The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity – September 26, 2021
Psalm 119; Proverbs 25:6-14; Ephesians 4:1-6
St.
Luke 14:1-11
In
the name of the Father, and of the T Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.[1]
For the third time, our Lord has come
into conflict with the Pharisees over the Sabbath. This is why they are said to
be “watching him carefully.” It may be that the ruler of the Pharisees invited
Jesus into his home precisely to entrap him into performing a miracle. I
wouldn’t be surprised if the chief Pharisee specifically invited the man with
dropsy.
When our Lord asks if it is lawful to
heal on the Sabbath, he is not looking for permission. He knows he is going to
heal the man. Rather, he is mocking the Pharisees. They think they have the
upper hand, that they have laid a perfect trap. What they didn’t expect was for
Jesus to call their bluff. His question leaves them in silence. They are silent
because they’ve been caught. They have been called to account for their deeds
and yet stand silent before the Lord.
This is not the silence of reverence or
the silence of awe. It is the silence of shame, the silence of sin. It is the
silence of Adam in the Garden. He hid from his Lord because he was naked. To
us, the silence is deafening. To God, we are but small children who, after the
window is broken, stand with the baseball bat behind our backs. The Pharisees
feel the weight of the Law and stand silent. Any response given would be an
admission of guilt.
Then Jesus heals the man and poses a
second question. “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?” Now the Pharisees
are not only silent, but they have no answer. No longer do they withhold the
truth for there is no truth in them.
Their shame is the revealing of their
pride, for pride is the fundamental sin of man. Man desires to be like God and
in being like God, he would become more than God. We think we know what is
good. We know that suffering is always bad and to be avoided. We know a better
foreign policy or tax policy. We know that happiness, leisure, and pleasure are
the chief goals in life. It turns out that what we think is good are the things
we like. This is the very height of pride.[2]
We think we are smart, clever, or
poetic. We think we can imitate God and by doing so please him. We, like the
Pharisees, even think that we can outwit God by knowing the right answer. ‘I
know what God says about humility so if I act humbly, I will be exalted.’ When
coming into conflict with a brother in Christ, we must tell others about the
confrontation, always admitting some mild form of blame while painting the
other guy in the worst light. ‘See, I’m humble for admitting my fault but he’s
the real bad guy.’
God will not be mocked. God knows the
filth in your heart. God knows the greed, wrath, and sloth of your inner
thoughts. God knows your humility is hypocritical for it is only a display to
garner sympathy. God knows your shame and God will not be mocked.
This is demonstrated in the telling of
the parable. It is not an etiquette lesson. Our Lord accomplishes three
purposes in this parable. The first is again to mock the Pharisees, showing
their false humility to be the height of pride. He sees the Pharisees jockeying
for position and again, he mocks their pride. Neither the Pharisee sidling
across the room toward the couch at the right hand of the host nor the one
making a show of his ‘humility’ to sit at the foot of the table, of course
expecting a promotion, avoids the sting of Christ’s parable. Everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled. Those who seek advancement through their own
means will end up outside of the banquet.
The second purpose is to reveal himself
to the Pharisees. Christ is the one who descended from the Father to dwell
amongst sinners. He did not spurn the virgin’s womb, but humbled himself to
become man. The very men listening to these words soon have him beaten, spat
upon, and executed in the most humiliating manner. He then returns to his
Father, to the right hand of God, exalted on high, and crowned in glory. He who
humbled himself is exalted.
Remember that he reveals himself in
this parable to the Pharisees, in the home of their leader. While he is
certainly mocking their behavior, he is also revealing himself to them because
he loves them. We are used to Jesus showing compassion upon the tax collector
and prostitute, but we must remember that Jesus loves the Pharisee also, which
is very good news for you because of how much you and I are like them.
Truly, we have more in common with
Nicodemus, who must come to the Lord in the cover of night than Mary who
anointed Christ’s feet with pure nard and dried them with her hair in the
presence of the disciples. Thanks be to God he has compassion upon the
Pharisees because it means he has compassion upon you. He desires their
repentance every bit as much as he desires yours. He is their shepherd just as
he is yours. Christ died for the ugly sinner just as he died for the
fashionable one.
Which leads us to our Lord’s third
purpose in the parable: He is calling the Pharisees, and all who hear his
words, to his humility. He is calling us to walk in his ways. We no longer
humble ourselves expecting a reward for the reward is already ours. We love and
serve because Christ has humbled himself that we would be exalted with him.
In fact, we ought to be humbled by the
knowledge that we are nothing. We are worms and not men. We are dust. We are
nothing compared to God. We are nothing and we have been saved by grace. The
love of God, his compassion on sinners has rescued us from the pit and set us
upon Mount Zion. Our feet, swollen with dropsy, have been relieved by the
piercing of Christ’s feet. We are lifted up and placed in the seat of honor by
Christ being lifted up on the beam of the cross. We are counted as the honored
guest because Christ is the honored guest who both humbles and exalts those
whom he loves.
May the gracious Lord of the banquet
continue to humble each of us, that we would be rid of the shameful pride which
dwells in the heart of man.
[1]
This sermon is based on a sermon preached for my Theologia III: Preaching Small
Group with Dr. Gifford Grobein during my fourth year of studies at Concordia
Theological Seminary. Changes have been made to fit the context of the saints
of Mount Calvary.
[2]
This and the preceding paragraph are inspired by the Trinity 17 sermon by Rev.
David Petersen found at https://cyberstones.org/sermon/trinity-17-2015/
No comments:
Post a Comment