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.