Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity - October 4, 2009

The Church Season of Trinity
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (October 4, 2009)

“Humilty”

Readings:
Psalm 2
Proverbs 25:6-14
Ephesians 4:1-6
Luke 14:1-11

Sermon Form Deductive

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the Gospel Lesson from the 14th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 14:1-11 (NIV)

1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away. 5 Then he asked them, “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they had nothing to say. 7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 “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. 9 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. 10 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. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Jesus joins a gathering as a guest and it is He who is being carefully watched by the host who is a Pharisee, and other guests the experts in the Law all waiting to see if they could catch Jesus being ill-mannered regarding the Law of the Sabbath. In front of Jesus was man who was physically ill, “suffering from dropsy.”(v. 2) a condition we would probably call today congestive heart failure. The sick man had a sick heart. The Pharisees and Lawyers had sick hearts too, today we would probably call their condition, religious hypocrites. Meaning the Pharisees appeared outwardly very religious, but in truth they were just as sick in their hearts as the man with dropsy.

And seeing the sick man Jesus asked, ““Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 But they[the Pharisees] remained silent. So taking hold of the [sick] man, [Jesus]he healed him and sent him away.”(v. 3-4) And Jesus anticipated the response, knowing it was unlawful to do much of anything on the Sabbath, unless of course they had checked in with the proper authorities to make sure that they were using the most precise technicality to skirt the rules and law. So in anticipation of their tricks and questions regarding His healing on the Sabbath, Jesus asked, “If one of you has a son or a donkey or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?”(v.5) But the Pharisees and Lawyers could care less whether their son, or anybody else made it out of the well, rather they were too busy trying to take care of their own self image. In those times you didn’t get to be called a prominent Pharisee without a little bit of hard work and a lot of chest pounding. But, whether at that point they realized it or not, in two swift sentences Jesus had humbled them. Because He had directly challenged these high and mighty technocrats of the world. Because by the healing on the Sabbath He had brought them low, cut them down to size. Jesus lifted up the back side of the Pharisees robes of prominence and exposed their arrogance. They didn’t want work to occur on the Sabbath because it broke their laws, even if it meant helping others. And it is certainly not wrong to help others on any day of the week.

Today we celebrate a group who helps other’s every single day of the week. Today is Lutheran Womans’s Missionary League Sunday or better known as LWML Sunday. We celebrate these servants of Christ who do so much from what would seem such small sources. For these women collect pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, in tiny little mite boxes, yet their contributions to help others and to advance the Gospel are amazing. Officially the LWML tells us that they have, "For over 65 years, focused on affirming each woman’s relationship with Christ, encouraging and equipping women to live out their Christian lives in active mission ministries and to support global missions.” The LWML has adopted in the current convention a $1.825 Billion dollar budget for the 2009-2001 biennium, monies which will be used to help ship quilts to Lutheran World Relief, and an amazing amount of those beautiful quilts came from this very congregation. The LWML is helping with the food bank at the St. Louis Seminary, refurbishing of homes in Florida, disaster aid in Oklahoma, and Louisiana, providing scholarships to Seminarians at both the St. Louis and the Fort Wayne Seminaries, Prison ministries, Braille Bibles, help in Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Dominican Republic, Peru, China, and North Korea, just to name a few. We thank God for all their efforts in the past, we thank God for all that they are doing now, we thank God for all that this organization will do in the future. This group is truly supporting the work of God here in this church, and here in this city, and here in this state, in this country, and in the world. They have not sacrificed giving in one place over another, rather they have found ways to support Gods work throughout the world. This is an organization which serves in humility.

In our Gospel lesson the Pharisees were so focused on rules and laws and pointing to their own accomplishments so much so that the could exhibit no true humility. They were so busy watching others break the rules, finding fault with others actions, condemning others lives, pointing, cajoling, and grumbling, that they could not see that in their actions they had already broken the laws they sought to keep. Their outward words and action really only reflected a cynical hypocrisy punctuated by the exclamation mark of sarcasm. Yet sadly if those Pharisees of old were able, they would point right back at us because we join them each and every day, by all that we have done and all that we have left undone, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, and so we are called to repent.

For there is only one who exhibits true humility, and it is He who came from heaven and “being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!”(Php 2:8) And through the cross of Christ, ‘God who knows our sin and pride’(Prvbs 3:34) yet He, still freely gives us His grace. You who “humble yourself before the Lord, He lifts you up.” In fact He has already lifted you up, for in the waters of your baptism all your pain, your worry, and your sins were set aside, you have been “raised from the dead so that you may live a new life.”(Rom. 6:4) And today you have received from Jesus Christ the forgiveness of sins, which renews, refreshes, and strengthens your faith.

In pride the Pharisees would have indeed pulled their oxen or donkey from a well even if it meant breaking their rules of the Sabbath. But God sends to you the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ and through His humbleness we who are weak of heart stand in His presence. We are called to serve our fellow man in this place and to the ends of the earth, and the LWML is a good example of that desire to serve others, because this flows from the gift of grace which God gives us through his Son. For Jesus Christ frees us from the depths of our sin. He lifts us from this world of despair and He brings us to our knees, and He blesses us with His forgiveness, and with His infinite humility He humbly blesses us, and brings us to the highest seat of honor in His father’s house. And their we will humbly exalt Him for all eternity. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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