Trinity 17

Luke 14:1-11 - Trinity XVII - September 30, 2012
Christ Our Sabbath Rest

Let us pray:

Come, O Christ, and loose the chains that bind us:
Lead us forth and cast this world behind us.
With Thee, the Anointed,
Finds the soul its joy and rest appointed.  Amen.

Jesus was invited to the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees.  It was the Sabbath, the day of rest.  Although it appeared to be a simple meal on this occasion, the Jews would often throw great feasts on the Sabbath so long as the food was prepared the day before—keep this in mind: they prepared their meal the day before.  Who, after all, would prepare anything that took more work on the Sabbath? 

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

And so, there they reclined, eating bread.  It was a low-energy little gathering.  And they watched Jesus, their guest, very carefully. That’s why they invited Him.  They were presumably looking for where Jesus might trip up and break the ceremony that they had perfected.  They knew how not to work.  They took very seriously how to fulfill the law.  And … you heard it: no work.  But as they ate their bread, lazily lifting each piece to their mouths, how blind they were to the fact that the Bread of Life sat in their midst.  If they had only sat in the right spot, they just may have seen that what Jesus offered was more than day-old bread to feed their bellies, but mercies new each morning, a banquet prepared lavishly before them by the Lord God of Israel.  They would have seen this… if they had sat in the right spot.  And this is the point of our Gospel this morning that I’d like to unfold. 

Fulfilling the Sabbath must have looked quite pleasant.  It was a cozy little restful occasion.  And it was a semi-public affair too.  Folks walking by could peak in and out and see what was going on.  The Pharisees no doubt liked this.  But then in crept a sick man who came not because of the restfulness of the scene, but in the hopes that One in their midst might arouse Himself from His rest and help him.  He had dropsy.  This is when the body retains water and the skin swells, and there’s no end or relief to it, especially in those days when no modern medicine was available.  He must have been an unpleasant sight in the midst of such whitewashed piety. But he did not come to be seen. He came because he saw Jesus. 

And Jesus saw him.  Jesus saw work that needed to be done.  He saw this poor man’s need for mercy.  Now of course the miracle that Jesus performed on this day proved that He was God.  But even before He proved it, Jesus beheld His fallen creation with true compassion.  It was He Himself, after all, who was there in the beginning—the very Word of the Father, by whom all things were made.  Man was created in His own image – with perfect knowledge and love toward God.  But because of man’s disobedience, this image was lost.  And here before the incarnate eyes of Christ, the wages of sin had begun in full force to take its toll on the body of this poor man.  God of God and Light of Light, who in the beginning once rested from His labors after forming the crown of His creation and calling what He had made good, here saw the miserable evidence that it was not good.  Not anymore.  Jesus saw sin.  Jesus saw pain – not that there is always a direct connection between the two – But Jesus saw the whole mess that His fallen creation suffers from still today.  Jesus saw a problem that only God could solve. 
And it was the Sabbath.

Now, of course, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Jesus elsewhere confirms this, but it was evident from the beginning.  Clearly a day of leisure by its very nature was intended as a gift of kindness from God, and not as a demanding imposition.  God sanctified the day He rested in order to teach man that true rest is found in God alone.  Obviously God does not need rest.  He is God.  But God hallowed the day after He had concluded His perfect work of creation in order to teach an important lesson.  Only where and when God completes His work for us do we find our own Sabbath.  This is not a burden upon man in order that he might earn something from God, but so that God might do something for man. 

So Jesus asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”  In other words, “Is it lawful to do what only God can do on the day of God’s rest?”  

Silence.  What a question.  They were not just quiet – heavy in thought.  No, the word here means that they were silenced.  What they were thinking, their scoffing disdain for this poor fool hobbling in, expecting Jesus to work for him on the day of rest – all their self-righteous thoughts and judgments were silenced.  They were put in their place simply by Jesus having asked the question: “Is it lawful? Is it lawful, on this day when the law requires us all to rest, for Me to fulfill the whole law in one word – by showing love to this man?”  Silence.  What could they say?  What could they do?  And that’s the point.  They could do nothing.  And in their inactivity, as holy as it looked, they accomplished nothing. 

It is interesting that this word for being silenced is also the word in Greek for having rested – having ceased.  The very thing that was required of them on the Sabbath, Jesus fulfilled in them by shutting them up.  Be silent.  Stop talking.  Stop grumbling.  Stop imagining what you must do to merit something from God, or prove your devotion.  Stop it!  Cease all labor, and look:  Jesus healed the man, and sent him on his way.  That’s what they needed to see.  They needed to see God at work – God at mercy. 

Now of course, from their perspective they supposed that Jesus might have broken the Sabbath by working.  But what foolishness!  As though on the seventh day of creation God ceased to uphold all He had made by resting.  Of course not!  As though on that first Sabbath the Almighty, by resting, did not continue to feed, and provide for, and defend what He had just created.  Of course He did.  Of course God continued to do what we needed God to do.  Which of the Pharisees would not have done what they could for a son or an ox in need of assistance?  How much more would God?  And so also in the face of suffering, and misery, and helplessness, God does for us what we need Him to do today.  God does what is in His character to do.  He does the work that we cannot.  He does it precisely where the law requires us to do nothing. 

As the Jews prepared their feasts the day before their Sabbath rest, so Jesus was prepared before His own Sabbath rest.  He was prepared well.  On Good Friday, the true Bread of Life was roasted by the fiery wrath of God as He hung on the cross to die for the sins of the world.  The holy Son of God prepared Himself as the sole object of God’s punishment in our place in order to spare us from the same.  He took our sin upon Himself in order that He might fulfill in His own flesh what the law demanded, what the law threatened, what the law revealed.  And the law was right.  It demanded everything of Him that it had demanded of us.  It demanded His self-giving life of love.  It demanded devotion to every word God spoke.  It demanded justice; it demanded mercy.  It demanded what we could not and would not do.  But Jesus did.  It demanded that He die.  And consider this.  It demanded that He rest more fully than flesh can rest, as the Lord of Glory was laid lifeless in the tomb.  And He rested.  From the dusk right before the Sabbath began to the dawn right after it ended when He rose triumphant on Easter morning, Jesus rested. 

The work for our salvation was done.  And so, as God sanctified His work of creation by resting, so Jesus sanctified His work of salvation by fulfilling the Sabbath on that Holy Saturday.  But our Lord Jesus even while dead in the grave continued to uphold the creation He had just redeemed.  Think of that!  He didn’t stop being God!  More importantly, though, while dead in the grave, He fulfilled the claim that the grave had on us.  He did not stop being our Savior.  He fulfilled the Sabbath once and for all by sanctifying our own death.  By making our death His own, He makes us holy.  He makes our death something that it is not.  He makes our final rest the gateway to life.  And so we feast, not on Saturday with bread, like the Jews who seek to fulfill something and earn life by their work.  But on Easter Sunday, we celebrate what has already been fulfilled, by feasting, through faith, on Christ Himself, the Bread of eternal Life. 

And this carries significance.  This is why we gather, and the Church has been gathering for 2000 years, every Sunday morning, not because of some law, not in order to fulfill something.  No. But every time we come here we celebrate what was fulfilled on Friday’s cross, and in Saturday’s grave.  We celebrate a rest, not demanded of us, but given to us freely for Jesus’ sake – a rest from our labor – a rest from having to earn something from God. 

Now, I’d like to return to the dropsy-afflicted man.  He teaches us something that the Pharisees could not.  The Pharisees sought to fulfill the law.  They had invited Jesus in order to show Him something.  “Look at what we offer to God.  Look at our obedience.  Look at our devotion.  Look at how much we love our Lord.  Look at our praise!”  This was why they came together.  But they came together for the wrong reason.  The poor sick man who followed Jesus into the house of the Pharisee did not come to show Jesus a thing.  He did not take a conspicuous spot to be seen by anyone.  He did not raise his hands or dance or perform.  He took the lowest spot, as he crept into a house occupied by lawyers and legalists.  In the presence of the law that exposed his unworthiness, he humbled himself at the feet of Him who fulfills the law.  And he found mercy.  And in seeking mercy in the person of Jesus Christ, he fulfilled exactly what the Sabbath required.  He sought rest, not in his own works, not in his own acts of praise, but in Christ alone.  And Jesus exalted him who took such a lowly seat by taking his infirmity, and his sin, and his death upon Himself, and by giving him a health, and a righteousness, and a life that only God can give. 

The Pharisees gathered to prove something to God.  And they invited Jesus.  Oh, how holy of them!  But that is not why we gather.  And we don’t invite Jesus.  Jesus invites us.  He invites us where His word is preached in its truth and purity and where His sacraments are administered according to His own command and promise.  Jesus says, “Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and what?  And I will give you rest. Because I’ve already earned it. Not for My own sake—no more than I rested for My own sake when I finished creating the world.  No, I rested for your sake.  And so I rested for your sake when I finished redeeming the world.  And I give this rest to you.” 

This is why we open our services here in the name of the Triune God – not in order to invite Him here, but because God calls us together through the same name that He placed on us all in Holy Baptism.  He calls us together, not so that we might show Him the treasures of our heart, but in order that He might reveal the mysteries of His own love toward us.  We come here in order to see what God does. 

We need what God does for us here.  That’s what the poor man suffering from dropsy teaches us.  We need to take the lowest seat in the house.  This doesn’t mean that we sit in the front or the back.  It means that we come here into the presence of God almighty for the right reason, and we do it regularly.  We come here, not to offer the sacrifices of fools with our many words, but to listen to what God says to sinners.  It means that we hold God’s word sacred and gladly hear and learn what God teaches us.  It means that we don’t skip church.  It means that we regard the word of God as more precious than sleeping in, cooking a meal, entertaining a guest, or even working.  Because it is.  To take the lowest seat and humble yourself means to consider what you can bring to the table.  It means to repent, because God demands more than that.  It means to rejoice, because God provides what you need. 

In this simple meal, which we are all about to receive, God gives to us what He moved heaven and earth to win.  He gives to us the very body and blood that redeemed us; He gives the forgiveness of all our sins, and the righteousness of Christ.  He joins us to Himself, and binds us to each other.  He gives us peace. He gives us rest for our souls. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.