The text this morning is from is from the Gospel according to Luke, the 14th chapter:
One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” And they could not reply to these things. Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Jesus sure seems to be a fan of Proverbs in the text today. And by that, I mean, it’s almost like He’s making up new proverbs, which, of course, He can, because He’s God. I mean, there are so many quotable things in the text. But, to just rip these out of context misses the fact that all of this is tied together very well. Let’s start at the beginning.
First, Jesus seems to be putting Himself into the lion’s den by going at eating at one of the head Pharisees’ house. Why would He do that? Doesn’t He know that these guys have been trying to break Him down, trying to trap Him, trying to catch Him in some blasphemy or some breaking of God’s Law? Well, of course He does. But you don’t bring people into repentance by hiding from them. If someone is breaking the law and you join them there, telling them that it was okay to embezzle $50,000 because they really needed it, all you do is make yourself an accessory to their crime. You don’t get them to realize how wrong they are. You don’t get them to return the money. You stand in the way of justice. But, if you warn that person that they have done wrong, you might be able to get them to repent.
In the same way, you don’t go and hide your head in the sand or try to escape someone who is coming after you. You face them head on. If they have false charges, let them throw them at you and see what sticks. If they’re bringing real, true charges against you, then you have the chance to repent. Either way, hiding from people never accomplishes anything.
Or, it’s like people who think that drinking alcohol is sinful. It certainly can be, if you get drunk, but, if you drink, they say you’re shaming the name of God. But is that God’s Law or is it something they’ve made up? Is that from God’s Word or is some restriction they’ve put on others so they can judge them to be Christians just like them? Of course, you know the answer.
Jesus is the same. He never hid from the Pharisees, but went to greet them so that He could show them what true religion was all about, which had nothing to do with making man-made laws about God and His Word and judging people by them. So, we find Jesus in the house. Whether this head Pharisee was a disciple of Christ, we don’t know, but we do know that there were a bunch of people who weren’t. They were watching Him. Jesus put Himself right in their crosshairs.
One of the men there had edema, where you get a fluid buildup somewhere in your body. Highly painful, indicative of other issues, Jesus took this man’s disease to make a point to the Pharisees. He’s God; He tells you what’s what. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Well, none of them did, and none of them could. I don’t just walk down the street touching people as I go and healing them of their infirmities, would that I could. Neither did the Pharisees. But, God can. God said to honor the Sabbath; the Pharisees did that by not working, which is a perfectly valid way for them to honor it. But they said no one could work on the Sabbath, concocted laws regarding that, and accused anyone who broke their laws, not God’s Law, of blasphemy. Here’s the question: can you heal on the Sabbath? God said nothing specifically about that. God didn’t need to, no one was able to do it. But healing, theoretically, is work. So, if God did heal someone, would He be guilty of breaking His Law? Would He be guilty of breaking the Pharisees’ laws?
And Jesus proved the answer by doing it. Healing the man and sending him on his way, Jesus proved Himself to be God before their very eyes, both in that He could heal and that He wasn’t struck down by God for doing so. It showed that God could not be held by man’s standards, and wouldn’t be. It had to make these who were trying to trap Jesus seethe. To their credit, they did it silently. They took their licks, even if they didn’t turn from their hatred.
And now, Jesus makes it worse. He turns it on them. Can they work on the Sabbath? If you have a son who is mortal danger, much less an ox, wouldn’t they do all the work they could to save them? One they love dearly, the inheritor of all they have, and their namesake, their legacy. The other, without which they would starve, for their animal does the heavy lifting on their fields. Of course they would save either one, and, while defiling their own laws, would leave it up to God to judge their righteousness. And they knew it. They knew that they would break their laws to save their own life and livelihoods. And they seethed again.
They knew there was nothing they could say to counter Jesus’ arguments. So, they said nothing. But Jesus isn’t finished. He’s about to put the last nail in their coffin. Knowing how much they love to be noticed and admired, He hits at their pride. He’s already taken on their arrogance in speaking for God. He’s already taken on their hypocrisy and hubris. Now He hits their pride before both man and God. They had already arranged themselves in accordance to honor, sitting themselves around their table so the greatest was at the head. But, Jesus points out the flaw in their logic: it is the master of the feast who decides who to honor, not you.
You ever been to a wedding where you have assigned seating at the reception? I once went to a wedding that I performed, where I was assigned a seat at the table in the back, against the wall, in the tightest of corners. Now, working on a Sunday morning as a pastor aside, I don’t like being the center of attention in groups. If I went to a party, I’d be more than happy just being a wallflower, so the seating at the wedding didn’t bother me at all. I was happy to sit there. When the bride and groom came in, and started doing their rounds before the meal was served, they saw immediately that I was in that spot. And they sent someone to tell me that I had been put in the wrong place, which probably was true. Instead of the last table, I was supposed to be up near the bridal party. Had I walked in there and put up a stink about being in the back, I doubt the mistake would have been rectified. Who would have cared? But the bride and groom were embarrassed that the pastor who just married them was shoved in the back for all to see, so they saw to it that their wishes were fulfilled.
So it was for the Pharisees, not that the people didn’t honor them, or that they didn’t rightly honor each other, but by all of their made-up laws, they dishonored themselves in the sight of God. It was like they went to God’s feast and put themselves in the best place, they took it for themselves. But, God has another seating plan. What it is, we don’t know, but, I’ll tell you this, we’ll all be fighting over the last seat at the Bountiful Feast. Sometimes, it’s good to be Lutheran: we always try to sit in the back of the Church. It’ll give us good practice for the future.
And now Jesus speaks to the head Pharisee: you do well to have a feast, but have a feast for those who can’t repay you. If you honor those who can repay you, you’ll end up feasting forever with everyone trying to repay the favor. Instead, give the feast for those who cannot repay in any way. A good reputation, a good witness, someone to stand up and tell God and others what you have done for them, is better than someone who’s constantly trying to compare you to them or vice versa.
The point of all of this should be clear to us: God is the one who judges. You will stand before God on the last day, and if you try to take honor for yourself, you will utterly fail. God doesn’t let you bring your own honor into His Kingdom, He doesn’t let you bring your own righteousness. Instead, He honors you with the righteousness of Christ. He brings you up from the end of the table to the head, to sit with Him in glory, to raise a worm like you from the dust and turn you into His bride. If we try to bring our own honor, our own works, our own good deeds, into the life which is to come, we will be shaken to the bottom so hard, we won’t even be in the room, which, as we heard last week, is not a good place to be. Better to be a servant in the house of the Lord than a lord outside in the darkness.
Jesus also makes it clear, as well, that God is able to do these things. If He can break the laws of man which have nothing to do with the laws of God, then there is nothing that can stop Him for caring for those whom He wishes to honor. You are dearer to Him than a son, and He will stop at nothing to bring you out of the harm of this world and into the safety of His eternal kingdom. And, being here, in this world, you are His workhorse, His ox, His beast of burden, doing His work in the harvest, bringing His Good News to all who would hear you. He would stop at nothing to make sure that you could keep doing what He’s called you to do.
And more than that, like Job and his friends, even like the Pharisees, we try to trap God. We try to show Him to be our enemy. Having fallen into sin, we declare God to be an enemy combatant. And it’s true. From our conceptions, we have made war against God. We struggle against Him in every way, whether it’s obedience to His Law, whether it’s putting restrictions on what we think is right or proper, like not drinking alcohol, whether it’s thinking too much of ourselves, whether it’s devaluing people in whose image God created them. We struggle and fight with God because we want to be our own judge. We even go so far as to accuse Him of not being righteous. We’re worse than the Pharisees, if we’re honest.
But, Jesus didn’t hide from you. He didn’t go and ignore you. He didn’t treat you like you don’t exist. Instead, He came among you. He took on your own flesh so that He could be with you forever, teaching you, loving you. Jesus comes into your house, even if you are an enemy, and sits down with you to share a meal. He desires to be with you so that He can bring you to repentance, and, when that happens, preach to you the free forgiveness of your sins won by His life, death, and resurrection. Jesus came, and not only sat with you, but died for you, so that you could enjoy the fruits of His kingdom forever and ever.
Your hypocrisy, your hubris, your pride, Jesus wipes them all away by humbling Himself. He has the place of honor, but puts Himself in the lowest position so that you can be exalted. He hid His glory in the flesh, and has invited us to search Him out. When we then find Him, when we hear His Word, when we turn from our wicked ways, when we’re forgiven, when we’re fed and strengthened, when we’re washed by Him, we have received from Him that which we could never pay back. And we will receive, with Him, for you are now part of His body in your Baptism, glory everlasting in the resurrection of the just. He will honor you forever there, as His child, as His good and faithful servant, as one whom He loves, for you were once lost and are now found. You have been won over into life everlasting. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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