August 29, 2007 - Be Humble and Be Exalted - Hayward Fong

Luke 14:7-11

It was at a dinner to which Jesus had been invited that he told this parable. According to Luke, he had already told a parable at this dinner before this one. It may be that Jesus was describing some event that had actually taken place. It was the type of conduct that often happened in this time and place of history.

Feasts in Palestine were held around a low “U” shaped table. Guests would be seated on low couches, or more accurately, they would recline on the couches. The host would sit at the center of the top side. The first place of honor would be at his right-hand side; the second place at his left-hand side. The third place of honor would be the second place on the right, the fourth place of honor the second place on the left, and so forth around the table.

As a side note, this center stage seating arrangement is adopted even today at formal banquets and organizations such as the United States Supreme Court, other multi-member courts and military tribunals, where the members are seated according to seniority and rank.

Usually the exact hour of the feast would not be specified. Those who were eager and grateful for the invitation would come early while those who had a feeling of self importance would come late so people could see their arrival.

It was the norm for the socially unimportant to come early and the really important guests to come last. Consequently, if one of the early comers were to take an honored seat the likelihood is that he would be asked to move when the honored guests arrived. So Jesus was advising on how a guest should conduct himself to avoid the embarrassment of being asked to move. Rather than taking one of the honored places, he should take the lowest place he could find so that he might be invited to move up and thus be honored in the presence of his fellow guests.

Herein, Jesus lays down the importance of humility. There are two areas in which humility is of supreme importance. First is in the realm of knowledge. No man will ever begin to learn unless he realizes that he does not know; the first step in learning is the admission of ones ignorance. The other area is in the realm of the spirit. It has been said that the gateway to heaven is so low that no one can enter it except upon his knees. The first essential of all religion is the sense of need. One who is proudly self-sufficient cannot find God but he who is humble enough to know the need will find the way open to God’s presence.

What we need is to find the pathways that lead to humility.

(a) Our physical makeup should keep us humble. Our society is power and force oriented. Nations manifest this in spending on military might, building bigger gas guzzling automobiles, trying to harness the energy of the atom. But the outstanding characteristic about man is his defenselessness – not his strength, but his weakness. The natural disasters of recent date - the hurricanes that have devastated the Caribbean islands, portions of southeastern United States and the Yucatan peninsula, the torrential rains that have flooded the central states from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico to depths of twenty feet, the earthquake in Peru, the typhoons that struck the Philippine, India and areas of the sub-continent, the forest fires in Greece, here in Idaho and Montana, yes as close as the mountains between Santa Barbara and Ojai burning since the 4th of July – all point up to how puny is man’s might. When the famous poet Alexander Pope was dying, he lost his sense of reason. When he recovered and thought about his weakness and humiliation, he confided to a friend, “I wonder now how there can be such a thing as human vanity.” The very fact that life’s machinery can so easily break down, that life’s strength inevitably decays, that life’s faculties become dull should be enough to make man realize his helplessness and to save him from pride.

(b) The smallness of our achievements should keep us humble. The great English poet, John Keats suggested as his own epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” To him it seemed that he had left no mark on life. Even a great servant of the Lord as John Wesley said at the end of his life, “I can see nothing that will bear looking at.” It is not uncommon for people to take pride in what they do, but the question is what difference would it make in the life of the world if they were to die tomorrow? If we think we are indispensable, take a walk in a cemetery. The insignificance of our achievement ought to keep us from pride. This is not to say that we should do nothing with what God has gifted us; rather we should put the glory where it belongs, in God.

(c) The smallness of our knowledge should keep us humble. No great scholar has ever been impressed by the amount of knowledge he has acquired. The truly great scholars have always been humbled by the thought of the wide areas of human knowledge of which they knew nothing. It is a paradox of learning that the more a man learns about a subject the more he realizes there is still much more to learn. At the academy of Athens where the cream of Greek youth came to study, the three year classes were not named Freshman, Sophomore, Senior, but rather, “The wise men,” Those who loved wisdom,” and in the final year simply, “The learners.” The further they proceeded into knowledge the more they realized how little they knew. Of all incomprehensible things, intellectual pride is the most incomprehensible. Any thinking man will find his own ignorance far more staggering than any knowledge he may possess.

(d) The fact that we have so little goodness should keep us humble. Here the most important thing is the standard against which we measure ourselves. If we measure ourselves against a low standard, we may be well pleased. And that is what a lot of people do. They claim to be as good as their neighbors, and they probably are. But that is not the yardstick we, as Christians, are called upon to use. As Christians, our comparison is with the goodness of God as revealed in the life of Jesus. And when we compare ourselves with that there is nothing left to say. If ever we feel pride in our own goodness, a moment’s comparison with the life of Jesus will reduce us to the humility we ought to have.

Finally there is the suggestive question – does your own judgment of your worth coincide with the judgment of your fellow men? The man who took the highest place uninvited set a considerable value upon his worth; but it was a judgment which was not endorsed by his colleagues. The judgment of our fellow men is not to be despised. Men instinctively admire honor and honesty, generosity and kindness, straightness and fidelity, the humble and self-effacing spirit. It would often be a salutary experience to know what others are thinking of us.