Sermon: Trinity 17 – 2011 and Baptism of Celeste Ward

16 October 2011 at Salem Lutheran Church, Gretna, LA


Text: Luke 14:1-11 (Prov 25:6-14, Eph 4:1-6)

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Our Lord teaches us the importance of humility – which is the opposite of pride.

Pride is what got Lucifer expelled from heaven. Pride is what got Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden. Scripture teaches us that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride gets in the way of salvation. Pride turns away grace. Pride believes it is too good to receive charity. Pride is not only the greatest lure to hell, it is based on pure self-delusion.

Dear friends, we have nothing to be proud of. For we are Christians. We are helpless. We are beggars. We are recipients of charity. We are poor miserable sinners who are by our fallen nature, sinful and unclean.

Pride drove the lawyers and Pharisees to watch Jesus “carefully” to see if He would slip up and break the law. They laid in wait looking to catch Jesus doing a good work on the Sabbath. For their pride was so great that they thought they were better than Jesus. Instead of looking inward to their own very real sins, they looked outward at our blessed Lord, fishing for imaginary sins.

Our Lord teaches them the value of humility by comparing their attitude to someone who attends a social function sitting somewhere where he doesn’t belong. Eventually, the person holding the ticket shows up, and the impostor has to be escorted from the seat, red faced, hopefully to find any place at all among the cheap seats. For in God’s kingdom, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Again, dear brothers and sisters, we have nothing to be proud of. For we are Christians. We are helpless. We are beggars. We are recipients of charity. We are poor miserable sinners who are by our fallen nature, sinful and unclean.

Our Lord finds us on the bleachers and escorts us Himself to the front row. Our Lord takes our hand as we lie in the gutter and carries us into His Father’s house. Our Lord meets us in the shabby home of our sinful dying flesh and says to us: “friend, move up higher” as He gives us immortality in a resurrected, glorified body through the forgiveness of sins and His gift of everlasting life!

And this is a gift that is spurned by the proud and missed by the arrogant.

The most humble person in this sanctuary is the littlest and most helpless of all. Little Celeste has nothing to brag about. She does not own a beautiful house, drive a fancy car, have letters behind her name, does not possess great learning, nor does she have reporters following her every move armed with a camera – unless, of course, we count her rightfully pleased parents and other relatives. But Celeste is a helpless little girl, not mighty, not powerful, and not laden with personal possessions. But she, whose name means “heavenly” has a name by which her heavenly Father has called her.

And this is exactly why she is our great teacher, dear friends. Heavenly, helpless Celeste is here today teaching us how to be a Christian! Jesus Himself told us to look to the little ones who believe in him, and become like them. For this is how we come to the kingdom: with nothing to be proud of. For we are Christians. We are helpless. We are beggars. We are recipients of charity. We are poor miserable sinners who are by our fallen nature, sinful and unclean.

Celeste has today become a Christian the same way we did – with a splash of water and the mighty invocation of the Holy Trinity, all by the command and promise of Jesus! And we are to emulate this little saint, to trust, to receive, to have the Holy Name placed upon us, to be baptized and to be humble! None of us should boast any more than Celeste is boasting today – except that we can speak about our Savior. In Him is our only boast!

And this is precisely what St. Paul means when he exhorted our brothers and sisters in Ephesus to “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.”

This is only possible, dear brothers and sisters, because of what Jesus has done for Celeste and what He has done for us! For we have all fallen into a well, a trap of sin and death, and we were all pulled out on a day of rest and rescue; saved, redeemed, and brought into the kingdom by none other than the King Himself, being taken by the hand and led to a place of honor at the banquet.

For we are not lords, prancing about like peacocks, strutting and boasting. There is indeed only “one Lord” – the Lord Jesus Christ who has saved us; “one faith” – the holy faith delivered to the saints through which we are saved; “one baptism” – in whose waters we are reborn as helpless little children, yet also as heirs of the kingdom, made rich in the heavens by the grace of our “one God and Father of all,” who is indeed “Our Father who art in heaven,” who is also Celeste’s Father, she who has been made heavenly through this one baptism; “called to one hope,” brought into this “one body” and united with us in “one Spirit.”

Celeste has nothing to boast about, and yet she has everything to boast about! She has nothing of her own flesh to be proud of. But in the kingdom, her flesh has been united to our Lord’s flesh in Holy Baptism! And in Christ, she, along with the rest of us, have a genuine boast in Christ – the One who has called us to sit with Him in the place of honor at the banquet.

And though Satan was cast out, Celeste was invited in. Though the rich and boastful Pharisees were humbled, little Celeste (like children of the Father of every age) has been exalted. Though in our sins, we sinners have been expelled from the Garden of Eden, through the cross we the redeemed have been invited back to heavenly glory, to living waters, to the fruit of the tree of life, to the bread of heaven, and to riches upon riches that will have no end!

Dear friends, we have not put ourselves “forward in the king’s presence.” Nor have we stood “in the place of the great.” Rather in our humility and in our poverty of sprit, we have been brought to the font and told “Come up here,” invited to the heavenly regions, just as our heavenly sister in Christ has been invited and now reminds us about the kingdom.

Again, dear brothers and sisters, we have nothing to be proud of. For we are Christians. We have been helped. Our pleas have been heard. We have been shown mercy. We are recipients of the Lord’s grace and riches, given a new nature, washed by the water and cleansed by the blood – of Christ, by Christ, and in Christ.

And this is our boast, now and forever. Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.