THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE
Luke 14:7-14
Pastor Jeremy Mattek – August 28, 2016
We are less than two weeks away from the first game of the NFL regular season. And one of the biggest games of the early part of the season will take place Sunday night, September 18th. That’s when the Packers travel to Minnesota to play the Vikings, which is usually an exciting game. But it’s even more exciting this year because it will be the first game in the Vikings new stadium, which will have cost nearly $1 billion to build. They started building the stadium in March of 2014. They started selling season tickets for the new stadium immediately. There are 18 different season ticket packages you can buy. And within two months, two of them were completely sold out. Can you guess which two? The two most expensive ones. The ones for which you have to pay $400 per seat, per game, plus an extra $9500 season ticket fee on top of that. And why did those two sections sell out more quickly than the other sections that are far less expensive? For a very simple reason. People typically want the best seats in the house.
And not just at sporting events. Watch people in a store parking lot looking for the parking spaces closest to the entrance. Watch kids get into a minivan and scramble for the seat they want. Many people have a seat at church they consider to be the best one. It might be halfway up on the left side. It might be the one you can sneak into when you come in late. It might the one you’ve been sitting in every Sunday for the last 40 years. For most people, it’s apparently not the one that’s closest to the front.
I’d like you to think of a seat that you might consider to be the best, a seat you might even be willing to pay large sums of money for, if you had it. You can pick any seat in any location. It could be at church, in a theater, at a concert or sporting event. And now I’d like you to pick one word that describes how you would feel while sitting in that seat. Maybe you feel excited. Happy. Relaxed. Maybe you feel important. After all, you have the very best seat – the one everyone else wanted. And now I’d like you to ask yourself how often in your life you actually feel that way. How often do you feel completely relaxed or happy? How often do you feel like the people around you think you’re important? Does that happen normally? Or do you feel like you have to work pretty hard to make that happen?
In today’s sermon, Jesus was attending a dinner party at the home of a Pharisee. And he noticed that the guests were working really hard to grab the best seats before anyone else could get them. I don’t know exactly what their definition of the “best seat” was, but Jesus used their eagerness as an opportunity to help both them and us identify the kind of seats in life God sees as the most valuable and important.
7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable:8 “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests.11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
There are really two conversations Jesus has in this section. First he addresses the guests at the dinnerand gives advice on what type of seat they should choose at a wedding. Then he addresses the host and talks about the reason he should invite guests to his dinners. Both situations have something in common. In both situations, a person is giving something. When you’re invited to a wedding, you give your time to the couple, time you could be using to do many other things. You also often give money for a wedding – money for a hotel room or a gift. And giving gifts, time, money, and attention are good things. Just like it’s a good thing to give a banquet. But Jesus knew the reason these guests gave their time, and the reason this host gave the dinner, wasn’t because they simply wanted to give, but because they wanted to get something from it. The guests wanted to gain recognition. The host wanted to gain a return on his investment. They weren’t giving to give. They were making decisions on where to give their time and attention in order to gain something for themselves, an attitudeJesus promised will always do more harm than good.
When Cynthia was 12 years old, she and her father had made plans for a night out in San Francisco when her dad was going to be there presenting at a conference. They had been planning the date for months. They had the whole itinerary planned out. Cynthia would attend the last hour of his presentation, meet him in the back of the room when it was done, and together they would leave quickly before anyone tried to talk to him. They would catch a trolley to Chinatown, eat Chinese food (her favorite), shop for a while, see the sights, catch a movie, grab a taxi back to the hotel, jump in the pool for a quick swim, order hot fudge sundaes from room service, and watch some late night television. Cynthia had been looking forward to it for a long time.
They met in the back of the room when his presentation was done, just as they planned. But as they were leaving, they ran into Bob, one of her dad’s old college friends. They hadn’t seen each other in years. Cynthia watched as they gave each other a big hug. Bob said how excited he was when he heard he was going to be in town. He decided to surprise him by attending his presentation and then said, “I’d like to invite you for a spectacular seafood dinner at the Wharf tonight.” Cynthia’s father responded, “Bob, it’s so great to see you! Dinner at the wharf sounds great!” But what Cynthia heard her dad say in that moment was that gaining for himself the seat at dinner with his friend was more important than giving his daughter time and attention he had been promising. Cynthia was heartbroken. And was she wrong for feeling that way? Was she being selfish? Of course not.
God made us to have meaningful relationships with one another, and he wants us to be and to feel loved within them. Think back to the Garden of Eden. It wasn’t selfish pride when God told Adam to take care of the garden and Adam felt like that meant he was important to someone. It wasn’t pride when Adam felt joy and happiness from the wife God made just for him. It wasn’t pride when God told Adam to name the animals and Adam believed that meant that what he thought and what he did would make a lasting impression. It’s not pride when a child longs for their parent’s attention. It’s not pride when a husband feels loved by his wife, or a wife by her husband. It’s not pride when you feel good about a job done well, or when you smile after your boss or your neighbor or your friend says that what you did made a difference and mattered to them. It’s not wrong to gain those things. It’s not pride.
In fact, you can see how empty of pride Adam’s heart was in the fact that, before sin, Adam didn’t even notice he wasn’t wearing any clothing. Have you ever had a day like that? You must really not be thinking of yourself for that to happen. But Adam wasn’t. He was just utterly, blissfully, completely lost in the love of his God and the wonder of the world and the wife that were all made just for him; so much so that, after the Fall, God had to ask him, “Who told you that you were naked?” “I don’t know,” Adam replied, “I guess I just started thinking about myself.” And, so much so, that it made him think less of the command God had given him. And there’s the important distinction. Sinful pride is not wanting to be loved. It’s wanting to feel loved more than you want to love God. The bible says we show love for God by keeping his commandments. And think about the times when it’s difficult to keep doing the things God commands us. It’s typically when we’re not gaining the things we’re wanting.
It’s not easy for a parent to keep giving love and patience to a child who only repays them with disobedience and complaining. It’s not always easy for a teacher to give a genuine smile when the disobedience isn’t just coming from one child, but two dozen. A wife doesn’t always feel motivated to keep giving love to a husband who only fills her life with complaints about dinner and her floor with socks that never make it into the laundry bin. It’s not easy for a dad to keep giving help to his family who always asks for help but never thanks him. It’s not easy for an employee to give their best work for a boss who takes credit for the good things they’ve done. It’s not easy for a citizen to keep giving time and attention to neighbors and community meetings when their neighbors are destroying the community they’re living in. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep giving when no one seems to recognize how hard you’re working.
But if that’s the reason we stop giving; if the reason we stop giving is because we don’t think we’re going to gain any benefit or recognition - then we’re no different than the guests looking for the seats of honor. When they were told to move down to a lower seat, it says they were humiliated. But they weren’t humiliated because they had to sit in the lower seat. Any seat at a wedding is still a good one. They were humiliated because, when the spotlight was on them, they were revealed in front of everyone as someone who was thinking about himself more than anyone. And, of course, God doesn’t need a spotlight to know who that is. Jesus said that “Everyone who humbles himself will be exalted, and everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.” Jesus doesn’t say it, but who is the one who will humble or exalt a person? It’s God. God notices why we choose the seats in life that we do. He knows when our hearts are full of pride. And he knows what humility looks like.
This past Thursday 33-year-old Chelsey Russell was out boating on a lake with her family when her 2-year-old son fell overboard. Chelsey immediately jumped over the side of the boat to rescue him. Neither of them had a life jacket on. She grabbed a hold of her son and tried holding him above the water so he wouldn’t drown. The trouble was, she couldn’t hold him above the water and also keep her face above the water at the same time. She had a choice to make – give air to herself or give air to her son. The boat they were on was a houseboat, and it took a while for her brother to turn it around and get back to them. When they finally did, they pulled Chelsey’s son from the water. He was fine. He was breathing and crying. But Chelsey wasn’t doing either of those things. Chelsey drowned saving her son. We know what humility looks like.
But these Pharisees didn’t. When the Pharisees scrambled for the best seats like little kids fight for the best toys, Jesus warned them, “Careful, you’ll be really embarrassed if someone more important than you comes along.” And not one person in that room picked up on the irony of what Jesus was saying. Not one single person stopped looking at themselves long enough to notice that God was in the same room with them, spending time with them, eating dinner with them; where these 2 or 3 or 400 came together, not one person even said “Thanks for coming.” And you know - It hurts when someone makes you feel like nothing, which makes it all the more remarkable when the book of Philippians tells us that Jesus “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant … he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross,” which was just another day no one noticed what God was doing.
God was dying. God was in pain; stabbed in his hands, struggling to breathe, longing to be loved, helped, and relieved of a blood-inducing stress we can’t even imagine. But longing even more for the one seat on earth no one else wanted – the one in which he could give you forgiveness for every time you’ve taken your love from him, and to keep giving until he could not breathe anymore so that you could look at his cross and clearly see that the God who fills heaven and earth feels unfulfilled without you, the crown of his beautiful creation. In other words, if you have ever wanted to feel loved, you are. If you have ever wanted to find a friend who will give and give to you without regard to what it costs him, you already have one. And no matter how poorly this world fulfills that legitimate longing in your heart, did you notice that your friend has promised you a day when he will love you in front of everyone. The day of your own resurrection. And until that day comes, one of the very best things you can do is help others see the glorious humble love that makes it happen.
I told you earlier about Cynthia and how she felt when Bob, her dad’s friend, invited her dad for a spectacular dinner on the Wharf. Her dad responded by saying, “Bob, it’s so great to see you! Dinner at the Wharf sounds great.” Then he went on to say,“But not tonight. Cynthia and I have a special date planned, don’t we?” Then he winked at his daughter, and they enjoyed an unforgettable night. Cynthia is the daughter of Stephen Covey, the author of the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But you don’t need to read his book to know how to make an incredibly effective difference in this world. You simply need to know what this world’s best seat really is. It’s the one you already occupy; the one in which you are loved and cared for by God so perfectly that you don’t need to worry anymore about anything; and since you don’t need to worry, it’s the one from which you can freely give all you can so that this filled world might see through you and me every day a little more clearly the resurrection that will happen when we as one church live and breathe the air of Christ-filled humility.
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