Trinity 17 2026

Text: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11).

I. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

You and I are not quite as obvious about seeking the place of honor as the people in Jesus’ story. But that does not mean that we’re immune to exalting ourselves.

Imagine walking into a dinner where there are no assigned seats and you do not know anyone. You see someone who is obviously important. He’s dressed well. Everyone seems to know who he is.

Across the room is another stranger. He doesn’t look particularly impressive. Nobody seems to know him. Maybe he’s sitting there all by himself, with plenty of empty chairs around him.

Where would you sit?

You do not consciously look for the place of honor. But you’re still making judgments, aren’t you?

Now change the situation. This time you know everybody in the room. Where do you sit?

You start looking for your friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes there is another calculation going on: I’m not sitting next to him.

In both cases, we’re doing the same thing. We’re assigning the places. We’re deciding who is worth drawing near to and who isn’t. We are exalting ourselves.

You can do that if you want. Our sinful nature certainly wants to. You can spend your life assigning yourself the higher place and assigning lower places to the people around you.

But are you really willing to do that before God? Are you really comfortable claiming a place for yourself and taking the risk of hearing the God say, “No, you give your place to this person”? Do you really want God to send you, in shame, to the lowest place?

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.”

That is about more than just avoiding embarrassment at a dinner. It is a warning about your standing before God. Every place we assign ourselves eventually gives way to the judgment of the One who really is the Judge. Before Him, you don’t get to assign your place.

II.

But thankfully, that isn’t all Jesus says.

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

And there is no one in whom those words are more perfectly fulfilled than Jesus Himself.

There was no higher place for Him to seek. He already possessed, by His nature, the highest place of all. God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. He had every right to the glory and honor and majesty of God because He is God.

And what did He do with that place?

Paul says that He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant.” He “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The One who possessed the highest place took the lowest. The Lord became the servant. The Judge stood under judgment. The Lord of life entered death.

And then: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” The crucified Christ is risen. The servant is Lord. Jesus’ words are fulfilled perfectly in Jesus Himself: “He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

But Christ did not take that lowest place simply to give you an example of humility. He took it for you. He took your sin, your shame, and your death upon Himself.

These words of our Lord are more than just a biblical principle. They are a promise. They are a promise to you. He did not humble Himself only for the purpose of exalting Himself. He humbled Himself in order to exalt you. He “made us alive together with Christ” and “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

He seated you.

You don’t have to find your place. You don’t have to seize it. You don’t have to prove that you deserve it by comparing yourself with the person beside you. Christ humbled Himself for you, and now, joined to Him, you have been raised with Him and seated with Him.

“Friend, move up higher.”

That is what He has done for you in your Baptism. He has joined you to Himself. He has made you His own. Christ has given you your place.

And that changes more than the way you stand before God. Because Christ has not given you a place that you occupy by yourself. He has placed other people beside you.

And that is where these words of Jesus become very concrete indeed.

III.

Here we come to something that has been weighing on my mind for some time. Because where the rubber meets the road in all of this talk about exalting ourselves and humbling ourselves is in our relationships with one another.

And right now, within this congregation, there are strained relationships. There are people who avoid one another. People who have been hurt and people who are angry. Families that are strained or breaking. Some of those divisions are recent. Others have been there for quite a while.

And some of you may be a little uncomfortable right now. You may be sitting there thinking, Yikes. Pastor is talking about me. I will not try to say that I’m not.

I am.

What I will say is that I’m talking about you… and a lot of other people sitting here today.

It is easy to talk about humility in the abstract. It is much harder when the person sitting beside you has hurt you, disappointed you, angered you, or sinned against you. Relationships are where humility becomes concrete.

You heard St. Paul a few minutes ago: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Notice where Paul puts humility: right in the middle of our life together. And notice that phrase, “bearing with one another.” Paul knows that life together is not easy. If someone never irritates you, disappoints you, misunderstands you, or sins against you, then you do not have to ‘bear with’ them, do you?

The question is what we do when those things happen. Do I need to put myself above you? Do I need to become the judge who decides that you are no longer worth hearing, no longer worth speaking to, no longer worth seeking peace with? Or, because Christ has already given me my place, can I afford to come down? Can I bear with you? Can I be patient? Can I seek peace?

And then notice another word Paul uses: “maintain.” He tells us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Thankfully, Christian unity does not depend upon Christians never hurting one another. If it did, there would be no Christian unity anywhere. Paul does not tell us to create that unity. Christ has already given it. “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” Christ has joined us to Himself, and in doing so He has joined us to one another.

That does not mean we will always agree. It does not mean everyone in this congregation has to be your closest friend. There are real sins, even among God’s people. There may be wounds that take time to heal. There may be conversations that still need to happen. There may be boundaries that need to remain in place. Trust may not be restored quickly—or perhaps ever fully restored in this life. Sometimes the other person may refuse every effort you make toward peace.

But none of that is the same thing as deciding, I will not be reconciled to you.

There is an enormous difference between saying, I want to be reconciled, but I don’t know how yet, and saying, I will not be reconciled. We cannot simply decide that reconciliation is off the table.

And that distinction becomes especially serious as we prepare to come to this altar.

There are times when the Church should tell someone that he should not receive the Lord’s Supper. There are a number of reasons why that may be necessary. But it is never a punishment. The Sacrament is not a weapon that we use to make someone behave. And it is not because you need to have your life put back together before you are worthy to receive Christ’s body and blood. None of us could come if that were the standard.

The concern is precisely the opposite. This is Christ’s body and blood, given for the forgiveness of sins. And because it is Christ’s body and blood, Scripture warns us not to receive it carelessly or impenitently. St. Paul tells us to examine ourselves before we eat and drink, because it is possible to receive this gift not for our blessing, but to our judgment.

And one of the things that we are called to examine is our relationship with one another.

You may have a conflict that is not settled. You may have wounds that have not healed. You may not even know yet how reconciliation can happen. None of those things, by themselves, prevent you from coming to the Lord’s Table.

But you cannot come to this altar determined that a conflict will never be settled.

To say, I will not be reconciled to you, is to refuse to repent. And we cannot deliberately hold on to our sin while coming to receive the body and blood Christ gave for the forgiveness of that sin. If you are determined that you will not be reconciled, then you would come to the Lord’s Table for your harm rather than for your blessing. You should not receive the Sacrament until you are willing to repent.

And that is why we’re going to do something unusual this morning.

Part of the reason we’re using Divine Service Setting One today is because of a rubric found on page 159. You can look at it if you’d like. Right after the Prayer of the Church, there are some words printed in red italics. That’s a rubric—an instruction for conducting the service. It is not something we are required to do, but it is something the liturgy gives us the opportunity to do. It says, “Following the prayers, the people may greet one another in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘Peace be with you,’ as a sign of reconciliation and of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

The sign of peace is an ancient part of the Church’s liturgy. Christians have been exchanging the peace with one another from very early in the life of the Church, particularly in connection with gathering around the Lord’s Supper. In our day, that practice has sometimes turned into little more than an opportunity to say hello to the people around you. But that isn’t really what this is. It is a sign of reconciliation and of our unity in Christ. By the way, notice the Scripture reference that our hymnal cites for those words is Ephesians 4:1–3—the very Epistle appointed for us this morning.

In a moment, we are going to follow that rubric. I’ll have you stand and greet one another—not in our usual way, but in the ancient way. With a word of peace.

Now, before we do, let me be very clear about what I am—and what I am not—asking you to say. When you say to someone, “Peace be with you,” you are not saying, Nothing happened.You are not saying, It didn’t hurt. You are not saying, You were right and I was wrong. You are not promising that everything between you will immediately go back to the way it was before. And you are not pretending that thirty seconds during the Divine Service can accomplish everything that may still require difficult conversations, confession and absolution, time, patience, or the rebuilding of trust.

But you are saying something. “Peace be with you” says, I do not want enmity between us. I do not want to stand over you as your judge. I will not decide that peace between us is impossible. I am willing to seek reconciliation with you. And whatever still needs to be said, whatever still needs to be worked through, whatever wounds may remain, I want to live with you in the unity Christ has given us.

That may sound like a very small thing. In some cases, it may be an enormous thing.

We can speak that peace to one another because peace did not begin with us. Christ made peace with you. Not after you had repaired everything. Not after you had made yourself worthy of Him. Not after you had worked your way into a place at His table. The One who possessed the highest place humbled Himself, became a servant, and went all the way to the cross for you. And there, through His blood, He made peace between you and God. And now He brings you to His Table.

So, instead of concluding the sermon with the blessing that I ordinarily speak, I am going to invite you to stand. Before we do anything else, we will take a moment in silence to pray for the unity of this congregation, and for the unity of Christ’s Church everywhere.

Then I will say to you, “Peace be with you.” And I will invite you to greet one another with those same words.

Everyone can do it. This is not just for those who have an argument with someone. Greet the people you know. Greet the stranger you don’t know. If there is no division between you, then those words affirm the unity Christ has already given you and remind you that this person beside you is your brother or sister in Christ. If the person with whom you especially need to be reconciled isn’t here this morning, speak Christ’s peace to those who are here, and let those words strengthen your willingness to seek peace with the one who isn’t. But if there is someone here with whom there has been division, perhaps those words can be a beginning.

You don’t need to seek someone out in order to make a point. You don’t need to make a public display of a private conflict. Simply greet one another as people whom Christ has made one: “Peace be with you.”

After we have given sufficient time, we will continue with the offering and the offertory, then we will come together to His Table.  Because “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” And the Host has given you your place. “Friend, move up higher.”

So I invite you now to stand. And let us maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.