauty;

nor by the chair we get to sit in at a banquet.

We’re defined by the grace we have received as a gift from God.

Humility tries hard to resist playing the pride game,

and seeing the world as filled with only winners and losers.

Instead, humility works hard to love and accept people,

to talk with and listen to people,

regardless of who they are,

where they are from,

or what they believe.

Humility is better seen in flesh and blood people.

Carol Zaleski, a theologian and writer, tells about how she and her husband had flown to Paris where they were going to live for a year while Carol wrote her dissertation. She was in Paris to work with the great medieval scholar and Benedictine monk, Dom Jean Leclercq. The problem was, the apartment they moved into in Paris had some plumbing problems. They called for a plumber and Carol decided to quickly check out the library while her husband waited for the plumber. A while later, Carol returned from the library and found her husband and the plumber bent over some pipes in the apartment. She asked how it was going. At that, they both got up. Suddenly Carol gasped in horror. This wasn’t a plumber! This was none other than Dom Jean Leclercq, the world famous medievalist. Her husband had mistaken him for the plumber!

The amazing thing was the Leclercq seemed perfectly fine with being mistaken for the plumber. He also seemed perfectly willing to do what he could to fix the pipes. And they had a perfectly fun time laughing about it all over a glass of wine.^[4]

That is the way it is with humility.

Humility means never taking yourself, your status, your titles, your wealth, too seriously.

Humility does, however, take your neighbor and your neighbor’s needs quite seriously,

because no matter how much a sinner or a saint,

no matter how much a failure or a success,

humility realizes we are all equally the objects of God’s love.

As people equally loved by God,

we are now invited to this banquet,

this down-to-earth meal of bread and wine,

where we can all take a place,

an equal place

at the table.

1. Cited in Randy Rowland, The Sins We Love, p.45. ↑

2. See David Meyers, The Inflated Self, p. 24-25 ↑

3. David Murrow’s book, Why Men Hate Going to Church makes the claim that men seek greatness and seek recognition for that greatness, even if that greatness is in humble service to others. He says the church’s greatest problem is in not recognizing their achievements, and not doing enough cheerleading and applauding of men. I find his solution – church as cheerleader — simply another circuitous form of feeding pride. ↑

4. Christian Century, May 16, 2006 ↑