Luke 14:1-14
Trinity 17
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
What is the purpose of getting friends and co-workers and neighbors together for a meal? Usually, it’s simply for the enjoyment of one another’s company. But sometimes, there can be other agendas at work. What benefit can I gain from the others here? How can I impress them and be built up in their eyes? How can I make use of this occasion and turn it to my advantage?
It’s that latter thing that is happening in today’s Gospel. I’m sure all who were present at this meal would have said they were friends. But they weren’t truly friends. For what were they doing? They were jockeying for position, wanting the top spot, jealous of where the others sat. In our equalitarian, American culture, seating positions aren’t emphasized quite as much–although everyone does usually want to be at or near the head table at the wedding or the awards dinner. Usually, though, you’ve got to look for other subtler signs of who’s in the position of top dog and who’s lower on the pecking order. But the same type of thing still goes on.
Jesus accepts the invitation to this Sabbath meal from a man who certainly is no real friend of His. For it says, they were watching Him closely, scrutinizing Him, looking for some flaw to exploit or for some advantage that they could gain from Him.
Now, it would be a tradition at meals such as this to leave your door open for a traveler or a poor person to come in if they wished to share in your meal. Of course, this act of piety was a nice symbolic thing, as long as some stranger or person in need didn’t take this seriously and actually come in. We’re all for charity for the poor until the poor are at our own doorstep. Government elites are all for large scale immigration, as long as it doesn’t affect them negatively in their gated communities. Giving a poor man some food at the bottom place or off in the corner could make him feel uncomfortable and speed up his departure.
It may well be that one such person shows up at this meal with Jesus. For a certain man with dropsy is there, a condition involving severe retention of fluid in the bodily tissues and joints and extremities. Jesus isn’t worried about impressing the others or climbing the social ladder. In all things He’s there to help the lowly. And so He says, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Is it OK for Me to help this man and make him glad?
Some there didn’t think so. Healing was work, and there was to be none of that on the Sabbath. The Pharisees had jacked up the requirements of what it meant to keep the Sabbath. The day of rest which God appointed for rejoicing in all of His good gifts they had made into a strict performance–only walk so many steps, only allow certain activities. By keeping their more demanding Sabbath standards, they could then compare themselves to others and find themselves superior–which was really nothing different than their jockeying for the better position at the tables.
And before we mock them for their silly, self-exalting ways, isn’t that exactly what we do if we use our church attendance as a way of trying to earn God’s favor? We try to exalt ourselves by that good work. And the reverse is also true. Some people skip church altogether because they want to engage in other recreational activities, or just to have a little “me time.” They think that’s where they’ll find their rest, rather than in Jesus. They think can do without divine service because they’re good enough on their own, by their own works. Pharisaism can afflict us all.
In spite of the Pharisees’ objections, Jesus heals the man anyway. And then He gives them an illustration, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” “That’s work. And yet you’d do that. How much more should I heal this human being who is in the pit of a bodily ailment and pain.” In the supposedly “higher” exercise of their religion, they were actually treating this man worse than they would treat an animal!
The fact of the matter is that what Jesus was doing was actually in perfect keeping with the Sabbath. For the whole purpose of this day of rest is for people to stop their work to focus on God’s work. The Pharisees failed to see that in Christ God was the one doing the work here. And that’s exactly what the Sabbath is all about. We stop our endless, futile efforts and striving so that we might receive good gifts from the Lord of the Sabbath–and not because we’ve got the top spot at the table or because we’ve earned some sort of reward for ourselves by our better living, but simply because Jesus is good and merciful and revels in giving Himself to us, even to those at the bottom of the table, even to us whose bodies and souls are deformed by sin, to us who are constantly justifying ourselves and exalting ourselves. He has come to release us from that bondage.
Colossians 2 says, “Sabbaths are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” The Old Testament day of rest points us forward to Him who is Himself our rest and our peace, namely, Jesus. So it’s not about following regulations, it’s about receiving the Gospel Word of the Savior who said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” To keep the Sabbath is to keep and hold on to Jesus and to hear and believe His Word.
That’s why the meaning to the third commandment in the catechism doesn’t mention anything about a day of the week at all, but rather states, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Again, the Sabbath day is about you stopping your work and your to-do list and your errands and your recreation and your entertainment–just stopping it all–and God doing His work on you and for you. And God’s work is to preach His words of repentance and forgiveness, to lead you to see your sin and to rely on Christ ever more deeply who died to make full payment for your sin. Coming to church is not your occasion to do something for God; it’s God’s occasion to do something for you.
For the fact of the matter is that when it comes to spiritual and eternal things, you are like that donkey or that ox that has fallen into the pit and cannot get out. You are in bondage to sin and death, and there’s not a thing you can do to get up over the edge and free. Your pawing at the sides only makes things worse. But Christ comes along on the Sabbath and by the power of His descent into the pit of death, He pulls you out through His resurrection, freeing you through the preaching of His Word of forgiveness and the supper of His living body and blood.
Coming to church, then, is not a Pharasaical burden but a divine gift. For Jesus is still exercising His authority to heal and restore you. It’s no wonder that so many people have such a hard time finding rest and peace in their hearts when they cut themselves off from the source by staying away from divine service for weeks and even months at a time. They don’t yet know the peace and the rest which passes all understanding and which transcends all the daily troubles of this life. There is no greater calm that one’s conscience can have than in hearing and believing, “Your sins are forgiven through the shedding of Christ’s blood, you are reconciled to God in Jesus. He is on your side. He is with you every day that you must yet live in this troubled and fallen world, and He will surely bring you through the crosses of life to share in His bodily resurrection.” That’s the sure word of Christ to you today. That is your Sabbath rest, the work of Jesus for you.
Only that work of Jesus can create true humility in us, that lowliness and gentleness toward one another that the Epistle speaks of. We can’t work it up in ourselves. In fact, even if we would make it our goal to become humble and work at it hard every day, we’d never ever be humble, because then we’d be paying attention to ourselves and our own improvement like the Pharisees, which is the opposite of humility. Anyone who thinks they’re really making progress at being humble and being a better Christian is bound to be a phony pain in the neck rather than a help to those who have to live with them and deal with them every day.
Only Jesus, true God, who humbled Himself to be born of a Virgin–only He is truly humble, gentle and lowly in heart. He gives freely and abundantly to us without calculating what’s in it for Him. And so humility is to be found only by living outside of yourself in Him. Only in Christ are you freed from the petty rivalries and the manipulating and using of people to show them real love, to do them good and to be a happiness for them without any calculation of their worthiness or whether or not you’ll get anything in return. That’s what Jesus is talking about when He says to invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to your feasts. Be free from considering what you’re going to get out of the deal, and simply pass on the good gifts of God for the benefit of others. By faith you receive the bounty of what God gives, no strings attached. By love you get to share His gifts with your neighbor, no strings attached.
It’s all grace, the undeserved love of Him who took the lowest place on the cross and has now been exalted to the highest place by His heavenly Father. And He has raised you up with Himself. It is written in Ephesians that you who believe are seated with Christ in the heavenly places–a reality that will be revealed to all at the close of the age. This is what Jesus means when He says, “He who humbles himself will be exalted.” You who in lowly faith follow Christ and share in His cross in this world will ascend with Him in the next and share in His everlasting life.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, even now Jesus is here among us at the head of the table. Take the lowest place, that is, come in all humility before God as a repentant sinner. Come empty-handed as the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, knowing that there’s no way you’ll ever be able to pay Jesus back, and you will be blessed. For to every penitent heart He speaks warmly, “Friend, go up higher.” “Come, share in My honor by receiving My own body and blood. Be filled with My forgiveness and My life. Here is your Sabbath rest and healing. Here is the foretaste of that Last Day when, in the resurrection of the body, you will go up higher forever.”
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠