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While you're busy fighting your way "up the ladder working for a "better life" for you and your children, and "keeping up with the 'Jones'" (or at least with your relatives), the Son of God took the "lowly place."

Another parable of our Lord's to reveal the Pharisee in all of us. He told it for the first time at the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees. It was spoken to the host and to the "jockey-ing" social-climbing invited guests. Today it is told to the hypocrites gathered here; all of us.

Adam and Eve exalted themselves, over and against their creator, and brought us all into the constant rebellion. It was Cain's anger over not being exalted in the eyes of the Lord that stoked his murderous rage. The opposite of a humble man is a vain man. Vanity, or pride, is the first sin; the sin of worshipping ME rather than God; the breaking of the First Table of the Law. Find me a man that is no longer struggling with his egoism, and I'll show you someone who's dead. Only by leaving this vale of tears, swamp of sin, will we cease to be puffed-up little Pharisees. Only in heaven will the "old natures" be gone for ever.

We go through our day-to-day lives consciously or unconsciously exalting ourselves. We desire to be taller, smarter, fitter, wealthier, and stronger, than the next guy. We want to be the best, and not so we can better love God and "SERVE" our neighbor, but so that we might be "served," or at least admired and rewarded. By nature we take the highest places. We crave and covet the best seats (ringside, or even up on the special dais with the dignitaries) the best cars, clothes, colleges, restaurants, vacation spots, and.......well the list is endless. While it's true that money, as money, is not the problem, and that physical things do provide us with the means to do our jobs, protect our loved ones, feed the family and allow us to be faithful in our vocations, our physical things far too often end up possessing us. Sin is in the heart not in the inanimate object. Sin is in chafing and feeling resentful when we don't get things our way. Sin in reality is arrested development, infantile behavior, and immature temper tantrums. Left to ourselves we would spend all our time fighting each other, physically, emotionally, metaphorically, to see who gets the best place around the pig trough, who gets the "first class" seats on the plane to hell.

For you, the Son of God took the lowly place; the lowliest of places. The Son of God humbled Himself so that He might exalt you. That's what Christianity is all about, that's what it means to be a follower, a disciple of Jesus. To belong to the Son of God means that you don't have to "do" anything. You can stop elbowing others out of the way, you can stop racing by all the other victims and scarred survivors...there's enough room for you in His loving arms; there's enough seating at the banquet table; and for you, the choicest of seats; there's more than enough food and drink--for a lifetime, yea for an eternity.

The Humility of the Word, was for you and your salvation: "Who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven. And was Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. And was made man; And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate..."

Jesus' thirty-three years of living, all that He did before His Easter Resurrection was a part of His "humiliation." The Incarnation, the taking on of flesh and blood from the Virgin into His Godhead, into the Divine Nature of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, that is not Christ "humiliating" Himself. No. There is nothing bad about the Lord taking Flesh and Blood. That's why He came, to restore its original image "in Him." When we speak of Christ's "humiliation" we mean the fact that for 33 years He veiled His Godhood and allowed Himself to feel pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness and other limitations of flesh and blood. Save for those few times when He was performing a miracle, Jesus' Body was subject to all the vicissitudes and burdens as your mortal tents. And He was tempted in every way that you are, so that you have an Advocate Who knows what it's like.

He humbled Himself and consented to obey Mary and Joseph, perfectly, all the time. This pays for the myriad of times that you disobeyed your own Mom and Dad. He humbled Himself by faithfully keeping all the Commandments--not with His God-super powers, but with His real Flesh and Blood. This pays for all of your arrogant rule-breaking and rationalized excuses. He humbled Himself by becoming a servant, a condemned criminal (declared a blaspheming, trouble-making, politically subversive traitor). He took the lowly place, the lowliest place. He humbled Himself to be lifted up on a wooden cross and tortured to death in front of His enemies. There was the King, abandoned, alone, the weight of your sins suffocating the life out of His precious body. There was the King totally humbled so that you this morning would be treated like royalty. By faith in your Savior, by the Grace of God you are his brothers and sisters. Please come now to the best seats at the table. Come to the front and be forgiven and fed and acknowledged as beloved.