Luke 14:1-14 - The Great Reversal in God's Kingdom - September 22, 2019

If we didn’t have a sermon this morning, if we just said “amen” and moved on with the service, what would your take-away be from this text? What is it about? Is it about showing kindness and mercy to the sick – like Jesus did to this poor man with dropsy? Is it about proper party etiquette? So that if you’re attending a Packer’s party this afternoon you shouldn’t sprint for the comfiest chair or if you’re hosting one, that you shouldn’t invite your family and friends but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? Or is the moral of the story that if you’re proud sooner or later you will be humbled but that if you’re humble, sooner or later you will be exalted? The fact that we aren’t really sure what we should take from these verses is telling. It tells us that we might have skipped right over a key detail in verse 7: that this illustration of the wedding feast was a parable – an earthly story with a spiritual meaning. It tells us that we tend to read Scripture through the lens of the law (this is about something I need to do) rather than through the lens of the Gospel (this is about what God has done). Most of all, it tells us that we have a really hard time seeing things from God’s perspective – because that’s really what this text is about. This text is not really about table manners or hosting dinner parties – it’s about how in God’s kingdom everything is upside down, backwards, reversed from the way of this world. In God’s kingdom, there is a great reversal.

The parable is told in the context of a dinner party thrown by a Pharisee on the Sabbath day – a regular occurrence in those days. We see a great reversal already in the first six verses. The Pharisees had seated Jesus in the most humiliating seat possible, next to a man suffering from dropsy. (Dropsy was a disease that caused bodily swelling and disfigurement and made a person ceremonially unclean (Leviticus 21:16-23).) But Jesus turned the tables. He exalted his position of humility by healing this poor man – something which left those in the seats of honor speechless. As the meal continued, Jesus noticed the tendency of the guests to choose places of honor at the table. Given that these were Pharisees, we’re not really surprised by this. From Jesus’ depiction of the Pharisee proudly praying in the temple (Luke 18:9-14) to his blunt assessment in Matthew that Pharisees love the place of honor at banquets (Matthew 23:6) – the Gospels portray the Pharisees as a proud, self-exalting bunch.

Now in and of itself, there’s nothing eternally important about where you sit at a dinner party – or anywhere, even church, for that matter. But how you behave with others, how you rank yourself does often expose the hidden thoughts of the heart. It is a sign of how you rank yourself in God’s eyes. And that’s what Jesus is driving at in this parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. Think of a wedding. If you’re not in the bridal party, if you’re not immediate family, if you’re only a cousin, a second cousin, a second cousin once removed, and you try to take a seat at the head table, the bride is going to stare daggers at you and none-too-gently tell you that your seat is back there, way back there, next to the restrooms. If you were to attempt such a thing at a wedding today, all you’d earn for yourself is embarrassment.

But here Jesus is teaching us about something far more important than proper etiquette at weddings. He is teaching us about the kingdom of God. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a wedding feast. Why? A few reasons stand out. First, a wedding is probably the biggest celebration in almost any culture, filled with family and friends, food and drink, laughing and dancing. Second, since you must be invited, attendance at a wedding is a privilege not a right. Third, and best of all, is that you get to eat and drink – and some other poor sap has to pick up the tab! This, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. It’s an incredible celebration. Attendance is a privilege, not a right. And, the best part is that for us, it’s completely free!

The question is, when it comes to the grand wedding feast in the Kingdom of God, how do you approach it? With what attitude do you walk into this party? Will you barge in like a Pharisee, acting like you’re doing the host a favor by showing up, acting like you own the place, acting like you deserve to be there? And don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is just about how you are to walk through the pearly gates when you die. The kingdom of God is not merely a future reality; God is reigning among us right here and right now. This has everything to do with how you approach the foretaste of heaven’s feast that we call divine worship – because the attitude with which you approach God’s house now is the same attitude with which you will approach the banquet in heaven. No, it’s not really about where you sit – it’s about your heart. What’s in your heart as you enter God’s house? Do you drive by all the people walking their dogs and prepping their boats and mowing their lawns and puff out your chest a little bit, thinking “God, I thank you that I am not like these people (Luke 18:11). I go to church!” Do you take time before worship to examine your heart, to meditate on the Scripture lessons, to think about what we are really doing here? Do you approach confession and absolution with a clear understanding of your personal need for forgiveness, or do we sometimes say the words without really thinking about them? Do we ever think that worship is where we serve God instead of where God serves us? Or, most subtle of all, do we think that going to church somehow earns us a seat in God’s kingdom? If we do, then we have become Pharisees, legalists, people who think that seats in God’s kingdom are earned rather than freely given. If we approach God’s house with proud and presumptuous hearts, then God will humble us.

Because there’s more going on here than meets the eye. When you step through those doors you are willfully and intentionally stepping into the presence of the all-knowing and all-powerful God. You are stepping into his house, his temple, his courtroom. You are coming into the presence of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:29). And I would be doing you a huge disservice if I didn’t tell you what you look like when you show up. It’s not what you saw when you looked in the mirror before you left your house. God is not impressed with how well-dressed you are, how big the offering is in your envelope, how faithfully you’ve attended in the past, or how well-behaved your children are. Oh, that may be how we judge each other – but the LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). What’s in your heart this morning? How did you enter into God’s presence? Do you regard it as a right or a privilege?

Last week we left here cleansed by the body and blood of Jesus from sin and with his blessing. What have you done with those gifts this past week? Have you kept your heart pure in thought, word and deed? Have you daily humbled yourself before God’s throne and treated others as better than yourself? Or has pride gotten the better of you? Have you proudly imagined that you are such a good Christian that you don’t need to study your Bible on your own? Have you found yourself demanding that others – coworkers, spouse, children – serve you rather than the other way around? Does it concern you that you are standing before the God who demands nothing less than perfection (Matthew 5:48), and that you don’t come close? If we really understood what we looked like to God, we wouldn’t treat worship so casually, we wouldn’t act like it’s merely an opportunity to catch up with friends, we would approach the throne of the Almighty with fear and trembling – and if we fail to do so, it reveals a proud and deluded heart. It reveals that we really aren’t so different from those Pharisees who imagined that they deserved the position of honor and glory – even in the presence of the Son of God. So let me ask you again: how do walk through those doors? With what attitude are you going to approach the One who can either save or destroy your soul (James 4:12)? Do we have any right to be here? We are no one. We are nothing – less than nothing – for we are mere dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). Even our good works are nothing but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). We are not here to give anything to God – as if he needed anything from us anyway (Acts 17:25). If we approach God’s presence with pride-filled hearts, we will be humiliated.

Are you ready for the great reversal? The great reversal is that when we finally realize that, when God has shown us the ugly truth about ourselves in the mirror of the Law, when he has brought us to confess our unworthiness and sin, then we are ready to be here, in the presence of God at his wedding feast. That’s the great reversal Jesus is teaching us about in this text. In fact, the whole Gospel can be distilled into a great reversal, a great exchange. On our own we are nothing but dust in God’s eyes – and so Jesus left heaven and made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Philippians 2:7). We all have a sinful tendency to exalt ourselves and tear others down, so Isaiah foretold that the almighty Son of God would allow himself to be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, allowed himself to be sentenced to crucifixion by one of his own subjects (John 19:11). Jesus, the sinless Son of God, took on himself the burden of our sin – our pride and arrogance included – and took our place under God’s wrath. Jesus, the only one who truly deserved to sit at heaven’s banquet, descended into the depths of hell to pay for our sins – so that we never would. Jesus took our sin so that we could have his righteousness. He took our place under God’s wrath so that we could have his place in God’s Kingdom. He died so that we might live. And because he rose again in exalted glory three days later – we can be sure that this great reversal, this great exchange has been completed once and for all. We can stand here in God’s holy presence and fully expect to find a seat waiting for us at heaven’s banquet – not because we’ve always been humble and generous but only because God turned everything upside down: he humbled his Son to the point of death so that we might be exalted to heaven’s eternal glory.

Many churches like to advertise that they only welcome sinners – but very few actually practice what they preach (I think this is especially apparent when you visit their websites and notice them bragging about how much they do for the poor and needy in the community on their websites – bragging is hardly humility). Jesus makes it clear today only humble, penitent sinners will be welcomed into heaven’s banquet. If you think you can come storming in like a Pharisee, like you own the place, like deserve to be there – the only person you’re deceiving is yourself (1 John 1:8), and you will be humiliated. But, if you come with fear and trembling, with the attitude that you don’t deserve to be there, with the humble confession that you are what God says you are: a sinner, undeserving of anything but wrath – then I have some really good news for you! This is the place for you. Here Jesus takes you by the hand through Word and Sacrament and says to you friend, move up to a better place. Here Jesus invites you to sit in his seat of honor and dine on the feast he purchased with his blood. It’s a great reversal. In this world the proud are exalted and the humble humiliated. But in God’s Kingdom the proud are humbled and the humble are exalted. May God grant us the humility to believe that the only ones who will find a seat at his eternal feast are those who confess in faith that they don’t deserve it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.