Sermon: Trinity 17 - 2019

13 October 2019

Text: Luke 14:1-11

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”

Our sinful flesh just loves rules and regulations.  We can use them to boss others around.  We can use them to make ourselves look good.  We can use them to claim that we are righteous by our works.  We can use them to tear others down.

But what our sinful flesh doesn’t understand is that God made the law for our good.

For when we keep the Law – even in a superficial manner – things go better for us and for our life in a community of people.  When we break the law, the opposite is true.  And so every group of people from the tiniest village to the mightiest empire has had some kind of rules, regulations, and laws.

When God created the universe in six days, and then rested, He set a precedent for all of creation: a Sabbath Day of rest.  And God commanded this rest for all people – and even for the animals who work for mankind.  This rest is a joy, not a burden.  It is for our good, not for our manipulation and control.  As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

But what does our sinful flesh do, dear friends?  We figure out how to take the gift of God and turn it into a curse.  We creatively find ways to pervert something beneficial into a burden.  And those who seek power over others use the Law to leash others rather than to liberate them.

Our Lord had to deal with this from the Pharisees and the scribes and the lawyers all the time. Instead of using the Law as a curb, a mirror, and a guide – as we Lutherans are taught are the godly purposes of the Law – the lawyers and Pharisees were using it as a snare to try to trick Jesus into breaking a law so that they could arrest Him, discredit Him, and, of course, to do what they really wanted to do: kill Him.

This is why, dear friends, they “were watching Him carefully.”  And they got their wish to see Jesus fall into the trap, for a man was very sick.  Now this was the Sabbath Day, and the Law says that a man may not work, but must rest, on this Seventh Day of the week.  This sick man had a disease called dropsy. 

Jesus knew that He was under constant surveillance and that the lawyers and the Pharisees were trying to trick Him.  Jesus wastes no time in turning the tables on them.  They are the ones who fall into the trap.

Seeing the man with dropsy, our Lord poses a question to the lawyers (and as every lawyer knows, you never ask a question in court that you don’t know the answer to).  Jesus throws the lawyers a curve ball: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”  

“But they remained silent.”

They already know where this is headed.  The Law says that work is prohibited on the Sabbath.  But does this mean that doctors may not cure someone?  Does this mean that an emergency worker must sit idle when a person is in distress?  Does this mean that pastors must not preach and parents must not feed their children?  For we all know what the spirit of the law is, and we also know how the lawyers and the Pharisees – just like lawyers and politicians and others do today – play fast and loose with the meanings of words to get the outcome that they want.

But not today, dear friends.  Not on this day.

Our Lord has cut right to the chase: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”

They refuse to answer because they are lawyers and they know that the rabbis have all addressed this question.

Jesus shows compassion for the sick man, heals him, and sends him away.  Then Rabbi Jesus addresses the legal question as have teachers of the law for centuries: “Which of you,” He asks, “having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”

And once again, the cat has got the tongue of this proud cadre of Pharisees and lawyers.  Jesus has made them look foolish by means of their own beloved Law.

Dear friends, we are not under the various Old Testament regulations that applied to the Sabbath Day – which was from Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday.  We are free from these ceremonial laws.  But we are still subject to the principle of the seventh-day rest, as well as setting aside a day as holy to the Lord in order to allow Jesus to come and heal us, just as He did this man with dropsy.

For we suffer with something far worse: sin.  Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, and His body was removed before sundown as the Sabbath Day approached.  He was laid in the tomb and enjoyed His Sabbath rest.  But on the first day of the week, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the visitors to the tomb found that He had risen.  His death and resurrection is our cure.

We Christians have sanctified the Lord’s Day ever since, and this is, for us Christians, a new and greater Sabbath – not one of rules and regulations, but one of liberation, one in which we are free to worship the Lord, free to hear the Word of God, and free to partake of His body and blood!  And we are indeed free regarding this Sabbath, for if necessity prevents our worship on the first day of the week, we may well worship on another day, such as Wednesday night, as has been the custom of our own congregation for more than a century.

The Law does not exist to enslave us, but to free us.  And though we fail to keep the Law, our Lord cures us of the dropsy of our sins.  For as hard as we try to keep the Law, we fail.  For we are like the son or the ox that has fallen, and we are rescued, we are pulled out of the well by our Lord.  

And this is what the Sabbath of the Lord’s day is all about, dear brothers and sisters.  We don’t come to church to show how holy we are, but rather because we aren’t.  We come to where Jesus is because only He can cure us.  We come on this day of rest because it is indeed lawful for Jesus to heal us.  

And this is no cause for boasting.  Indeed, we have been invited to this wedding feast, and yet we “go and sit in the lowest place,” right here in the pews of this sanctuary – which are reserved for sinners only.  This sanctuary is like the waiting room of a hospital.  We are all here because we suffer affliction and are looking to be healed.  And while lawyers and Pharisees may mock us for being here, we know where we need to be in order to be healed.  We are not too proud to take a seat here in this waiting room.

For our Lord Jesus Himself comes to us, right here, and He says to us: “Friend, move up higher.”  And we take our seats with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  We join in their unending praise, their Hosannas, and their joyful celebration of eternal life.

For it is when the Lord declares us worthy to eat at His table, to come to this altar, to kneel and feast with Him and upon Him, and we are “honored in the presence of all who sit at table with” us.  

So let us come to the table, unworthy of ourselves, but made worthy by the blood of the Lamb, by His never-ending Sabbath, and through His mercy in healing us from all that ails us.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.