A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity
A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity
1 John 3:13-24 & St. Luke 14:16-24
by William Klock
It was the Sabbath. Jesus and his disciples were in town and Jesus did all his usual things: healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, opening the ears of the deaf, casting out demons. And he’d said and preached and proclaimed all the usual things: “Repent, because God’s kingdom has come.” The poor heard God’s good news. Others were challenged. They begged Jesus to read the scripture lesson in the synagogue service, so he did, and then he said some profound and eye-opening things about it. Some of the Pharisees were intrigued by Jesus. Some of them didn’t know what to think. Some of them were angry. Some of them had already determined to trap Jesus. If they gave him enough rope, he’d eventually hang himself. He’d say or do the wrong thing and then they could all point at him and tell everyone, “See! See! We warned you from the beginning that he’s out to lunch,” and everyone would lose interest and Jesus would go back to Galilee and be forgotten—or, maybe if they were lucky, what he said or did would be bad enough they could have him arrested.
One of the leading Pharisees lived in this town. He invited Jesus to his house for lunch as everyone was filing out of the synagogue. It would have looked bad if he hadn’t. But he and some of his friends had an idea. Luke, in Chapter 14 of his gospel, says that they were keeping a close eye on Jesus. In fact, we might translate Luke’s words to say that they watched him lurkingly—just waiting for him to do or say the wrong thing. They lurked on Twitter and had scoured their way through ten years of Jesus’ tweets. Nothing. (Actually, no. Jesus wasn’t on Twitter—he’s too smart for that.) So it’s no surprise then that as Jesus arrived at the Pharisees’ house for lunch, he met a man whose limbs were swollen with dropsy. The Pharisees probably hadn’t invited the man. The rabbis taught that dropsy was the Lord’s punishment for secret sexual sins. But in those days, doors were open, people came and went from banquets. The poor and needy would show up looking for handouts. On any other day, this Pharisee probably would have shooed away the man with dropsy, but not today. He wanted to see what Jesus would do. It was a given that Jesus healed the sick—but would he do it on the Sabbath?
And, of course, Jesus saw right through the whole scheme. Seeing the man, he turned first to the Pharisee and to his lawyer friends—the local torah scholars and experts on the law. And Jesus put them on the spot. “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath or not?” he asked. They should have seen that coming, but they didn’t. They wanted to trap Jesus, but now he’s got them trapped. No matter what they said, they’d condemn themselves. And so while they stood there looking awkward, Jesus healed the man with dropsy and sent him away. And then he turned back to the Pharisees and to the lawyers and said, “Suppose one of you has a son—or an ox—that falls in a well. Are you going to tell me you won’t pull him out straightaway even on the sabbath say?” And, of course, they just looked at him. They had nothing to say that wouldn’t condemn them. Because, of course, if their son or their ox fell in a well, even on the sabbath, of course they’d pull him out.
It was hard to hear. The Pharisees were right about a lot of things. They knew that Israel was supposed to be a pocket of God’s light in the middle of a dark world. They were the people who lived with the living God in their midst. They were his people, graciously chosen, delivered from bondage, and made holy for just this task: to be light in the darkness. The Pharisees were zealous for the law because they were grateful for God’s grace. Not all of the people in Israel were as faithful as the Pharisees. They tried to live their lives—even the little things—as if they were in the temple, in the presence of God. They saw themselves as walking manifestations of God’s light and of his kingdom—walking pockets of what the world is supposed to be like. And Jesus just exposed them, because as much as they were right on a lot of things, they’d forgotten the most important thing. The law was about more than do this and don’t to that. It was about loving God and loving neighbour. It was about showing others the same grace, the same lovingkindness that God had shown to them. They knew that deep down, but somehow, through the generations, they’d forgotten that aspect of it. Instead of being a light to lighten those lost in the dark, they were being light to shame and condemn those lost in the dark—and that’s not light at all.
Jesus had already spoiled the party, so he just kept going. Luke tells us in 14:7 that Jesus noticed how each guest claimed the best seat he could, so he told them that God’s people should, instead, be humble. “If you go to a wedding and just assume you can sit in the seat of honour, the host is going to tell you to move so the real guest of honour can sit there and you’ll look like a fool in front of everyone. No. Instead, be humble. Take the lowliest seat and let your host offer you a better place.”
They were starting to figure out what Jesus was getting at. He said, “Everyone who pushes himself forward will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be honoured.” They knew this wasn’t just about banquets. Jesus was saying that the way these leaders of Israel were behaving at banquets had become representative of how they thought of themselves in relation to God and to each other. They acted like God had chosen them because they were special when it was really the other way around: They were special because God had chosen them. They knew better—just like we do. They knew God chose Israel because he is gracious. But they didn’t act like it.
So Jesus says: If you truly want to represent God and his kingdom, stop thinking so loftily of yourselves, stop avoiding the people who aren’t like you and who don’t share your status, and start throwing banquets for the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Rejoice when sinners repent. Rejoice when God saves the lost. That’s what God has done for you, after all—you’ve just forgotten.
Some of them understood what Jesus was getting at, but not everyone. Some poor, clueless soul shouted out at that point, “A blessing on everyone who eats bread in the kingdom of God.” He totally missed the point. Blessed, indeed, is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God, but who will be there. That was Jesus’ point. These people were sure they’d be there, but in so many ways the way they acted and the way they saw themselves said otherwise. They weren’t the walking pockets of the kingdom they thought they were. For all their holiness, they were really more like walking pockets of darkness.
So in response, Jesus told them another parable. This is our Gospel today.
Jesus said, “Once a man made a great dinner, and invited lots of guests. When the time for the meal arrived, he sent his servants to say to the guests, ‘Come now. Everything is ready!’ But the whole lot of them began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I’ve just bought a field, and I really have to go and see it. Please accept my apologies.’ Another one said, ‘I’ve just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’ve got to go and test them out. Please accept my apologies.’ And another said, ‘I’ve just got married, so naturally I can’t come.’ So the servant went back and told his master all this.
As they sat eating what was probably a simple sabbath lunch prepared the day before, Jesus brings to mind an elaborate and expensive feast—the sort of thing that took days to prepare and that cost so much that the man throwing the part would send out invitation months in advance. We only do that today for a wedding, but imagine him, like a bride and groom, sending out invitations with RSVP cards to his friends and business associates. The RSVP cards came back and everyone said they’d be there, so he made all the arrangements. So much wine and so much fruit. So much meat and so much bread. He arranged for musicians and dancers and other entertainers. He got his house ready. And then the day of, he put on his finest clothes, threw open his doors—and no one came. So he sent his servant out to find out what was up with his guests. They all had excuses. This one bought a field sight unseen and had to go have a look at it. This one bought a bunch of oxen and just had to try them out. Another just got married. Obviously his honeymoon was more important than this man’s great feast.
Imagine all the effort and expense that this man invested. It was a huge deal for him. But no one else cared. No one else valued all that he had done for them. Imagine how you’d feel if no one came to your wedding banquet after they all returned their RSVP cards saying they’d be there. Jesus says the man was angry, but he wasn’t going to let all his expense and preparations go to waste.
‘Go out quickly,’ he said to his servant. ‘Go into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.’ ‘Alright, Master,’ the servant said, ‘I’ve done that—but there’s still room.’ ‘Well then,’ said the master to the servant, ‘go out to the highways and the hedges and make them come in, so that my house may be full! Let me tell you this: none of those people who were invited will get to taste my dinner.’
When his rich friends won’t come, he invites—even rounds up—the poor. Notice that his servant literally has to bring, to compel them to come to the banquet. Imagine what the poor people in the town thought at the invitation. Imagine what the blind beggar sleeping in a ditch thought when this rich man’s servant pulled him up and dragged him into a fancy house full of fancy food. They would have thought it was a joke, at least until they actually got there. That’s why the servant had to compel them to come, because they knew how these things worked. They didn’t belong. But the rich man brought them in. He brought them all in. And they had the time of their lives—and, I think, so did he.
Now, Luke doesn’t tell us how the Pharisees responded. In the next verse he jumps to a completely different time and place. But we know. We know that this just made them angrier and more hostile to Jesus—not every last one of them, but most of them. Eventually they’d be angry enough that they’d conspire to have Jesus arrested. But why did the things that Jesus did and said at that sabbath lunch make them so angry?
Well, remember that the Jews, and especially the Pharisees, were waiting for the Lord’s return. The prophets had talked about that day in terms of a great banquet and this banquet idea then became a common image of the coming Day of the Lord. Israel’s God would return to judge and to cast down the nations (and the unfaithful within Israel) and then he’d throw a great feast for his beloved people. The closest things they had to describe it was their entry into the promised land, the land of milk and honey, and the prosperous days of King David. It would be like that, only a thousand times more so. When Jesus told a story of a man preparing a great feast, everyone listening knew he was talking about the Lord and how he would come to deliver his people and set everything to rights and usher in the age to come—the age when they would feast in his presence. And now Jesus explains that he’s come to throw open the doors to God’s great banquet. This is what Israel has been waiting for all these years. And yet Jesus rebukes them. This isn’t the first time the Lord has extended his invitation. For centuries he had called to his people through the prophets, but they had refused to hear the prophets and had even killed some of them. The Pharisees knew that and they were committed to making sure they didn’t do the same thing. Except that’s exactly what they were doing. This time God has spared no expense. His people had rejected and killed the prophets. This time he’s sent his own son, who humble himself to be born in their flesh. He’s travelled through Galilee and Judea, calling everyone to the banquet, but like the people in the parable, they all have excuses.
It’s worth noting the excuses given in the parable. One man says that he’s bought five yoke of oxen sight-unseen and has to check them over. Another has bought a field sight-unseen and needs to go have a look at it. The third just got married and has obligations to his new bride. All three of these excuses have echoes that go back to the law in Deuteronomy. A man who had built a new house, but hadn’t dedicated it yet; a man who had bought a field, but hadn’t enjoyed its produce; and a newly married man were all legitimate excused from going off to war. And now these guests twist those laws as excuses to reject their host’s banquet. But this is what Israel had done with the law: twisting it into something it was never meant to be. And it’s that twisting of the law that was particularly exemplified in the Pharisees. Jesus didn’t meet their expectations of the Messiah. His banquets included too many sinners, unclean people, and outsiders. Those were the people that the Pharisees had showed up with their own holiness. The Messiah was supposed to come and feast with people like them, while raining down fire and brimstone on all those unholy people. And so they frowned as Jesus forgave sins and welcomed home the prodigals. The Pharisees had gutted the torah of its loving heart and that was profoundly exemplified by their angry glares as Jesus healed a sick man on the sabbath. There could be no better way to celebrate the sabbath than to dance and sing and glorify God for his lovingkindness, but instead they tisked and frowned and gave Jesus disapproving how-dare-you scowls. The angels rejoiced in heaven to see God’s mighty works—but here on earth the people most expecting it, the people most longing for it, frowned and disapproved because God didn’t do his mighty works according to what they thought the rules were. That was their attitude towards Jesus’ entire messianic ministry. The banquet had come, but now they wanted nothing to do with it. And so Jesus warns them: I’m going to take my invitation to the unclean and to the sick and to the poor—and even to the gentiles—and having rejected me, you will have no share in God’s new creation. If I were to let you in, you’d only mess it up—because you don’t know what love is.
The parable was a warning. Matthew records it too, and I expect he was thinking of his people, most of whom continued to rejected Jesus even as their judgement day was so close. But think of Luke. He was one of those gentiles. He was one of those poor men, sleeping in a ditch while the rich man prepared his banquet. Maybe he didn’t even know the banquet was going to happen. He saw the caterers coming and going, wondered what it was all about, but he never expected to be there. He’d never received an invitation, but more importantly, he wasn’t even the right sort of person. He was a gentile—uncircumcised and unclean. Jews didn’t associate with his sort. And then the rich man’s servant came, woke him up with a kick, and said, “Hey! My master’s thrown a banquet and no one came, so now he’s inviting you to know his goodness.” For Luke, that servant seems likely to have been the Apostle Paul. And Paul gave Luke a firm gospel shove into the banquet. And before he knew it Luke was dancing and singing and praising and glorify the God of Israel—the God of those weird, annoying Jews—and this God was like none of the gods he’d ever known. This God was good and loving and most of all faithful. And even though Luke, as a gentile, had no right to be at the banquet, he was welcomed in because when he heard about this Jesus, this Messiah who had died and risen from the dead, and he believed and he was caught up in God’s great redemptive act of new creation.
In fact, this unexpected and undeserved invitation to the banquet so transformed Luke that before too long he joined Paul as they set sail for Europe as gospel heralds—to proclaim to the lordship of Jesus. A few years later he would join Paul on another missionary journey. And about ten years after they’d left Troas that first time, Luke would journey with Paul on his final voyage, the one that took him to Rome to appeal his case before Caesar. And not only was Luke, with Paul, singing the glories of Jesus and the God of Israel through Greece and on to Rome, he also talked to those who had met Jesus and he recorded their stories and wrote his gospel and then followed it up with the book of Acts. Luke learned profoundly what grace is. He knew profoundly the love of God. Because even though he was a foreigner, through Jesus, the God of Israel had made him a son and even poured his own Spirit into him—including Luke in promises he had no natural right to be part of.
Brothers and Sisters, Luke is us. Like Paul hauling him out of the ditch and sending him into the banquet, the Lord’s servants have come to us, proclaiming the good news about Jesus, hauling each of us out of our own ditch, giving us a gospel kick in the pants, and (with the Spirit’s help) propelling us into God’s great banquet. We need a reminder of this, because we’re prone to taking our place before the Lord for granted. The Pharisees had their way of taking their family status for granted and we have our ways, but however we do it, it always seems to stem from forgetting that whether Jew or gentile, whether we were born into the family or whether we came later, we forget that it is by the gracious lovingkindness of God—who gave his son to die so that we who were his enemies can be here as his sons and daughters.
Our Epistle today continues with this short course of readings from John’s first letter. John writes in Chapter 3,
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the family. Anyone who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has the life of the coming age abiding in him. This is how we know love: [Jesus] laid down his life for us. And we too ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Anyone who has the means of life in this world, and sees a brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against them—how can God’s love be abiding in him? Children, let us not love in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:14-18)
Does God’s love abide in us? I think that all too often, we come to the banquet, to the Lord’s Table. We eat the bread and we drink the wine, but we’ve forgotten the amazing sacrifice of love in which we participate here. We take the Lord’s feast for granted. Or maybe we eat it for the wrong reasons. But we find some kind of assurance here, the Table reminds us that we belong to God and to his family, but then we go out in to the world—or maybe we even interact with our brothers and sisters here—and instead of being pockets of gospel light in the darkness, instead of being pockets of God’s future here in the present, we’re darkness. We call ourselves God’s sons and daughters, we follow the rules, but there’s no love. We eat the Lord’s bread and we drink the Lord’s wine and we should be reminded of God’s great provision for us, of his great blessings, but we ignore the needy. Here we’re reminded that in Jesus and because of his death on our behalf, we’ve been given life and have a share in God’s new creation, but too often we keep it to ourselves instead of taking it to the highways and hedges. Here we have the means of life, the gospel, the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen. We know the gracious lovingkindness of God. We don’t belong here, but he’s invited us anyway. He’s forgiven our sins and filled us with his Spirit and given us a promise of new creation. And we go out to a world in need, people suffering physically and people dying spiritually, and we close our hearts against them.
So, Brothers and Sisters, come the Lord’s Table this morning and be reminded that in Jesus, God has humbled himself and given his life for our sake. This is the defining act of love. But don’t just remember. The Lord’s Supper is more than an intellectual exercise. As we eat the Lord’s bread and drink his wine, we participate in that great act of love ourselves. Be shaped, be transformed by the love of God made manifest at the cross. Every time you come to the Table and participate in God’s perfect love, let it more and more define you. Abide in God’s love and, more and more, let God’s love abide in you, that you might truly be a gospel light in the darkness.
Let us pray: Father, you delight to show mercy to sinners and you graciously sent your Son to suffer the punishment we deserve. We have received your grace and have been given new life. Remind us to set aside all thoughts of self-righteousness. Give us opportunities now to share your gracious love with others—with each other and with the world, that everyone we encounter may be transformed by your gospel. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.