In this week’s lectionary reading from the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus yet again heal on the sabbath, and then giving a lesson on humility to the pharisees, but how have the traditional interpretations missed the mark and kept power structures in place?
Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
Luke 14:1, 7-14 (NLT)
14 One Sabbath day Jesus went to eat dinner in the home of a leader of the Pharisees, and the people were watching him closely…
7 When Jesus noticed that all who had come to the dinner were trying to sit in the seats of honor near the head of the table, he gave them this advice: 8 “When you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t sit in the seat of honor. What if someone who is more distinguished than you has also been invited? 9 The host will come and say, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then you will be embarrassed, and you will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table!
10 “Instead, take the lowest place at the foot of the table. Then when your host sees you, he will come and say, ‘Friend, we have a better place for you!’ Then you will be honored in front of all the other guests. 11 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
12 Then he turned to his host. “When you put on a luncheon or a banquet,” he said, “don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors. For they will invite you back, and that will be your only reward. 13 Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 Then at the resurrection of the righteous, God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you.”
True Vs. False Humility
If I’m honest, at this point in my spiritual journey, I have a fair amount of trouble with Luke 14:11: “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” I’m totally down with the first part. I believe this, meaning, on some level, I have faith that this is true and will be true in the future in some deep fundamental sense. I have also lived it. Every time I have clawed and scraped under my own self-will in order to achieve something or position myself in some way, I have crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. It’s always easier to believe something you have first hand experience with.
But the second part feels…off.
In one of my all-time favorite tv shows, The Good Place (some light spoilers ahead), Brent is easily one of the worst characters on a show full of characters who are designed to show off the worst aspects of humanity (please comment below if you would enjoy an Enneagram and The Good Place series!). In order to get Brent to stop being a total tool, Eleanor and her team of Soul-Savers tell him that there’s a better place than The Good Place, and there’s a contest to see who can do the most good deeds. Brent, self-assured he belongs in the best place, goes about doing good deeds, not because they are the right thing to do, or because he believes in them, but because he wants to win.
When I read the second half of Luke 14:11, this is what I see happening with how we’ve interpreted it. On some level, this more literal interpretation seems useful! Like, this one is simple! Just humble ourselves, then we’ll be exalted! As an evangelica teenager, I took this to heart! I let kids cut in front of me in the school lunch line, I was always down to do the dirty work after youth group like putting away chairs, taking out the trash, and cleaning bathrooms. I wanted to get to the best place, and this verse gave me the road map, or so I thought.
What I didn’t realize is that I had gone from a race to the top to a race to the bottom. But it was still a race, a contest, a competition. I had to had to have to lowest seat at the table, because that meant I would store up my treasures in heaven. I, just like Brent, was doing good with a bad motivation.
Back in the world of The Good Place, Eleanor admits that her plan has a major flaw, the point system won’t register good deeds done with bad motivation. They’re only hope is that Brent will do enough good deeds to have some of the goodness sink in and shift his motivation over time. When I read the full context of Luke in this story, I have a sense that one level of Jesus’s teaching to the Pharisees kind of hits like this. He saw how wrapped up they were in their race to the top (like so many of us), Jesus redirected their race to the bottom in the hope that their motivations would shift over time.
I don’t believe this is a bad plan, but it’s not a sure thing, and it leaves a lot to be desired from one of the most important verses in the New Testament. So, how do we move deeper? If that was the plan for the Pharisees, what’s the plan for those of us who live on the margins? How do we interpret this verse to develop a change of heart and not just a change in direction?
A Better Why
In this story Jesus gives several instructions on humility and generosity, taking the lowest seat, inviting people who can’t repay you, etc. Most of us reading this story have an intuitive understanding that these are good things to do, but we aren’t always clear on why. It’s easiest to just say, “Because Jesus said so,” or, “Because then we’ll be exalted,” but these answers to why put us right back into the bad motivation camp.
In one of the most dramatic moments of the whole series, Brent is finally confronted by Chidi just moments before their eternal fates will be decided. Despite Brent doing so many good deeds on his quest to gain entrance to the best place, his motivation had not changed. His point total was actually getting worse because of it. But when Brent was confronted by Chidi, an amazing thing happened—his heart changed.
Brent’s mission to do the most good deeds kept him in close contact with a rag-tag group of afterlife-humans, who, over time, he built relationships with. Despite Brent’s shortcomings, he saw this group as his friends, and deep down, he cared about them. It was because of this relationship and his care (however buried underneath his bravado) that Chidi was able to get through to him and change his heart.
This is what I believe Jesus was getting at when he invited us to move to the “loser table” and invite the unexpected to our dinner parties. It’s not just to game some system, or win extra afterlife points. It’s because when we practice humility—even poorly—we open ourselves to relationships with people we would have otherwise overlooked. We find ourselves in solidarity with people we didn’t expect. These people, these relationships, this love we share with each other—these are what change us. When we find ourselves in this kind of unexpected loving community, we find that our lives look a lot more like the heaven we’re trying to worm our way into. Suddenly we don’t need to scam our way into The Good Place, because we’re already living in The Best Place right here and now.
When I was an evangelical teenager, I heard the message over and over that I should limit my relationships with people outside the church. They were dangerous. They would betray me. They would hurt me. They could not be trusted. Yes, yes, yes, help the poor and needy, but do it from a distance, otherwise you’ll be sucked in and led astray. But as I started to step out into the world beyond the Walmart at the edge of my small town, I realized that the people I was told to be afraid of were the ones who were the most loving. As I moved closer to the people I had kept at a distance, I heard them, I saw them, I empathized with their struggles. I moved into solidarity with them—and it changed me forever.
Loving relationship is what changes the world. But our hubris is always standing in the way. It may show up as fear, or an inflated ego, a sense of self-righteousness or hatred, but when we can set those things aside and move into proximity and connection with those we’ve kept at a distance—that’s when we’ll see things really change. Our race to the bottom becomes the ground of lasting transformation. This is the invitation Jesus is offering in this story. It’s not a cheat code to max out your afterlife points, but a sneaky way to develop more connection and loving relationship in our lives. Humility becomes Solidarity becomes Transformation.
Who is at the end of your table? Who do you think has nothing to offer you? How can you move closer to them? How can you practice humility and open yourself to new relationships?
The Good Place is freaking genius. I've watched it all the way through three times. I think they should teach it in seminary. And the way they end the series gets my vote for best conclusion ever. I love hearing your take on this scripture and how you've worked with it over the years. That's what makes wisdom literature so rich. We all see different things when we turn that jewel and let the light hit it. I remember first chewing on that passage as a teen. For me, then, "exalted" was a synonym for "free"...that if I could keep in check my impulse to self-aggrandizement (lifelong work!), I would know a kind of freedom that felt like exaltation.
Yes to Enneagram and Good Place.