Luke 14:1-11 - Trinity
XVII - September 30, 2012
Christ Our Sabbath Rest
Christ Our Sabbath Rest
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.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment