Luke 14:1-14 - You Don't Understand - August 28, 2022

“You don’t understand” might come off as a rather condescending theme for a sermon. The truth is that I was just reminiscing about my teenage years – you know those years when you were smarter than your parents? My parents never understood why I had to play my music so loud, why I had to stay up late and wake up even later, why these hands were made for playing video games and throwing baseballs – not washing dishes or taking out the trash. Know what I mean? Parents never seem to understand anything when you’re a teenager. In the Word of God before us, Jesus reveals that we don’t really understand our God.

The thing you have to understand about this text is that there’s more here than meets the eye; it’s not really about showing mercy to the sick or proper party etiquette or that if you’re proud you’re going to be humbled and if you’re humble, sooner or later you will be exalted. How do we know that? First, because Jesus’ miracles are never about the miracle – they are always signs pointing to something bigger (John 20:30-31). Second, Luke explicitly says that Jesus was teaching them by means of a parable. A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. But before we get to the parable, we first have to understand the context. The context is that of a Sabbath day dinner party thrown by a Pharisee. There are two things you should understand about this dinner party: 1) the Pharisees weren’t being kind to Jesus, they were trying to catch him breaking God’s law, they were watching him closely; and 2) they apparently sat Jesus next to a man who was suffering from swelling of his body as bait for their trap. Would Jesus heal this poor man – even on the Sabbath? He’d done it before (Luke 13:10-17; John 5:1-15). Now they’re daring him to do it in front of plenty of witnesses. Jesus exposes their trap by voicing the question that’s on their minds: is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they were silent. So Jesus answers his own question by [taking] hold of the man, [healing] him, and [letting] him go. Unlike his other Sabbath day healings, this time he puts his hands on the man, making it clear that he was doing “work” on the Sabbath.

Why? Why did Jesus throw this allegedly Sabbath-breaking miracle right in the Pharisees’ faces? To show them how wrong they were about God – specifically God’s heart. They believed that God was an unforgiving slave-driver who found his joy in telling his slaves what they could and could not do. They believed that they could earn God’s favor by doing nothing on the Sabbath. Jesus came to expose their misunderstanding. He teaches them that the 3rd Commandment is about God’s compassion, not his judgment. This miracle shows that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). He came to show them that God gave the 3rd commandment for their sake, not his; a day to physically rest without fear that they would starve; a day to find rest and peace in God’s Word; a day to remind them of the eternal rest the Savior would bring.

I think we too have a hard time understanding God’s heart. We tend to think that God has commanded us to come to worship each Sunday to appease his anger and earn his favor. And maybe pastors are partially at fault here. There were some pastors who made laws regarding worship attendance when you were going through confirmation class. No worship – no confirmation. And it worked, right? 7th and 8th graders were in worship every week. But then what happened? Not long after confirmation they stop coming. (It’s hard to blame them; what’s the first thing you did when you didn’t have an assigned bedtime? Stay up as late as you wanted!) It’s the same reason why it’s so tempting to believe that attending worship and Bible class and receiving the Lord’s Supper are things we do for God. If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand! In fact, you need to repent; to change your mind. Sermons and Bible classes and communion are not ways in which you please God – they are ways in which God comes to serve you to strengthen your faith and save you from your sins! The 3rd Commandment and the means of grace they direct us to reveal the pulsating heart of our God – that he wants to meet you here to give you his mercy, not demand some kind of sacrifice (Matthew 9:13).

The Pharisees misunderstood God’s heart. They didn’t understand that God’s way of looking at everything was different from theirs. It’s different from ours, too. We naturally read the Bible through the lens of the Law – that it’s about what we should do – rather than about what God has done for us. That’s why we have trouble with Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet. This parable cannot be about seating etiquette at wedding receptions. Why not? Well, first, if you take the lowest place fully expecting to be upgraded, isn’t that obviously false humility – the sin of hypocrisy? Second, if this parable that being humble in this life will earn yourself a place of honor in heaven – isn’t that just work-righteousness? Parables are many things, but they are not guidebooks for life in this world. Jesus didn’t tell the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin to teach us what to do when we lose something (Luke 15:1-10). He didn’t tell the parable of the shrewd manager to help us find a new job after we’ve been fired for negligence (Luke 16:1-18) – and he didn’t tell this parable to teach us how to choose a seat at a wedding reception.

How can I be so sure that this parable isn’t really about what we should do? Well, let’s go back to the text. After healing the man, [Jesus] noticed how they were selecting the places of honor, tells the parable, and then proclaims this axiom: everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The point is not that your humility now earns your exaltation eternally – that’s just legalism cloaked in piety. The point is that God’s kingdom operates in a way that is radically different from the way the world works – God humbles the proud and exalts the humble. I could cite many examples from Scripture, but just consider this one: where was Jesus seated at this banquet? Right across from a man who was suffering from swelling of his body. (Incidentally, at that time, dropsy, or the accumulation of fluid in the body was viewed as a punishment for sexual immorality (Numbers 5:11-28). Would you want to sit next to someone with monkeypox today?) Do you think the Pharisees – who prided themselves on their ceremonial purity (John 18:28) – would even consider sitting next to him? They picked seats as far away from him as they could – but not Jesus. Jesus wasn’t ashamed to sit next to this man and then, without even being asked, Jesus healed him. He exalted him from the shame of a stigmatized physical malady. That’s grace. God exalts by grace, not merit. He exalts freely, unreasonably, outrageously.

Do you understand that? Do you understand that God doesn’t think in terms of merit but in terms of grace? (Note that even in the parable, the person who is invited to move up to a seat of honor did nothing to deserve it – his exaltation was a free gift from the host!) By way of application, we might say that God’s greatest pleasure is not in exalting those who boast of their perfect worship attendance, their generous offerings, their selfless service in his kingdom. Nope, God’s greatest pleasure is in exalting the one who is terrified to even step through those doors because they are painfully aware of their unworthiness, who know they really have nothing to offer God than their sins, who willingly acknowledge that they have not served God as his dear children.

And that’s because God exalts only people for Jesus’ sake. God exalts worthless sinners only because his sinless Son humbled himself. Jesus, who rightfully deserved a place at the head of the table, humbled himself to take the lowest place – the place we deserved; a place of shame, sin and punishment in hell; a place on a cross. But then, as Paul says, God then exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name (Philippians 2:9). Because Jesus took the lowest place, God comes to us and freely offers us forgiveness and life and salvation, saying, in other words friend, move up to a higher place. This is what you have to understand about God’s grace: he doesn’t grant it to those who deserve it, but those who don’t; to those who realize that not only don’t they deserve the place of honor – but that they don’t even deserve an invitation. Understand that only those who confess that they deserve only punishment now and forever will ever be lifted up to a place of honor in heaven – because that’s how grace works.

We don’t understand God. Our thoughts aren’t his thoughts; his ways aren’t our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). We think Law, he thinks Gospel; we think works, he thinks grace. Which leads us to the third and final act of this little dinner party. He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, do not invite your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or rich neighbors, so that perhaps they may also return the favor and pay you back. But when you make a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.

Now, at first glance, you might think that Jesus is legislating a new law: invite to your parties only those who can’t repay the favor. But, again, Jesus didn’t have to teach the Pharisees about good works – they had that down pat (Matthew 23:13-39). Jesus isn’t teaching us about how to formulate our guest list for next week’s Labor Day party – he’s teaching us about God. Specifically, he’s teaching us about the one thing God fears above all things. God is afraid? What’s he afraid of? Payback. God is afraid of people trying to pay him back for his gifts and his grace. That’s not only unnatural and unreasonable to us; we would probably consider it not only impolite but unjust. We expect to be paid back. Our world revolves on the principle that if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. We don’t understand this seemingly irrational fear because we tend to believe that what’s true in this world is true in God’s kingdom. We think God invites us here to his house just so that we can be instructed and directed on how we are to go out there and work for him. That God is like a slave owner who only feeds his slaves well so that he can get the most out of them. If this is how you understand God, then no wonder coming here each week to feast on Word and Sacraments feels like such a burden!

Certainly, we confess with Luther that in view of all of the blessings God has given us we “ought to thank and praise, to serve and obey him” (Luther’s Explanation of the First Article). But that’s not the main reason God invites us to take time each week to come here, to come to his table. He invites us for our sake, not for his. Consider how you’re dismissed after you have received your Savior’s body and blood in communion. Do you hear: “Now get out there and serve God better!” No! “Now this body and blood will strengthen and keep you steadfast in the one truth faith to life everlasting. Amen.” Or consider the words that close our services. It’s not “Now get out there and heal the sick, feed the hungry, make this world a better place” but “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look on you with favor and give you peace” (Numbers 6:22-26). You come to this banquet to be served, not to serve.

God has a fear of being paid back, and this is comforting. If God doesn’t want to be paid back for his grace to you, then you don’t have to feel guilty because you can’t. If you feel that you have nothing to give to God but your sins and needs and worries, the fact that you come here each Sunday begging for forgiveness, expecting him to listen to your prayers and petitions, and pleading for his blessing – that’s ok! In fact, that’s good! That’s the way God wants it. You should view coming to church like coasting into a gas station on only fumes; hoping and pleading to be filled up – because the whole reason God wants you to stop and sit and rest and listen is to refill you with his grace.

While it’s probably true that parents don’t understand teenage logic, it’s even truer that we don’t really understand our God. We don’t understand his heart – that the 3rd commandment, the Sabbath, is not for us to serve God but for God to serve us. We don’t understand his grace – that God doesn’t exalt those who deserve it, but those who don’t. We don’t understand his fear of being repaid – because he gives the greatest gifts to those who can’t. Don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that you should – or can – understand God. But I do hope you understand – and believe – that he is even better than you ever imagined! Amen.