Ephesians 1:16-23, Luke 14:1-11, and John 1:11-18 — Fifth Sunday of Advent
You are standing on the threshold. Advent’s fifth week brings you to the edge of the Incarnation itself, and these readings converge on a single question that pierces through all your spiritual pretensions: Have you made room? Not in your theology, not in your correct opinions about Christ, but in the actual architecture of your inner life—have you created space for God to arrive, or is every seat already taken by the self you perform for others?
When Jesus enters the Pharisee’s dinner party in Luke’s account, He walks into a room arranged by anxiety. Everyone is calculating their position, measuring their importance, securing their status. The scramble for the best seats is not merely social awkwardness—it reveals the interior condition of souls that have filled every available space with self-promotion, leaving no room for the Guest who matters. When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him (Luke 14:8). This is not etiquette advice. This is spiritual diagnosis.
You do this constantly. You fill the interior rooms of your heart with accomplishments, with how you want others to perceive you, with the curated version of yourself that maintains control. You sit in the high seat of your own self-regard, defending territory, managing image, protecting against the shame of being revealed as less than you pretend. And all this frantic positioning leaves no space for the One who actually wants to dwell there. The Incarnation cannot happen in a heart with no vacancy.
John’s prologue names this with devastating precision: He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him (John 1:11). This is not merely historical fact about first-century rejection. This is the perpetual human condition—the tragedy of God arriving and finding every room occupied by lesser things, every seat claimed by false versions of self, no space prepared for divine indwelling. His own property refuses its Owner. His own house locks Him out. Not through active hatred but through the passive fullness of a life already completely furnished with ego.
Maximos the Confessor teaches that “the human person is a workshop where all creation comes to be filled with the divine.” But the workshop must be empty enough to work in. You cannot transfigure what you refuse to surrender. You cannot be filled with what you have no room to receive. The humility Jesus prescribes—go and sit down in the lowest place (Luke 14:10)—is not self-abasement but strategic emptying. You descend from the false throne you have been defending so that the true King can finally arrive and lift you to where you actually belong.
This is why Paul prays for the Ephesians that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (Ephesians 1:18). The enlightenment required is not more theological information but vision to see what you have been defending against: that your inheritance is not secured by maintaining status but by receiving what God has already prepared in you. The glory is not something you achieve through positioning; it is something that arrives when you finally stop filling space and allow yourself to be filled.
Notice the pattern in John: But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name (John 1:12). Receiving precedes becoming. You cannot become what you refuse to receive. The children of God are not those who successfully performed godliness but those who made room for divine life to enter the hollowed-out places they stopped defending. The Incarnation requires your participation, not through effort but through surrender—through the humility that creates capacity.
Gregory of Nyssa writes, “He who in his poverty has received the wealth of the Godhead makes room in his wretchedness for that transcendent power.” Your poverty is not obstacle but prerequisite. The wretchedness you have been hiding, the shame you have been managing, the wounded child you have been suppressing—these are not disqualifications from divine indwelling but the very places prepared to receive it. God does not arrive in the rooms you have made presentable. He comes to the basement you have been avoiding, the storage closet packed with denied grief, the crawl space where your rage lives.
This is the inner work that Advent demands in its final days. You must feel what you have been avoiding. The scramble for the high seat at the dinner party is not really about social status—it is about terror of being seen as you actually are, the panic of exposure, the childhood wound that convinced you love is conditional on performance. When Jesus says sit in the lowest place, He is inviting you to stop the exhausting performance and face what you have been running from: the fear that if you are not impressive, you are not valuable. That if you are not in control, you will be destroyed. That if you are not defending territory, you have no ground to stand on.
But here is the revelation that the Incarnation announces: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory (John 1:14). Glory does not arrive through your successful defense of self-importance. Glory arrives when the Word takes up residence in your flesh—in this body, this woundedness, this history you carry. The dwelling of God happens in matter, in time, in the specific brokenness of your actual life. Not the version you perform for others but the one you live in private, where the scramble for seats reveals the terror underneath.
Athanasius declares, “God became human so that humans might become God.” But notice the order: God descends first. The Incarnation is not you climbing to divine heights through correct positioning but God entering your depths and transfiguring from within. The humility Jesus teaches mirrors the humility God displays. The highest does not demand that you ascend to meet Him; He descends to meet you where you actually are—in the lowest place, where you have finally stopped pretending.
This is why Paul prays for power: and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20). The same power that raised Christ from death is working in you now. Not power to maintain your position but power to undergo the death of false self and rise as who you actually are. Resurrection power works through descent first—death before life, emptying before filling, humiliation before exaltation.
The cosmic scope of this truth is staggering. When Paul declares that God put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23), he is revealing that your personal transformation participates in universal reality. The humility that creates space in your heart is not private spiritual work disconnected from cosmic transformation. Your willingness to vacate the false throne participates in Christ’s cosmic lordship—the rearrangement of all things according to their true nature, with God finally filling space previously claimed by pretenders.
Creation itself is groaning for this revelation. Every creature scrambling for position, every system of domination, every structure of pride—all of it is the dinner party chaos writ large, the universal scramble for seats that should remain empty until the Host assigns them. Your inner work of descending to the lowest place participates in creation’s movement toward its true order. When you stop defending territory and allow yourself to be rearranged by grace, you are not merely improving your spiritual life—you are collaborating with the cosmic reconciliation that places Christ as head over all things.
Basil the Great teaches that “the Spirit gives Himself by measure, adapted to the capacity of the receiver.” This is why humility is not weakness but wisdom. By descending to the lowest place, you increase your capacity to receive. The high seat you were defending had no room for the Spirit’s fullness; it was already occupied by the version of yourself you thought you had to perform. The lowest place is spacious. It has room for grief, rage, shame, terror—and therefore room for the divine presence that transforms all these through transfiguring encounter.
Notice what happens in Luke’s account: For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14:11). This is not arbitrary divine punishment and reward. This is revelation of how reality actually works. You cannot be lifted to your true dignity while clinging to false dignity. You cannot receive your inheritance while defending stolen territory. The exaltation God offers requires hands empty enough to receive it. And you can only empty your hands by letting go of what you have been white-knuckling: the need to be impressive, the terror of being seen, the performance that exhausts you.
John Chrysostom writes, “When you see your Lord humble, do not seek your own exaltation.” The Incarnation itself is God choosing the lowest place—not the palace but the stable, not the throne but the manger, not accompanied by armies but by shepherds and animals. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17) specifically because He emptied Himself of the glory that was rightfully His to make room in creation for creatures who had no room for Him. Divine humility creates space for human exaltation. God descends so you can rise—not by climbing but by being lifted from the depth where you finally stopped pretending.
This is the Advent preparation in its most radical form. You are not decorating for a guest you want to impress. You are demolishing the furniture you thought made you presentable. You are vacating seats you have been defending. You are creating room where there was none—not by building more but by emptying what is already there. The Christ child requires a womb, a space carved out of your fullness, a darkness willing to become pregnant with light.
And here is the promise that makes this possible: And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace (John 1:16). The fullness you receive is not reward for perfect emptying. It is the gift that enables your emptying in the first place. Grace meets you before you have successfully humbled yourself. Divine presence arrives in the midst of your scramble for seats, not after you have perfectly descended. You can risk the lowest place because you have already been seen there and loved. The humiliation you fear has already happened—Christ entered it completely in His Incarnation—and it did not destroy you. It revealed your glory.
So sit in the lowest place. Not as performance of false humility that is really pride in disguise, but as honest acknowledgment of where you actually are. Feel the terror this brings up—the childhood wound that says you are only valuable if impressive, the shame that drove you to defend territory in the first place. Bring the Jesus Prayer into that lowest place: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Let divine presence meet you in the basement, the crawl space, the hidden room packed with everything you have denied. This is not technique but theurgic encounter—inviting the Word to become flesh in your flesh, to dwell in the specific brokenness you carry.
The Pharisee’s dinner party is happening in your heart right now. The guests are scrambling, defending, positioning. And Christ is watching, waiting to see if you will vacate the high seat you have been exhausting yourself to maintain. When you finally do—when you feel the terror and do it anyway, when you stop performing and risk being seen, when you descend to where you actually are rather than where you pretend to be—He will say what He says to all who make room: Friend, go up higher (Luke 14:10). Not because you earned it through perfect humility but because the space you created can finally receive the fullness that has been waiting all along to fill you, to exalt you, to reveal you as the glory you were always meant to become. This is the Incarnation, transfiguration, theosis, exaltation, kenosis, humility, grace, fullness, descent, and glory that Advent prepares you to receive.
The Greater Horizon 