The Humblest Man in the World

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
(Luke 14:11)

Sermon — August 31, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

There’s something a little ironic about Jesus’ exhortation to humility in our Gospel reading today. Most of the time, when we say that someone is “humble,” we mean something like “modest” or “not boastful.” Humble people don’t speak very highly of themselves. They avoid fame and notoriety, especially if it comes from talking about how great they are.

What they don’t usually do is to go around saying things like, “I am the light of the world,” as Jesus does in the Gospel of John. (John 8:12) We generally don’t think it’s very humble for someone to say, “whoever has seen me has seen [God] the Father.” (John 14:9)

But here’s Jesus—the self-proclaimed Light of the World who travels around Galilee and Judea telling other people that they’re wrong—telling a parable about the importance of humility.

Of course, there’s a piece missing here, and it’s that Jesus isn’t really boasting, per se. According to one school of thought, honesty is the essence of humility. Noah Webster defined humility as “a modest estimate of one's own worth,” if you are indeed the Son of God, your worth is inestimable. Jesus isn’t boasting. He’s just telling the truth. He really is the Light of the World. He really does know the will of God, and he can see where people have departed from it. It comes off as braggadocious only to those who don’t understand who Jesus really is.

And that’s all well and good for Jesus. I’m not particularly concerned that he isn’t humble enough. But what about for us? To say that to be humble is to be honest about our own capacities and our own worth seems lacking to me. Most arrogant people aren’t being dishonest, necessarily. They’re just acting like jerks.

But you might notice: none of this has very much to do with what Jesus says in this parable. His idea of humility is about something else. Jesus doesn’t say anything about how people think about themselves. He doesn’t say anything about how people talk about themselves. This parable today is all about what people do, and why.

Our short first reading from the Book of Proverbs offers the same practical insight: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” (Proverbs 25:6-7) This is just honestly good advice. If you’re walking into a room full of people who are going to organize themselves by importance, you should put yourself at the back. It’s embarrassing to be told that you’re not as important as you think. But what if the king says, “No! Come on, you know we’re closer than that”? Now you look awesome and humble. Big win for you.

Jesus finds himself in a situation just like that, and so he expands the proverb into a longer form. He sees guests at a dinner carefully choosing their places at the table, seeing who gets to sit closest to this important religious leader, (Luke 14:1) just like you would all be angling to sit as close to me as you can. (Right?) This seating arrangement is an uncertain and a complicated thing. But Jesus makes it much simpler. When you go to a banquet like this, don’t sit down next to the guest of honor, and don’t try to figure out where exactly in the pecking order you fit. Just pick the furthest-away and least important seat. (14:8) Worst case, you really are the least important guest, and it looks like you possess both self-knowledge and equanimity. Best case, the host says, “No! Come on, you know we’re closer than that,” and you look even better than before. (14:10)

And then Jesus expands on the thought. He says to the one who’s invited him there, “When you host a dinner like this, don’t invite your friends or siblings or rich neighbors,” (14:12) the people you think are your equals or your “betters” in society. Act as though you belong among the people whom society values the least, and invite them in—and even if they can’t reciprocate by hosting you, you’ll still be rewarded in heaven. (14:13–14)

Humility is not a state of mind or a manner of speech. Humility is an action: it’s the act of choosing to sit in the place of least honor. And the distinctions between these three categories, of thought and word and deed, is what makes humility different from low self-esteem, or false modesty, or humiliation.

Low self-esteem is when you think you aren’t as good as you really are, and you talk and you act that way. False modesty is when you think you’re pretty good, but you speak as if you’re not—“What, these old rags?” Humiliation tends to come when someone thinks you’re acting as though you’re better than you are, and they decide to “put you in your place.”

But humility is the decision to go and sit in that lowest seat, to choose the place of least prestige and honor, regardless of what you think about yourself.

Humility is not the opposite of confidence or self-esteem. In fact, if I think about the people I’ve known who are the most humble, in the true sense, they tend to be people with a deep sense of confidence in themselves. I don’t know about you; the people who come to mind for me are some of the most brilliant, or talented people whom I’ve known. They’re people who are incredibly good at what they do, and who know it, and who have no need at all to prove it to the world. People who can step back and let others shine, without feeling another person’s success as a threat to themselves. It’s their confidence and sense of self-esteem that allows them to be humble; to let another person take the place of honor.

And in the opposite direction, the greatest braggadocio often comes from a deep sense of insecurity. The most pompous or boastful or arrogant people I know tend to come across as if they’re trying to prove they’re better than me. They’re trying to convince everyone that they belong in the most honored place, and so they take their seat at the front and puff themselves up and dare the world to question them—and feel even more enraged when people roll their eyes and look away, because they read that disapproval of their behavior with the very sense of judgment that they feared.

But there’s one more piece of this. Parables aren’t just fables, simple stories with a moral for us. Parables have something to say about who Jesus is and what he’s there to do. And while, yes, Jesus sometimes speaks of himself in honest-but-exalted terms—what Jesus does is the humblest thing of all.

Jesus leaves behind the place of honor he deserves, seated at the right hand of God the Father. He comes down to earth, and he goes down into the depths of human pain. He suffers and dies. He’s put to death on the Cross, in the least honorable form of execution the Romans had. And nevertheless, he is exalted—he is raised from death into new life, and he ascends back from earth to heaven, and—like the best mentor, or boss, or friend—he invites us to come with him there, to the place of honor, where we too might experience the presence of God face to face.

Jesus is able to act with perfect humility because he has perfect confidence. He is able to descend into the depths of human pain, to endure mockery and scorn, because he knows that wherever he goes and whatever happens to him, he remains the beloved Son of God. And it’s his great act of humility that sets us free from the need to prove anything to anyone about ourselves. Because of Jesus’ humble, self-giving love, “we can say with confidence,” as the Letter to the Hebrews says, “‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’” (Heb. 13:6)

And we can live the humble lives that the Letter to the Hebrews imagines. We can show hospitality to strangers, (Heb. 13:2) because we can choose to act as if they belong here just as much as we do. We can “remember those who are in prison, as though [we] were in prison with them,” (13:3) because we can choose to act as though people who have broken the law deserve to be treated with just as much dignity as we are, who have not. We can “keep [our] lives free from the love of money, and be content with what [we] have,” knowing that while we need money to survive, having more doesn’t mean we’re worth more. We can act humbly, and love one another boldly, because we know that we, too, are the beloved children of a God who says to each one of us, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (13:5)