Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 17

Ephesians 4:1-6  +  Luke 14:1-11

When God made Adam and Eve, He made them in His own likeness and image, which means, as we discussed recently in Bible class, that they had true knowledge of God and were truly righteous and holy like God. One of the key components of that righteousness is love, and one of the most basic traits of love is that it focuses outward, away from oneself. Love focuses, first, on God—who He is, what He thinks, what He has said and done, what He wants done. And love focuses, second, on the neighbor—what he or she needs, what would benefit him or her. That doesn’t mean we’re to have no concern at all for ourselves. After all, God says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But the focus is outward, toward God first and toward the neighbor second, so that we spend very little time thinking about me—what I think, what I want, what I’m suffering, or what I might suffer if I serve God and my neighbor. Love doesn’t waste time dwelling on how great I am, or what a failure I am. It doesn’t have time to dwell on those things. There are too many other people to focus on. “What does God say? What would help the people around me?” These are the questions God would have us focus on. To live like that is to live in love, which is also to live in humility. That’s how God made us to be.

But since the fall into sin, it isn’t who we are, by nature. One of the main effects of sin on our race is that it has taken that outward focus of love and curved it inward, so that by nature we spend most of our time worrying about what I think, what I want, what I need, what I’m suffering, what I’m going through, how great I am, or how worthless I am. I think I’ve told you before that one of my teachers used to call this, “navel-gazing,” staring at your own belly button, focusing on yourself. We’re all prone to that. It’s one of the defining characteristics of sinners, in fact.

But Jesus wasn’t—wasn’t a sinner, wasn’t prone to navel-gazing. His focus was always outward, toward His Father in heaven, and toward the rest of humanity whom He came to save at great cost to Himself. He shows us in today’s Gospel the importance of an outward focus for God’s people.

It was a Sabbath Day. Jesus was invited to a meal at the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were notoriously focused on themselves, how obedient they were, how much godlier they were than others. There was a sick man there, a man who had dropsy. Jesus planned to heal him, but first, He wanted to guide the Pharisees and the other guests to understand this outward focus. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?, He asked. They remained silent. Not a word. They didn’t turn first to God, to see what He said about it in His Word. (If they had, they would have realized that God never forbade helping your neighbor on the Sabbath Day.) Instead, they turned inward. They made the Sabbath to be about themselves, their obedience to God’s commandment to rest on that day. They didn’t want to see anyone healed on the Sabbath. But they couldn’t come right out and say that, or they would have looked just as self-centered and mean spirited as they actually were. So they remained silent.

Jesus healed the man and let him go. Then He asked them, Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? And they could not answer Him regarding these things. Of course, all of them would have helped their own animal on that day. But, again, they couldn’t admit that, because it would show that they had more concern for their animal than they did for their fellow Israelite who was suffering.

The fact is, God made the Sabbath day to emphasize that outward focus, on God, on His Word, and on the neighbor. The Sabbath rest was not designed so that the Israelites could look at themselves resting, could focus on themselves obeying the commandment, but on their workers who needed a break, on their family members who needed a break from work. My neighbor needs rest! My animals need rest! God’s Word must be heard! The ministry must be used! The needy must be helped! Every other day, the focus, by necessity, perhaps, was more about, my work, my chores, my needs. But one day a week, they were to focus exclusively on God’s word and their neighbors need. So not only did the Law permit healing on the Sabbath. It actually required it—if healing were in your power.

So Jesus’ kindness and compassion for the man with dropsy show us what true, humble, outward-focused love toward the neighbor looks like, and at the same time it highlighted the self-centeredness and inward focus of the Pharisees.

Then we come to the second part of our Gospel. At the same meal, Jesus noticed how the guests chose the best places for themselves. In their culture, the seating arrangement at a banquet said something about how important or how unimportant a guest was. And all these guests seemed to think of themselves as more important than the rest, as deserving of the best spot available. Again, focused inward, on their own importance.

But where should they have been focused? On the one who invited them! Gratitude toward the host for inviting them at all! And deference to the host’s decision about where each guest should sit. He’s the one you should be focused on. And since God is the Host of the heavenly banquet, and the King of His kingdom, which is the holy Christian Church, He will determine where each one belongs. And Jesus tells us here what pleases Him and what displeases Him.

It displeases God when we exalt ourselves, when we raise ourselves up in His presence, when we put ourselves ahead of others, when we make ourselves the judges of ourselves. Leave that to Me, He says. Leave it to Me to decide. Let Me be the Judge, because I am the Judge and I will determine where each one belongs. As for you, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’

How do you choose the lowest place before God? You admit, as you did in the confession of sins today, that you are a poor miserable sinner who has justly deserved His wrath and punishment. That means you admit that you’re no more worthy of His grace and mercy than anyone else. In fact, you see yourself as “chief of sinners.” That goes contrary to what our sinful nature wants. The most natural thing is to choose a place in the middle. No, I’m not the most deserving out there, but surely I’m not the least deserving! I’ll go over here to the middle and choose a place for myself. But no, Jesus says. That’s wrong, and dangerous, too. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. No, go and sit down in the lowest place. Admit before God and man that you are the least deserving, because you haven’t maintained that outward focus toward God and your neighbor that God demands. Not even close. You’ve spent more than a little time focused first on what you need, how you’ve been treated, how you’re suffering, what you deserve, how great you are, or how wretched you are. It’s time to let God be the Judge, and that means lowering yourself all the way down to the bottom of the heap before Him.

For those who do, Jesus makes an amazing promise: He who humbles himself will be exalted. There are no if’s or maybe’s about that promise. Admit your unworthiness before God, confess your curved, inward focus. Look to God, not for recognition of how worthy you are, but only for His mercy in Christ Jesus. And God will exalt you. He will lift you up. He will forgive you your sins and give you a place of honor in His kingdom, a good place, the right place, a place of His choosing, a place with Him.

And He’ll do all this, because Jesus, your Substitute, maintained His outward focus on God and on His neighbor for you, in your place. He maintained it all the way through Holy Week and up to the cross, never flinching, never crying out, “What about Me? What about what I deserve?” It was all, every moment of it, every drop of blood, spent yearning to fulfill His Father’s will, yearning to earn mankind’s salvation.

As a new person in Christ, that is the example you have also been called to imitate. Walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There it is, the outward focus on your neighbor, and especially on your fellow Christian. It’s hard not to worry about yourself. It’s hard not to focus on your own successes and on your own failures. It’s hard to look up, away from your own belly button. But God, right now, is gently lifting up your head to stop worrying about yourself, to stop complaining, to see only the people around you—your family, your church, your neighbor. And He lifts your head even higher, to see Him, and to know that Christ, your Savior, and God, your Father, is not focused on Himself at all, but on you. One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. You, focused on Him, He, focused on you, with the promise to raise you up and give you all you need—what need do you have to focus on yourself? Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

So far in this Trinity season, we’ve considered two of Jesus’ healing miracles: the healing of the man who was deaf and mute, and the healing of the ten lepers. As we’ve seen, every healing miracle teaches both the identity of Jesus as the Christ, the all-powerful Son of God, as well as His great compassion. Today’s miracle is really the ultimate example of that.

This is the first of Jesus’ three resurrection miracles recorded in Scripture. After this, Jesus would go on to raise back to life the daughter of Jairus, and also His friend, Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. In all three of those events, the compassion of Jesus is evident. When Jairus was told that his daughter was dead, Jesus took him aside and assured him, “Do not be afraid, only believe, and she will be saved!” When Jesus saw Mary and all the people weeping over the death of Lazarus, Jesus Himself wept. Here in our Gospel, we’re told that, when Jesus saw the dead man being carried out of the city, the only son of his mother, who was a widow, He had compassion on her.

That comes as no surprise to us, given everything we’ve learned of our God from hearing and watching Jesus through the lens of Gospels. If God sent His Son into the world to save sinners, if God gave His Son up to torture and death on a cross to pay for our sins, if Jesus willingly accepted all the suffering so that we could be saved, how could God not have compassion? His compassion is well-known to us.

It wasn’t quite as well-known to the world before the time of Jesus. Yes, at various times God showed great compassion to His people Israel in saving them from their own rebellion and backsliding. But the fact is, death reigned in the world since the time of Adam. Every single human being, except for the two exceptional cases of Enoch and Elijah, eventually died, sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently. Where did God stand on death?

Well, we have to acknowledge the truth. God is responsible for human death. He’s responsible for it in the same way that a judge or a jury is responsible for a criminal ending up on death row. When He said to Adam, “In the day you eat of the fruit from that tree, you will surely die,” He didn’t force or entice Adam to do the thing that would lead to his death. But He did enforce His own words after Adam and Eve sinned. And He continued to enforce His righteous decree that the soul that sins shall die.

But, surely the young man of Nain, or the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, or Jesus’ friend Lazarus—surely they didn’t deserve to die? No, not at the sentencing of any human court. Of course not. But before God’s court? The soul that sins shall die. And so all died, because all were born in sin and spent their lives proving it.

So humanity might have wondered where God stood on death, if He was pleased by it, if He delighted in it, because those sinners deserve to die. Israel knew better, because they had the Scriptures at hand, where God spelled it out plainly through the prophet Ezekiel: I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies. But when God sent His Son into the flesh, He made it as clear as possible, both by the life of Jesus and, ultimately, by the death of Jesus. Our God is moved to compassion by the death that we die, moved to compassion most of all for the living who are left to deal with the death of a loved one.

That’s what we see in the Gospel: Jesus’ compassion for the widow, for this daughter of Israel, who had already mourned the death of her husband, and now was grieving the death of her only son.

“Do not weep,” He said. Then he came and touched the coffin, and those who were carrying it stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother.

Before this day, outside the city gates of Nain, it had been about 800 years since anyone had been raised from the dead, as far as Scripture records. That miracle was done by the prophet Elisha, after he cried out to the Lord for the power to perform it. Before that, only the prophet Elijah had performed a similar miracle, also praying to the Lord for the ability to do it. But you notice that Jesus didn’t have to stop and beg God in heaven to listen to Him or to step in and restore life to the dead man. Jesus did it by His own power, on His own authority—power and authority that were freely given to Him by God the Father, as Jesus says in John 5: For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

The fact that Jesus Himself can decide to restore life to the dead demonstrates that He is not just a prophet. He is the promised Messiah, the all-powerful Son of God. It teaches the world to honor Him just as they honor God the Father. And it serves as a warning to those who don’t want Him for a Savior, to those who refuse to call Him their Lord, because He alone is the One who gives life to the dead.

All right. Aside from helping us to identify Jesus as Son of God, in addition to helping us understand the compassion of our God, what is the point of this account for us? What else does it teach us? What does God want us to learn?

He would teach us that, although the miracles of Jesus were only for the people of that time when He walked the earth, the compassion of Jesus remains. We shouldn’t expect Jesus to come back down to earth and start raising the dead again before the Last Day, just as we shouldn’t expect Him to miraculously heal our cancers or our heart diseases or any of these consequences of the curse on creation. But we should expect Him to sympathize with us in our weakness, to care when we’re struggling, and to send the comfort and help we need in the face of suffering, sickness, and death. His compassion continues, even He reigns at God’s right hand.

What else should we learn? We should learn that, although the time has not yet come for the dead to be raised from their earthly graves, the time has come for Jesus to raise people to spiritual life from spiritual death. Jesus explains in John 5: he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.

Even now the voice of the Son of God calls out: Repent and believe in Me! I offer you the forgiveness of sins! I will save you from sin, death, and the devil! I will give you eternal life! And as we believe His promise, He raises us from death to life, here and now. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Even when we were dead in trespasses, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

That’s an awesome thing, pictured for us in all the healing miracles of Jesus, especially the resurrection miracles. But there’s more. The brief three-year window of physical healings and resurrections that Jesus performed on earth was also a sampling, a foretaste of the actual, bodily raising He’ll do on the Last Day. As He concludes in John 5: Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth, believers (those who, as New Men, born again of water and the Spirit, did good in step with the Holy Spirit) to the resurrection of life, and unbelievers (those who did evil and had no faith in Christ to cover their evil) to the resurrection of condemnation. That resurrection is real—just as real as the resurrection miracle Jesus performed in today’s Gospel. Just as real as His own resurrection from the dead. It’s real. And it’s coming, sooner than we might think.

So trust in the One who raises the dead. His compassion and His power were proven in the past, and they continue into the present, and into the future. Trust in the One who called you to faith, who gave you life and gives it still. Trust in the One who will surely come and speak over your grave, Arise! And you will. And you’ll live together with the Lord, and with all those who believed in Christ, the Conqueror of death. Amen