Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Etiquette
is fairly well established in our culture, as it was in ancient society. At ever wedding reception I’ve been to,
there’s a table in the very front, that everyone can see. Sometimes there’s even names by the chairs at
this table. You know the one, it’s where
the bride, groom, and wedding party get to sit.
It’s the table that is most honored, it’s served first, sometimes that
table even gets Champaign when everyone else gets sparkling grape juice. What would happen if you, simply an invited
guest, set yourself in the chair marked “bride?” Most would uncomfortably look at you,
wondering what to do. But eventually,
when the bride wants to sit down, someone has to tell you to sit somewhere
else. Then it won’t matter where you sit
because you’ve been shamed by taking a lower place.
The
other side of this coin is you do take a lower place. You sit in the back, farthest away from the
head table. When the groom calls out to
you, “Hey, come up here, I want to talk with you. Celebrate this joyous day with me.” Then you’re exalted in front of everyone as
you walk up to the highest place.
So,
what’s Jesus’ point? Is He simply giving
advice on dinner etiquette or is there something more to it?
Jesus
had been invited by the Pharisees to a dinner banquet that has a bunch of
Pharisees and lawyers, but not these lawyers never stood in front of a judge or
argued a case on behalf of a criminal.
Their job was to comb through the Torah, the books of Moses, the first
five books of the Old Testament and figure out what they were supposed to do in
order to gain God’s favor. Jesus, the
invited, guest of honor to this soirée was probably thinking, “I’d rather be
hanging out with those sinners and tax collectors.” The invitation wasn’t extended because Jesus
was loved by the Pharisees, quite the opposite.
He was probably invited because they wanted to catch Him in His
words. They wanted to find a reason to
have Him brought up on some trumped up charge and executed. But if they had a plan, they don’t even get the
chance to put it into action. Jesus
makes the first move.
“There
was a man before Him who had dropsy. And
Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath, or not?” An uninvited
guest. A man with dropsy comes into the
room with his swollen dropsy body wanting to be healed… On the Sabbath.
Now,
the Pharisees had made all kinds of rules about what kind of work you couldn’t
do on the Sabbath, so Jesus question puts them to the test. If they say it’s unlawful, then they’ll look
like unreasonable jerks. But they don’t
want to agree with Jesus so they can’t say that it is lawful either. So, they remain silent, Luke tells us.
Jesus
answers their silence and His own question by healing the man on the Sabbath because
that’s what God does. Jesus then chides
the Pharisees over their legalism, being willing to pull on ox out of a well on
the Sabbath, implying that it’s ok for the Pharisees to care for animals but
helping and serving the neighbor, not so much.
It’s like the parable Jesus told of the
Good Samaritan. The priest and the
Levite who saw the man lying in the ditch could not help him. They were bound by the Law, couldn’t touch a
man who’s been beaten. Only the
Samaritan was free to be neighbor. Only
one who is free from the Law can answer Jesus’ question with a confident “yes,
it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath”. But you can say that only as you are free. Jesus is free. He comes to bring freedom and life. He is the Sabbath fulfilled, and for that sick
man, He is the epitome of the Sabbath. Rest
from illness, rest from sin, rest from death. Rest that only God in the Flesh can give. That’s why we don’t worship on the Sabbath,
on Saturday, because Jesus is our Sabbath rest.
We’re free to gather together as the Church and worship on whatever day
we want.
Now Jesus has
the table exactly where He wants them. Now
they’re really watching this Sabbath breaker who has the power of God to heal
diseases with a word and a touch. He
points out how the guests all jockey for positions of honor at the table, to
the right and the left of the host. And
He says, “When you are invited, don’t
take the honored seats lest you be embarrassed.
It would be like taking the seats of honor at a wedding reception when
you’re not in the wedding party and being told that your table is over in the
corner next to the cake. Take your place
among the least, so that when the host comes you’ll be honored when he says, ‘Friend,
come up to a better place…’ For everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be
exalted.”
Now if you
think all that Jesus has in mind is the seating arrangements at the next dinner
party you’re invited to, think again. He has in mind first of all His own work.
Though He was the Son of God, seated at the right hand of the Father, the place
of highest honor, He left that seat to take on human flesh and become a
servant. He left the highest place to take up the lowest seat in the house, a
cross and a grave. It doesn’t get any lower than that. He humbled Himself to
death for our sakes. And from that place of humility, the Father highly exalted
Him and seated Him in our humanity at His right hand. And in Him, we are seated
there too.
Recognizing that and believing that, we
don’t presume the honored place at His table either. We don’t waltz in to the
Lord’s Supper as though we’ve earned the right to be there and God should be
honored that we bothered to show up. No, we take the lowest place with the
least, the lost, the lowly, the dead. We say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
We come as chief of sinners seeking mercy, humbled by the Law that reminds us
there is no good in us. And Christ says to us, “Friend, I forgive you. Come up
to a higher place. Sit with me at my table.
“For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled.” Boast in your goodness, and the Law will put
you in your place. Wrap yourself with
all the good you’ve done, and you will be revealed as a gate crasher at the
Lord’s wedding party. Take your place with the losers of the religious world,
with sinners, and you will be exalted. All you need to bring to the Lord’s
table is your confession and a plea for mercy, and you will hear “Friend, come
up to a higher place.”
Then Jesus turns to His host, whose nice
little Sabbath dinner party now lay in shambles at the feet of Jesus, and He
notes all the dignitaries. “When you give a dinner party, don’t invite your
rich friends and relatives lest they do the same and repay you. But instead,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, that man with dropsy who
crashed your party, all those types you avoid, invite them, and you will be
blessed precisely because they can’t repay you. Your reward comes in the
resurrection.”
And again,
Jesus isn’t talking so much about whom to invite to your next birthday party as
He is talking about the party He is throwing, the marriage feast of the Lamb in
His kingdom which has no end. He isn’t inviting people who can repay Him. Not
at all. He’s inviting empty-handed, broken beggars, the likes of you and me in
our sinfulness. We can’t repay the Lord for what He has done for us. Nothing we
can do in this life, no offering, no prayer, no dedication, no amount of
purpose-driven living can repay Jesus for His service to us, His sacrifice, His
saving us. We come as the poor, the lame, the blind. That’s what we are under
God’s Law. Impoverished of anything remotely called righteousness before God.
Crippled to the holiness God demands of us. Blind to Him.
Yes in our brokenness and poverty, we are
invited guests, welcomed to a feast of salvation that literally has no end. Why
does Jesus do it? Why bother with a table full of losers? Well, if you’re
looking for spiritual winners in this world, you won’t find any because there
are none. Without God’s mercy in Jesus, without Jesus’ death on the cross,
without the forgiveness of sins that comes in His name, there would be no one
at the wedding feast of the Lamb save the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Oh, and a bunch of angels.
Jesus’ reward,
the joy that was set before Him, is the resurrection of the righteous. The joy
of a resurrected humanity declared righteous by what He has done. You, standing
before the Father, clothed in the righteousness of the Son, raised from death
to life – that’s why Jesus suffered, died, and rose again. So that you would
have a place at His table.
So as you take
that place today, as one of His baptized believers, don’t think of yourself as
a winner, as one deserving to be there. For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Humble yourselves, and He
will lift you up. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
