Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Text: Luke 14: 7-11

Theme: Party Principles: Die to Rise! Don’t Rise to Die

When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, "give your place to this person," and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But, when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes he may say to you; "Friend move higher" Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

In our Gospel as previously read, Jesus is presenting another of his party parables that compares entry and the fulness of the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast. In the wedding feast parable in Matthew 22, Jesus sought to focus on the required and supplied wedding garment, which with the Lord’s Great Feast is nothing other than Christ’s robe of righteousness. Here in Luke 14, Jesus tells the parable of all the excuses that will be given by notable folks who refuse to come to the feast in contrast to the riff-raff who show up. Just before telling this parable, however, Jesus provides some advise on how to throw a party and how to attend one. The advice on how to attend a great feast provides also an important window for understanding life with God in the Great Feast to come. So Jesus advises, when you go to a wedding feast, do not grab a chair of honor lest the host come and humiliate you, asking you to give up the place of honor and take what Jesus calls the last or lowest seat. Rather, says Jesus when you enter, take the dead lowest place, that the host may come and raise you up to a higher place of honor. You have party choices here: you can seek to honor and exalt yourself . . . in which case you will be humiliated. Or you can go for the humble-pie dead-last position . . . and be raised up to a place of honor by the host of the feast. And . . . so it is with the Great Feast of the Lord in the fulness of his Kingdom. As with the other party parables, we have all been invited. That issue is not in question. The issue here has to do with how we enter the kingdom. If you go for the honor, if you go for seeking self-commendation, if you are seeking recognition on the basis of your own righteousness as if that is something fit for honor . . . you are going down. You will be humbled by the fact that your native wretched condition just is not going to merit any honor from your Heavenly Father.

Rather, as St. Paul reminds us in Philippians two, we are to come to the party in the Kingdom the same way that our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God has entered the Kingdom. He counted equality with God nothing to be grasped but emptied himself and became nothing, humbling himself before the will of the father in obedience even the death on the cross. In the cross of Christ, Jesus takes the last and the lowest place on earth. He becomes the chief of sinners when he who knew no sin became sin for us. In obedient humility, he embraced the cross and suffering and died to sin . . . your sin . . . and my sin! Once for all. Jesus takes the place of the lowest of the low . . . the shame of a criminal’s death before men - and forsaken of the Father, He becomes the greatest sinner the world has ever know, bearing your sins and mine on that cross. The lowest of the low spots in the Kingdom is to die to sin, and that is just what Jesus did. And so the Father has exalted him raising Him up, and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2: 9-10)

Ponder with me just a few moments here on the significance of what Jesus is teaching us about the Big Party. Imagine that you have entered that great hall with the table and chairs around it for all the saints who there will be seated. If all the saints who have and every will live are there, just imagine the immense size of the place. Now, if there were name tags at each place setting, which chair in that great hall will have your name on it? Will it be way up front or in the back? Will it be one of the higher or one of the lower places? Who do you think is going to get the lowest, dead-last chair? Do you think it will have your name at that place setting? Yours? Yours? If we all followed Jesus’ advice and took the lowest chair and if it had our name on it - are we not presented a mystery? What is the solution on the basis of what we have already observed? How many chairs are there around that great table? Is it not true that there are but two chairs? The chair of humiliation and the exalted chair?

At the Great Feast, we follow Jesus for we have become united with Him in our baptism. We enter into the Kingdom, the Great Feast of Glory the same way that He did. We live in our Baptism . . . taking first the lowest of the low and last spots . . . we take that chair of humiliation where we die to sin with the crucified Jesus. We who are in the Kingdom, we who would come to the Feast, we make our entry to the great party by being humbled again and again by God’s Law. We are taken to that humble place behind God’s spiritual woodshed and given a good thrashing . . . This is no do-it-yourself exercise in humility. Rather, it is the doing of God to us. We are humbled unto repentance, dying to sin by the working of the Spirit in his Holy Law. Today, in so many of the churches Christians want to party with Jesus on their own resources. They want to live with Jesus without dying with him. They want the glory without the cross. They want the high exalted spiritual life without in your face, smash-mouth Law by which we are taken to the place of repentant and hungry humility.

And about this, if you are going to be raised up with Jesus, if you are to have that place of honor - that exalted place - which is only possible as one who is united with the righteousness of Christ, you must be humbled by the death to sin, this is what the Cross of Christ does - to Christ and to all who are joined to Christ the crucified. There is no other way! You die to sin, and you are raised up justified by Christ’s righteousness. There is no other way! There are just two chairs at the Great Feast, the chair of humiliation and the chair of exaltation. The place where we die to our sin with Christ, and the place where we are lifted up to the place of great honor as a child of God and honored citizen of his Kingdom. But, if you do not join Christ in his humiliation at the lowest place of wretched sinners and die to sin, you cannot be raised up with the Son to a position of righteous honor in the Kingdom of God. If you go for the life of honor and self-commendation, you will be sent down to a humiliating death. If you are humbled by the Law of Life to repentance, you can be raised up by a gracious Father who will take you to the highest place of his Heaven, for a place of honor at the grand party the great Wedding Feast of the Christ and his bride, the Church. There is no other way. We are either dying to live, or we are living to die.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.