Trinity XVII Sermon 2025

Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them
that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased;
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
                                        (St. Luke xiv. 11)
 
We open our sermon today at a dinner party. In it we find a humble man who is overawed that he was invited at all and takes the lowest seat because he deems himself unworthy. Next, we find that the host notices his guest and rewards his virtue by asking him to come up higher. The invited defers to the host for guidance as to where and with whom he should sit. Guidance is our theme for this 17th Sunday after Trinity. For Christians, guidance is sought out by those who are meek and humble. The need for guidance is central to the building of Chrisitan character.
Of course, guidance is not a popular virtue these days. Our society thrives on self-will run riot. The situation is so bad that prerational children’s appetites are deemed more valid than parental supervision. But self-will run riot ruins self-respect. For the self-respecting man uses his powers in the service of righteousness. Self-respect demands that meekness and humility search out guidance rationally to find the road that leads to all goodness. Homer, the greatest of the Greek epic poets, called upon the heavenly muses for guidance in writing. Virgil did the same. The Jewish prophets appealed for guidance from Yahweh Himself. Dante secured guidance from Virgil. Bunyan’s good will provided guidance to his Pilgrim seeking God’s kingdom. For Ancient and Medieval Man, humility and meekness always seek out guidance for wisdom that embraces righteousness.  

St. Thomas Aquinas writes that humility is a virtue that tempers and restrains the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately…and strengthens the mind against despair [to] urge it on to the pursuit of great things according to right reason. (S.T. II, ii, 161, i.) And meekness mitigates the passions of anger and envy. Humility moderates and secures the mind in measured pursuit of goodness. Meekness defuses exasperated rage and malevolence. The two virtues inspire the soul to seek God’s Goodness with due measure and in proportion to human life. If a man strives excessively and immoderately after high things in ways beyond his capacity and ability, he will fall flat on his face. Beware of the ancient Greek Daedalus, who constructed the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete to imprison the Minotaur. Daedalus’ clever craftsmanship got the better of him when it became his own prison because he had tried to kill the king’s enemy. Pasiphae, the Queen, released Daedalus, who then made wings for himself and his son Icarus so that they could fly from Crete. Daedalus, chastened and with newfound humility and meekness, warned his son to fly midway between the sea and the sky. Should he fly too close to the water, he would drown. Should he fly too close to the sun, his wings would melt. In the end, Icarus became so enamored of the sun’s beauty that he forgot himself, ignoring his father’s guidance. He was doubly damned. His wings melted and he fell into the depths of the sea. Man is made to acknowledge that heights and depths are revealed to human nature to find the mean between two extremes. If man is bound by fear and keeps too close to the water, he will perish. If man’s pride moves him to fly too high and close to the sun, he will perish. Humility seeks guidance to find God’s goodness. Meekness submits to it.

St. Anthony Abbott, the founder of Monasticism, whose guidance helped to form the soul of the early Church, had his own version of Icarus’ fate. He writes that because of the pride of angels and men, the heavens fell, and the earth’s foundations were shaken. As a result, Hell was made to house men and angels whose pride had rejected God’s guidance. 

In St. Anthony’s exposition of the Bible, pride is an intellectual vice that finds its origin in Lucifer’s first rebellion against God. Prior to God’s creation of all other things, angels submitted to God’s guidance. There was nothing to tempt or distract them away from God! Of course, God’s guidance is His power, wisdom, and love. The proud angels envied God’s nature and were angry that He alone was in possession of it. Because they rejected God’s Grace-filled guidance, they fell.
Man, too, has fallen. The humble man knows because all men have sinned with Adam, rejecting God’s guidance, they have fallen from Grace. With St. Anthony, he knows that fallen man has deceived himself into thinking that he can save himself. He needs meekness to submit again to God’s guidance. Meekness is a patient and calm disposition that prayerfully knows its weakness and the need for God’s Grace for wholeness. The humble and meek must reject self-will run riot and look for God’s assistance.

The humble and meek who know themselves to be powerless over sin without guidance are like the man with the dropsy in this morning’s Gospel reading. Dropsy is edema, a swelling caused by fluid in the body’s tissues. It renders a man incapable of movement. The humble and meek man identifies with the dropsical man and sees in his fleshly powerlessness a spiritual illustration of human weakness. He senses that the man with the dropsy is a spiritual image for his own swelling sin tormenting his soul. Like the man afflicted with the dropsy, the humble and meek man seldom finds healing and restoration on the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath Day for the ancient Jews and, sadly, for many contemporary Christians often seems more about ritual than redemption. Of course, in Jesus’ day, if the Pharisees’ asses, oxen, dogs, or cats needed rescuing on the Sabbath, the Pharisees wouldn’t hesitate to help them. But how little time they had for lowering themselves to stoop down, help, and minister God’s healing power to the suffering and afflicted, especially on the Sabbath Day.
 
Jesus is not like the Jewish Pharisees. He comes down from Heaven into our sickness and suffering every day, and especially on the Sabbath Day. Jesus brings down God’s healing power from Heaven, lowers Himself to find us, to minister to us, because He fully intends to ask us to come up higher. (St. Luke xiv. 10) Jesus always wants to lift us out of our spiritual suffering and onto the high road that leads us to the Kingdom.

Today we pray for the humility and meekness that needs Christ’s guidance. We must humbly confess that we are sick with the spiritual dropsy. We must embrace that calm, peace, and patience in meekness that will allow the Lord to heal our souls. We must become humble and meek like St. Paul in this morning’s Epistle. He is a prisoner of the Lord, chained by free will to the lowliness and meekness of Jesus Christ. (Eph. iv. 1) His humility and meekness enable him to imitate Christ on His Cross. Abandoning any pride in himself, St. Paul’s humility and meekness fall down and take the lowest seat at Christ’s crucifixion to submit to His guidance because He knows that Christ alone can conquer his sin and death.

Taking the lowest seat is a good place from which to contemplate Christ and His love. The lowest seat enables us to realize our earthly limitations and to pursue more earnestly Christ’s mercy. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.(2 Cor. v. 14, 15)  From the lowest seat, we see that Christ has died for us. His guidance leads us to discover that His death has conquered our sin. His guidance invites us to join Him in His death. We take our low seats because Christ first took the lowest seat of unjust suffering and shame to destroy our pride. Christ’s guidance will strengthen our minds against despair and urge us on to the pursuit of great things…. (St. Thomas, Idem) 

The great things we pursue is the Kingdom of Heaven and communion with our God. Christ came down from Heaven to minister to those who are sick, need a physician, have been humbled by the humiliation of their sin, and are rendered meek in anticipation of what He might do. Through humility and meekness Christ lowers Himself to die to sin on the Cross. From here, He shares His humility and meekness so that we can die to it also.

Let us follow the guidance of Christ’s humility and meekness today as we confess our true nature and need. In Christ, we can accept God’s guidance with deepest gratitude. God’s wisdom guides us into His righteousness. Through it, we can leave behind the exaggerated ego’s soaring pride to embrace what we need most for salvation. If we humbly go with Jesus to His Cross, all earthly riches become worthless. If we go with Jesus to His Cross, we wait with meekness for Christ’s guidance to find a greater treasure. We pray that God’s Grace might always prevent and follow us, (Collect Trinity XVII) because this alone opens our eyes to Christ’s love. The invitation so overwhelms us, that we know not what to expect. But we are surprised by joy as we begin to see that Christ’s guidance on the Cross leads us into a good spiritual death, beginning here and now. We see that Christ was made low, but is in truth lifted up high, to invite us to join Him as we begin the journey home to Heaven, even on this the Sabbath Day.
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin