Sermon: Trinity 17 – 2023

1 Oct 2023

Text: Luke 14:1-11 (Prov 25:6-14)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The Pharisees “were watching [Jesus] very carefully.”  Their motives are very clear: Jesus is their rival, and they want to take Him out.  They are watching Him closely to catch Him in something: a scandal, a contradiction, a false teaching – anything that they could get Him on.  After all, with most people, this is pretty easy.  Everyone makes mistakes, nobody is morally perfect, everyone has a skeleton in the closet, nobody knows everything about everything.  And there is always the “guilt by association” card. And even if they have to lie or plant evidence, or use their influences to take Jesus out, well, that’s just how things work.

Jesus had been telling the Pharisees that they were wrong.  And that is something they will not have.  Who does this guy think He is anyway?  He’s fairly young, comes from someplace else, His mother wasn’t married to His Father, He was raised by a blue-collar stepdad, He has no record of studying with any accredited teacher, and He is telling all of them that what they have taught for generations is wrong.

And every time they try to trip Him up, He makes them look like fools.  He is rude to them, and the people are flocking to Him.  The Pharisees and the lawyers are losing respect because of Him.  And to make it even worse, He does miracles.  He casts out demons.  He heals the sick.  Not like a doctor, but more like a prophet, or a God.  How can the Pharisees compete with that?  And just to irk them, He does many of His miracles on the Sabbath Day – which violates all of the Pharisees’ rules and regulations. 

Indeed, who does this guy think He is?

Our Gospel reading is a classic example of the hunter becoming the hunted.  For Jesus has been watching them closely.  And it isn’t difficult for God to catch poor, miserable sinners in a mistake, a scandal, or a false teaching – especially when their whole approach to religion is grounded in pride, self-glorification, and a refusal to confess that they are “poor, miserable sinners.”

Many of the Pharisees were not evil, but they were being led astray by their leaders.  They did not worship the true God because they had replaced Him with a god of their own making.  And to be honest, their god was their reputation.  Instead of yielding to God’s Ten Commandments (which we cannot keep), they made up their own 613 commandments (which were cleverly constructed with loopholes, so that they could keep them).

And then along comes this Jesus character, and with a few words and a few miracles, calls the whole thing into question. 

And so they are watching Him closely.  And that’s good, dear friends.  We like it when the enemies of Jesus watch Him closely.  He’s going to give them something to watch.  He is teaching them, and He is calling them to repentance.  And in so doing, He is giving us something to watch, teaching us, and calling us to repentance.  For there is a Pharisee lurking inside each one of us. 

It is the Sabbath, and all of the Pharisees’ rules are in place.  And here at this Sabbath dinner, right in the house of one of their rulers, even as they are keeping close watch on Him, it happens yet again.  In comes a man who is sick.  He has dropsy, which we might think of today as pleurisy.  It is fluid in the lungs and around the heart. Untreated, it will cause this man to die a painful death.  They are watching to see what Jesus will do.  Will He obey the rules and leave this man alone in his sickness, or will Jesus break the rules and cure him with one of His miracles? 

“And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?’  But they remained silent.”

Why are they silent, dear friends?  Why don’t they scold Jesus for what He is about to do?  If they are right, why are they silent?  Could it be that they know – deep down inside – that their righteousness is just an act?  Maybe their religion based on their own rules is all a lie.  And are they silent because they know in their hearts who Jesus is?  Whatever is going through their minds, they are silent.  And they are all really watching Him closely now.  And so are all of the angels and the demons.  Thanks to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, so are we.  We are silent before God in the flesh teaching us, calling us to repentance, but also forgiving us, and healing us.

Jesus healed the man and sent him away.  For unlike the Pharisees, who could only talk behind the man’s back and question what he did wrong to have dropsy, Jesus actually did something about it.  The man who was cured had no more reason to hang around with these men, whose rules could not heal him, whose religion was misleading.  Jesus sent him away from the Pharisees.  And the man cured of dropsy will have no reason ever to return to their gloomy, false teachings about God.

But Jesus is not done, dear brothers and sisters.  For our Lord is the Teacher of teachers.  He asks them a question that will further silence them.  For the Pharisees had a loophole in their Sabbath rules about rescuing a family member or animal that falls into a well.  So why do their rules allow an exception to show mercy to one’s own son, or an ox, but not to a person suffering from a terrible disease?  Why is Jesus the bad guy here for healing this man? 

“And they could not reply to these things.”

And Jesus is still not done, dear friends.  “Now He told a parable.”  For as they were watching Him, He was doing some people-watching of His own: observing the Pharisees jockeying for the seats of honor at the meal, noticing “how they chose the places for honor.”  For this meal was not really about sharing food and enjoying one another’s company; it was a political event.  It was all about being seen, and trying to move up in society. 

Jesus tells them a story based on one of the proverbs we heard in our Old Testament reading: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.’”

Don’t assign yourself the place of honor.  You might get moved to your shame.  Instead, be humble.  You might get moved to your honor.  For this is how God deals with us, dear friends.  When we think highly of ourselves, God will knock us off of our pedestals to call us to repentance and to teach us to stop following man-made rules, thinking we can keep 613 of our own making.  But when we are humble, when we confess that we are “poor, miserable sinners” in need of healing, who cannot keep God’s Ten Commandments, then Jesus comes to us, even on the Sabbath, and heals us.

And in fact, there is more to this story.  For the Pharisees and the lawyers will continue to watch Jesus closely, looking for an opportunity to kill Him.  They will do so, not realizing that Jesus knows their plan, and that His plan all along is to die sacrificially for us – and yes, even for the Pharisees. 

Jesus will offer His blood as healing for all of the world’s sicknesses and sins on Good Friday, and they will remove His body quickly, so as not to defile their Sabbath.  But even in the tomb, even as Jesus takes His rest on that Sabbath after His crucifixion, He is working, He is healing, He is saving.  They cannot stop Him.  And it will be a Pharisee named Joseph of Arimathea who will ask Pilate for the body of Christ and will offer Him his own tomb – which turns out to be a very short-term gift.  For Jesus will emerge from the tomb, leaving no more doubt that the Man they resisted, stalked, and killed is God in the flesh.  And even then, many will stubbornly refuse to submit to Jesus.

Our Lord will take on the suffering of the man with dropsy, as our His lungs and heart will fill with fluid on the cross.  And even in death, He will continue teaching, as the Roman spear punctured His heart, issuing forth blood and water – which John saw and reported, pointing all of us to baptismal water and the blood of the Lord’s Supper for our own forgiveness and healing.

Dear friends, let us repent of our silly pretensions of worldly honor.  Let us watch Jesus carefully, hear Him, and receive His free gift of healing.  Let us, like Joseph of Arimathea, ask for the body of Christ, and let us offer Him our own tombs, so that He might raise us from them.  Let us find our place of honor in the lowest place at the Lord’s banquet, knowing that even the worst seat there is better than any golden throne or VIP accommodations that this fallen world has to offer.  For we know who Jesus is.  We are watching Him closely.

And “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.”

Amen.

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