17th Sunday after Trinity + Luke 14:1-11

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

On a certain Sabbath Jesus dines with the Pharisees. The meal isn’t a courtesy. It’s a trap. As they eat they watch Him closely, trying to entrap Him as they usually do. Suddenly a man with dropsy appears. Dropsy is an old term for edema, the retaining of water. Dropsy is usually a symptom of an underlying disease; congestive heart failure, cirrhosis, or kidney problems. This man won’t live many years in this painful condition, yet the Pharisees parade him before Jesus to test Him. They want to see whether or not Jesus would heal him on the Sabbath, the day in which no work was to be done. According to Mosaic Law the penalty for doing any work on the Sabbath was death. The Holy Spirit records the example in Numbers 15 of a man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath. The Lord condemned that man to death by stoning because He willfully violated the Sabbath law. The Pharisees wouldn’t be able to stone Jesus if they caught Him healing this man, their Roman overlords didn’t allow the Jews to live under the Mosaic civil law. But with this they could discredit Jesus as a teacher in line with Moses and prophets and destroy Him that way.

Jesus knows what’s in a man’s heart, though, and what’s in the hearts of these treacherous men so He preempts them with their own question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” They remain silent. Jesus sprung their trap. He’s walked right into it! “He took him and healed him, and let him go.” That was His answer. Of course it’s lawful, or legal, to heal on the Sabbath. Why? Because while Sabbath observance was Law, so is love. The greatest commandment in the entire Law is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37), and the second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). These men weren’t loving the man with dropsy. They used him as a human chess piece to try to checkmate Jesus! They didn’t bring the man to Jesus in love for the man, hoping that Jesus would restore His health. They used Him. Jesus then asks them, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” If your animal’s life is in danger, who of you wouldn’t work to rescue Him? None of you! Does that break the Sabbath? No. If you can work and exert yourself to get your animal out of the ditch on the Sabbath, how much more should Christ be able to heal a man made in God’s image on the Sabbath? Jesus exposes their hypocrisy. They’ll help irrational animals on the Sabbath but they refuse to help their fellowman. They misunderstand the purpose of the Sabbath, humility, and love.

Then Jesus tells a parable about something else entirely. When you’re invited to a wedding feast, don’t sit in the best place because if someone who is more honorable than you arrives, you’ll be asked to move to a lower seat. When that happens everyone will see you for what you are: a man who thinks too highly of himself. Instead, seat yourself in the most humble place. Have a right judgment about yourself. Then the man hosting the feast will see you and tell you to go up to a place of higher honor. Then you’ll have glory, not from yourself but from the host. Self-exaltation is no good. Humility is a virtue, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” The parable seems to have nothing to do with the healing of the man with dropsy. But remember why Jesus told the parable in the first place. “He noted how they chose the best places.” The parable strikes the same nerve as the discussion about healing on the Sabbath. They thought nothing of the poor man with dropsy, using Him as a walking prop. They thought too highly of themselves, exalting themselves in the presence of others.

The point isn’t that Christians should observe the Sabbath. There are some sects that teach we should, but they forget that Christ has fulfilled the Law in our stead and freed us from it. Paul’s point to the Galatians, a church consisting of mostly Gentiles, is that Gentiles didn’t have to become Jews in order to then become Christians. Sabbath observance, dietary restrictions, and all the other ceremony Moses gave to the Jews aren’t necessary. The only thing that justifies is faith in Christ, not works of the Law, even works that the Lord Himself prescribed to His Old Testament church. Those works were never given with the intention of earning righteousness. They set Israel apart from the rest of the nations of the earth and they looked forward to the Messiah whom God had promised. St. Paul says in Colossians 2:17 that the Old Testament ceremonies are “a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” Everything in the Old Testament Law foreshadowed Christ, either His person or His work. Sabbath prefigures His work, or rather the result of His work for all who believe. Sabbath means rest. That’s precisely what He gives. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Christ gives rest to the conscience who is heavy laden with knowledge of its many sins. He gives peace to those have attempted to labor for their righteousness and found it be impossible because of their inability and sinful nature. This rest of conscience can only be achieved by faith in Christ’s atoning death for the sins of the world trust that His perfect life is our righteousness. The Sabbath also prefigured the eternal rest God will give to all who die in faith, for they now rest from their labors.

Christians retain the Ten Commandments and the commandant tells us the Sanctify the Holy Day. But the Holy Day for Christians, freed from the Law, isn’t the Sabbath, but every day. We worship on Sunday, following the first Christians in the book of Acts who worshiped on the first day of the week, because it the day of the Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week and the eighth day of the week, eight signifying the new creation. We sanctify the Holy Day, not by abstaining from labor, although it is necessary for man to rest. He wasn’t built to work non-stop. How is anything sanctified? Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:5 that all things are sanctified “by the word of God and prayer.” So that is what we do. We hear the Word of God read publically. We hear the Word of God preached. We receive the Word of God attached to bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. We offer up prayers for ourselves, for our neighbor, for the church, for our nation, and for all in need. Christians still follow the Third Commandment. But the point of the commandment isn’t just about taking a day off for rest. It’s resting from labor to attend to the Word of God. When Christians give up meeting together, they’re violating the Third Commandment since the entire point of the Divine Service is hear God’s Word and respond with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

For Christians, who are no longer obligated to observe the Sabbath since Christ has fulfilled the law, the point of this healing and parable should be evident. Christ teaches us that the point of the Law, even for Christians, is love. Love first for God, which is exhibited by hearing His Word preached, receiving His sacrament offered, and by offering up our prayers because He’s commanded us to pray and promised to hear and answer. Then comes love for neighbor. Not love in word only but in deed and truth. Love that will pull our neighbor out of the ditch he’s fallen into, love that will go out of one’s way to help someone in need, love that takes the lowest seat, thinking of oneself soberly, not seeking self-glorification but the service and well-being of others, for “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” May God grant us grace to humble ourselves, before Him in repentance, so that He might daily forgive our sins and exalt to us to be sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. May God grant us grace to humble ourselves in our hearts, that we may love our neighbors as ourselves, for this too, the Lord will exalt us, if not in this life, then in the life of the world to come. Amen.

May the peace of God which passes human understanding guard your hears and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

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