4 October 2020
Text: Luke 14:1-11
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Once again, our Lord has a confrontation with the Pharisees. Everybody looked up to the Pharisees. They were the devout and religious people of their day. They always went above and beyond the call of duty. They fasted twice as much as everyone else, and gave more money in offerings than anyone.
And they were quick to point this out to everyone too.
In fact, the motivation for these good works was not to love and serve their neighbors, but to rack up points for themselves in heaven. They were in the business of impressing God and their neighbors – and they expected to be praised by both.
Imagine their shock when Jesus comes and tells them that they need to repent. “Repent? You mean like sinners? Oh, Jesus, now you’ve gone too far! We need to take you down a peg. We’re going to keep our eyes on you, Rabbi!”
And over and over, they tried to trap our Lord in a gotcha moment. And this is exactly what happened at the home of one of the rulers of the Pharisees, where a public dinner was taking place. And “they were watching Him carefully.” Not to learn, but to attempt to expose. For Jesus was annoying – like that John the Baptist before Him, who called the Pharisees snakes. Can you just imagine? The Pharisees? Calling them a ‘brood of vipers’? Who do these guys think they are. Don’t they know who we are? We’re the Pharisees.”
So, not wanting to disappoint the Pharisees, Jesus performs a miracle. He heals a man with dropsy. Today we call it edema. It’s a symptom of congestive heart failure. But before He healed the man, Jesus knew how the Pharisees were, and what they were trying to do. So He put a question to them: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” Our Pharisee and lawyer friends “remained silent.” They knew the drill. They had seen Jesus make fools of them before. They knew what was coming. And Jesus healed the dropsy victim right in front of them.
So think about this, dear friends. They just witnessed a miracle. A true miracle. They did not ask Him about this ability or its source. They did not seek to discern who He is. They didn’t even rejoice with the man who was healed. They remained silent. They just stewed in their own juices, because Jesus made them look like fools once again.
Our Lord doubles down and puts another question to them. And lawyers know what these kinds of questions are. They aren’t really questions. Our Lord asks rhetorically: “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.”
They are dumbfounded. They want to accuse Jesus of breaking the Law, but He just demonstrated that God’s mercy and love overcome even the Law. We don’t become righteous by externally keeping the letter of the Law, but rather, God shares His righteousness with us so that we can perform true acts of righteousness, not based on rule-keeping and racking up points, but rather based on love for our neighbor. These exceptions to the Sabbath were well-known by rabbis, but they are so angry with Jesus, they repeatedly paint Him as a criminal for healing people on the Sabbath. That is how debased these Pharisees and lawyers have become.
Why are they like this, dear friends? Is it that they haven’t researched the legal opinions and the rulings of the rabbis enough? Is it because they are simply ignorant of the Scriptures? Do they just need more education?
The answer isn’t obvious to us, but it is obvious to our Lord. Their problem is pride.
They believe that they are righteous because of their works: their obedience to the laws, rules, regulations, and even made-up traditions of men. They are proud of their ability to keep the rules, by hook or by crook, even if they need the help of clever lawyers to go bobbing for loopholes. They want God’s pat on the back. They want the men to fawn over them, and the women to swoon. They want applause and admiration, fame and fortune. That, and not love, is the fuel that motivates them. It’s all pride.
Jesus calls them out with a parable.
He uses an example of a wedding feast to show how pride ultimately results in shame, and humility, by contrast, leads to honor. Banquets are socially-regulated affairs, with the most important people having the best seats. So if you are prideful and full of yourself, of course, you’re going to take the best seat available.
But what if you’re wrong? What if you think more highly of yourself than you ought? You’re going to be humiliated when you are told to vacate the seat of honor, and “you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.”
And so, given this story, the best thing for a banquet attendee to do is to actually “go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’”
Jesus says: “Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.” And here is the lesson. Here is what the Pharisees really need to hear: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Pharisees were not made to look foolish by Jesus, but rather by their own delusion that their made-up loveless works and false obedience made them righteous. In fact, what makes us righteous, dear friends, is confessing together that we are “poor miserable sinners” and when Jesus heals us – like the man with edema, who comes to where Jesus is on the Sabbath, to a banquet, and leaves behind the shame of sickness to be exalted to health. It’s all grace. It’s all Christ.
We are not healed by our own knowledge, or forgiven because of our own works. We are made well and redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ. And we forgiven sinners, humbled by the Law, join Him by grace at the heavenly banquet, eating and drinking with Him in eternity, with a foretaste here at our altar. We humbly receive His mercy and His healing, and we are exalted, even unto eternity. Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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