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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Again moving forward in St. Luke’s Gospel account, skipping over verses we heard back in Lent, in today’s Gospel Reading we hear essentially three-fourths of the events and teaching in connection with Jesus’s attending a Sabbath Seder, which is most of the account’s fourteenth chapter. These events and teaching are largely unique to St. Luke, who is said to tell more about Jesus’s Sabbath controversies than any other evangelist (Lohse, TDNT 7:25-26). As St. Luke tells it, by Divine inspiration, Jesus continues His time in Perea, in this case dining at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, of whom Jesus in the Reading is largely critical. And, in the Reading’s three “scenes”, we can see ourselves, three different aspects of our spiritual lives. So, we consider each of those three scenes and the corresponding aspect of our spiritual lives in turn, all under the theme, “Three Scenes at a Sabbath Seder”
The first of the “Three Scenes at a Sabbath Seder” is Jesus’s healing of a man with dropsy, and in it we can see Jesus’s mercy on us as sinners. Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, and the Pharisees themselves were constantly watching Him carefully, watching to see whether He observed the traditions of the elders, in this case particularly those traditions related to the Sabbath, a day of rest intended to be made holy by the right use of God’s healing and re‑creating Means of Grace. And suddenly, at this semi‑public event (Lenski, ad loc Lk 14:2, 767), behold, there was a man before Jesus who had dropsy, what today we might call “edema”, a disfiguring accumulation of fluid, symptomatic of illness somewhere in the body. Having healed on the Sabbath and having had run‑ins with the Pharisees before (Luke 4:31-39; 6:6-11; 13:10‑17), Jesus asked the experts in the law and the Pharisees present whether or not it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. God’s law did not prohibit it, but their traditions did (Arndt, ad loc Lk 14:3, 337), although Jesus suggested that they themselves immediately would pull out of a well a son or an ox that had fallen in on a Sabbath day. So, answering His own question with His actions, Jesus took the man with dropsy, healed him, and released him.
Whatever our symptoms, we all are sinful by nature, and so, by nature, dead in trespasses and sins. Our sins may be those of sexual immorality, as was thought to be the case with dropsy (TLSB, ad loc Lk 14:2, 1745; Jones, CPR 26:4, 18), or our sins may be another sorts. Regardless, we are not worthy to come to and partake of the Lord’s meal of rest apart from faith in Jesus Christ. So, Jesus takes us in our sin, heals us, and releases us. Jesus’s healing is not a medical treatment that will fail in this lifetime (Beyer, TDNT 3:130), but Jesus’s healing is a healing for eternity: the forgiveness of sins, freely given by grace for Jesus’s sake, through faith, to those who by the Holy Spirit’s power humbly repent. So, in the first scene of Jesus’s healing a man with dropsy we see Jesus’s mercy on us as sinners.
The second of the “Three Scenes at a Sabbath Seder” is Jesus’s parable teaching humility, and in it we can see Jesus’s exalting us who are humble before Him. Recalling the wisdom of both today’s Old Testament Reading (Proverbs 25:2-10) and today’s Psalm (131), Jesus told the parable to those who were invited, who kept on choosing for themselves places of honor. Jesus cared even for the scribes and Pharisees and spoke, as it were, to each of them individually. Jesus tells them that their exalting themselves could result in their host’s humbling them, to their shame, while their humbling themselves could result in their host’s exalting them, to their glory. The same is true of us in our spiritual lives. Jesus cares for each of us, and calls us to repentance and faith. Humbling ourselves in repentance, we recognize not only our unworthiness but also our worthlessness, that we shamefully deserve not honor but rejection (Arndt, ad loc Lk 14:7, 339). And so, by grace through faith, God exalts us for Jesus’s sake. Our glory is in His cross, and our comfort only in His mercy (Kretzmann, ad loc Lk 14:7-11, 345). When we humbly seek God’s mercy, then we leave His presence justified, exalted by His forgiveness of sins (Luke 18:14; confer James 4:10)—not because we sought God’s mercy, as if a cause for an effect, but for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus is more than just an example of true humility; Jesus’s humility brought about our justification, our forgiveness. Although not outwardly humble in the manner of His day (Grundmann, TDNT 8:16-17), Jesus’s true humility was His not always or fully using His divine powers as God in human flesh, although at times He used them, as He did in healing the man who had dropsy. Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5) and healed as God’s Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One. Jesus’s true humility was His being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, in order to save us, and therefore God exalted Him (Philippians 2:8-9). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 13:1-17), Jesus suffered in order to sanctify us through His own blood.
Using two different words, today’s Gospel Reading nine times makes reference to inviting or calling, and the whole of the Gospel Reading is, as I mentioned earlier, set in the context of a Sabbath Seder meal (in fact, the Reading makes reference to meals five times with five different words). God calls you and me by the Gospel, in all its forms, to this Sunday sacramental meal. God first brings us through the waters of Holy Baptism, where He clothes us with the robe of Christ’s righteousness, fitting us for the feast. Then, we who privately confess our sins, God sets free with individual Holy Absolution. And finally, God brings us here, to this Rail of this Altar, where He gives us to eat Jesus’s Body with bread and to drink Jesus’s Blood with wine, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Not sitting, as was the custom in Jesus’s day (as mentioned in the Gospel Reading by several different words), but, kneeling or standing, we humbly seek the exaltation of His forgiveness of sins. So, in the second scene of Jesus’s parable teaching humility, we see Jesus’s exalting us who are humble before Him.
The third of the “Three Scenes at a Sabbath Seder” is Jesus’s teaching regarding unselfish hospitality, and in it we can see Jesus’s reaching out through us. Jesus tells His host at the Sabbath Seder not so much to invite his friends, brothers, relatives, or rich neighbors but more so to invite neighbors of a different kind: the poor, crippled, lame, and blind (see also Luke 14:21). Not exclusively the kind of people who could invite him back and repay him, but those who could not, the very kind of people whose interactions with Jesus demonstrated that He was the Messiah (Luke 7:22). We are to do the same, and, as Jesus works through us, we do invite all those in need of His eternal healing here, where ultimately He Himself blesses them and us, rewarding our good works if not now certainly at the one resurrection of the just and the unjust (Pieper, III:52; Acts 24:14), in what the Epistle Reading called “the city that is to come”, the new Jerusalem.
So, we have considered “Three Scenes at a Sabbath Seder”: first seeing, in Jesus’s healing a man with dropsy, Jesus’s mercy on us as sinners; second seeing, in Jesus’s parable teaching humility, Jesus’s exalting us who are humble before Him; and third seeing, in Jesus’s teaching regarding unselfish hospitality, Jesus’s reaching out through us. Thanks be to God that He has mercy on us for Jesus’s sake, exalts us who are humble before Him, and uses us to reach others lost in sin. To paraphrase today’s Psalm, O Pilgrims, so hope in the Lord from this time forth, and even forevermore.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +