The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Luke 14:1 It happened that when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Him closely. 2 And there in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy. 3 And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” 4 But they kept silent. And He took hold of him and healed him, and sent him away. 5 And He said to them, “Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?” 6 And they could make no reply to this. 7 And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them, 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, 9 and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. 10 But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” 12 And He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment. 13 But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (NASB)
It was a normal day in the life of Jesus. For most of us, it would be a very difficult way to live, but for Jesus it was just another day at the office. People of ill will were constantly watching Jesus with a critical eye. They laid in wait, waiting for Him mess up. They wanted something/anything they could use to hurt His credibility. We know how that works. In the school of thought known as ethical/psychological egoism, there is a principle that goes like this. Once you accept a proposition about someone, you interpret everything that person says and does in light of that proposition. Once you accept the idea that a person is selfish and self centers, or a racist, or suffers from some kind of phobia, and so on, then you see everything he or she does in light of that real or impute trait.
Christians in general and Lutherans in particular have a guard against doing that. It’s the Eighth Commandment. Remember your Small Catechism?
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. What does this mean?–Answer. We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
As a group the Pharisees were a particularly self righteous lot. They had a beliefs and a religious system and Jesus was a threat to that system. They regarded Him as a heretic and they wanted some kind of indictable action. Sometimes they weren’t willing to just lay in waiting for Jesus to make a mistake. They were proactive about it. They wanted to bait Him and trap Him.
We have laws against entrapment. Law enforcement, district attorneys, and judges aren’t suppose to set up a set of circumstances that unduly influences a person to commit a crime. (We seem to be having a bit of problem with that kind of thing lately, but I digress.)
In the Gospel lesson before us this morning, Jesus “went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Him closely. 2 And there in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy.” Dropsy is old fashion word for an “edema.” An edema is an excess accumulation of fluid in tissue. Edema can be a non-emergency situation or a sign of a very serious and life threatening condition. This seems to be a case of the former not the later.
We aren’t told how it is that the man came to in the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath, but given the way St. Luke records the conversation and what Jesus says and does next certainly has the look of a set up.
There’s Jesus in a Pharisees’s house. It’s the Sabbath. The religious elite of the town are watching Him closely waiting for a mistake. There in front of Jesus sits a man who could use the healing hand of Jesus. Jesus’s reputation for miraculous healing and for being a compassionate and merciful rabbi was well known. Put a sick person in front of Jesus and He’ll likely be moved to action.
Usually the challengers would put a trick question to Jesus. They try to solicit from Him an answer that ran contrary to the accepted orthodoxy of the day so they could accuse Him of heresy and sedition. But this time Jesus beats them to the punch.
Jesus asked the 3 “lawyers and Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?’ 4 But they kept silent. And He took hold of him [the sick man] and healed him, and sent him away.” Jesus knows that what He was about to do would be offensive to His host and the other religious elite. They were looking to take offense. Yet, He does it anyway. Today we are told the greatest offense is “giving offense” against some whose life is built around taking offense over pretty much anything. But take note, the fact that some will be offended by what Jesus is about to do, doesn’t stop Jesus from doing it because He is both merciful and fearless. So ought the Christian be. Stop being afraid. If it is good and right, merciful and true, then speak it and do it.
Jesus heals the man and follows up the healing with an argument that is simple and to the point. “Is it lawful to show mercy, to help, and to rescue a fellow human being on the Sabbath rest?” It is more than lawful. It is loving and merciful. This is the argument Jesus makes. 5 “Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?”
6 “And they could make no reply to this.” They couldn’t find fault with what Jesus had done or just said. They knew there were exceptions to the Sabbath laws in the Old Testament and they understood that those exceptions were based on mercy and life.
Jesus here shows that all that God the Father gives and commands is for our good. The lawyers and Pharisees were all about rules, regulations, and traditions and discrediting, silencing, and crushing any one who dared challenged the religious, philosophical, and moral systems of the day. They made men slaves to their laws. They used the law at the expense of love, mercy, and faith.
But Jesus puts into practice here what He said in another circumstance in Mark 2:27-28 “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The Gospel reading this morning consists of a two part lesson. Jesus starts with a lesson in mercy and the right use of the law, but moves on from there. Having just taught a lesson in God’s mercy, Jesus sees more guests arriving for the Sabbath meal. As they arrive, the guests jockey for position. They start competing for the places of honor. So Jesus tells a parable about a wedding feast and the choosing of the place to sit. 8 “Do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place.”
Jesus is teaching more than just manners. Parables are not morality tales. They are a particular kind of allegory/story told by Jesus as a way to teach, compare, and contrast the kingdom of heaven from the way this things are and work in this world.
Jesus uses the image of a wedding feast a lot in parables. The wedding feast in His parables represent the church and salvation, both here in time and there in eternity. We just had a real time, concrete example of God’s disposition toward us. He is merciful. He forgives and heals. He is a rescuing God. His commandments are for our good. It is not only permissible to heal on the Sabbath, it is in fact what the Sabbath is all about. The church service, a proper and real church service is about God’s gives of mercy, Christ, the Word, the Gospel, baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. An act of mercy is what the Sabbath is in itself. It is God’s act of mercy healing toward us.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The Catechism: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise the preaching of His Word, but regard it as holy, and gladly hear and learn it.” The Third Commandment is God’s direction to Christians that we are to meet regularly to hear His Word, receive the forgiveness of sins, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It is in the Word and Sacrament ministry that we receive God’s mercy and healing, the kind of mercy and healing we need on account of our sin.
But now Jesus moves us to one of the byproducts of God’s mercy. So if it was and is God’s grace and mercy that brings us into the banquet hall, the church then there’s no reason to jockey for positions of honor. If all starts with and proceeds from God’s mercy in Christ Jesus, then there is no reason for places or works of honor. God has done all in Christ Jesus.
You want to know why we wake up time and time again to another story of mass shootings and murder. It’s because we have created a culture that does not breed love, mercy, humility, gratitude, and selflessness. Instead our culture glorifies selfishness, violence, death, and disrespect for life.
Our Lord did not bring us into His church so that we could fight for the positions of honor and praise. We don’t even have to enter the competition that is out there in the world. We have been forgiven by grace alone. We are children of the heavenly Father. We didn’t become children of the heavenly Father by any merit or worthiness in us. We weren’t called into the kingdom of light because we were honorable people or because her had any glory of our own. Speaking to Pastor, but applicable to all Christians, Luther wrote;
The Gospel was not given that we might seek our own praise and glory through it or that the common people might praise us, its ministers, on account of it. But it was given that through it the blessing and glory of Christ might be illuminated, that the Father might be glorified in His mercy, which He has shown us in Christ, His Son, who He gave up for us and with whom He has given us all things. Therefore the Gospel is the sort of teaching in which the last thing to look for is our own glory. It sets forth heavenly and eternal things which do not belong to us which we have neither made nor earned.
The Gospel does not produce pride, but rather humility. Humble people aren’t selfish and demanding people. Folks, there’s an awful lot people inside and outside the church who believe they are entitled to whatever their little selfish hearts’ desire. Free this or free that. They even believe they shouldn’t have to hear things with which they disagree or hurt their feelings. They think they are entitled to a life free from offense, challenge, and contradiction.
Inside the church, we have had to live with three or four generations of parishioners who think they were entitled, the deserved a pastor more to their liking. Someone who would tickle their ears with a more pleasing doctrine, or who would be a respecter of persons– especially people who put more money in the plate, or who had been life long members, or founding members, and so on.
In the Gospel reading this morning, Jesus said, 11 “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” In Matthew 18:4 He said, “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Psalm 25:9 “He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way.”
Galatians 6:3; “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”
All begins with God’s mercy in Christ Jesus our Lord. Listen to words from some of the collects we pray throughout the church year.
“O God, who declares Thine Almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.” “Almighty and everlasting God . . . pour down upon us the abundance of Thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask.”
“Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with Thy perpetual mercy.”
In this Gospel reading Jesus is not offering up a group of random thoughts. He is not engaging in a word association test. He is demonstrating how things are suppose to be and are in the kingdom of heaven. Where true mercy is shown, true humility ought to be present also.
To drive the point home, Jesus tells the host to invite those who cannot pay him back for the gifts they have been given. 13 “When you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” The world operates on quid pro quo, “this for that.” I give something so that sooner or later I get something in return.
If one has received the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation on account of the mercy given to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, then there is no place for boasting. Romans 3:27-28 “Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.”
If there is no place for boasting, for crediting all to God in Christ, then there is only humility, and if there is only humility then we ought to be marked by humility and faith. Philippians 2:4-6, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests [quid pro quo], but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.”
The places of honor at this table of the feast do not belong to those who choose them, but to those who are chosen by God. Each one of us deserves to be outside, scorned and humiliated and tormented. We are who we are and where we are by the grace of God. I am nothing, and I deserve nothing.
All begins with mercy, the mercy God has shown and given to us in the person and work of Christ and in the gifts of the Word and Sacrament ministry. Our sins have been forgiven. We are on the road to our healing. All began with mercy and goes from there.
Amen.
May the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.