How We Keep the Greatest Commandment
You don’t have to show hands, but how many of you have a person in your family that you find you apologize for before people meet them.
Maybe an aunt or uncle, maybe a parent, who’s you just find yourself warning those you bring to a party or event:
“Look, my uncle Danny’s going to be here, and he’s going to make some comments he thinks are incredibly funny or wise, just stay calm.”
One of the amazing things about Jesus, something that most people would have real problems with if they were to meet him at a dinner party, was his complete frankness and refusal to follow rules of tactfulness when confronted with hypocrites.
Luke especially brings this out, as there are 32 dinner banquets mentioned in his telling of the Gospel, more than one every chapter. And most involve some level of awkwardness, but I think Luke 14 takes the cake. And that’s because no matter how awkward you might feel Jesus words or actions are at this party, they are nothing compared to the awkwardness of what the host of the party does to Jesus.
Our first clue that something is up, is that the party is being thrown by a leader of the Pharisees. In general, they have been belligerently opposed to Jesus and His message, out of jealousy. This invitation to dinner is intended to trick Jesus into saying or doing something wrong so that they could be able to publicly discredit Him. But the problem is…
Jesus knows this, and they know he knows it, so how do you trap someone who knows that they were only invited so you could set a trap?
Before we get to the trap, what is the great debate between the Scribes and Pharisees, and Jesus? What is the greatest commandment…
Both sides agree the Greatest Commandment to Love the Lord… .
The question was, HOW do we do it. By that, I mean practically, because we can’t see God the Father. The Pharisees believed that the best way to love the Lord was by keeping the Sabbath Day holy.
The Mishnah has 39 categories of rules of what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath day. Some have had to be revised for today. You couldn’t start a fire, and many Jews today won’t turn on lights in their house, even going as far as unscrewing the refrigerator light. Turn on the lights, the coffee pot, anything like that, on Friday night before sundown.
Many Jews won’t spend cash on the Sabbath (but credit cards were ok), or drive, but only walk on the Sabbath. My dad, who is an orthodox Jew, told joked about how overcrowded the McDonalds parking lot a few blocks away from shul would always be Saturdays (no parking).
The thought is, the more restrictive you make life on the Sabbath, the more you honor God. It’s a perfect picture of man trying to earn our way into God’s Heaven. Works, not Grace.
And what did Jesus say? Jesus ties together honoring God, and keep the Greatest commandment by keeping the Second. We show we love the Lord by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
St. John phrases it this way in 1 John 4 verse 20
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This doesn’t mean keeping holy the Sabbath day isn’t important to Jesus, but it is kept holy especially in showing love and mercy to others, not in making the Sabbath as restrictive as possible.
So here is the conflict. They know Jesus values loving others more than the Sabbath. So, what was their trap? This is really sick, but they want to use his love of others to force him to do something that could be considered “work” on the Sabbath violating their Sabbath rules.
So, as they began eating, they bring in a man whose body is swollen with fluid from a disease called edema. The meal begins, and this person is brought in, likely on a stretcher given their condition, and plopped down right before Jesus like some sort of entrée.
The Pharisees have brought this man to Jesus, not as a guest, not so he would be healed, but the opposite, to tempt Jesus to dishonor God by healing on the Sabbath, or admit they are right.
There are 7 times in the Gospels, and 3 times in Luke where it is recorded that Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, always in front of a bunch of complaining Pharisees. And every one of them ended in an argument. This is the third time, so before he does anything, Jesus asks them, you’re lawyers, right, so: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?
Silence. So, Jesus decides to give them instruction. “If one of you had a son or an ox, and it fell into a well on the Sabbath day, would you not immediately pull it out?” Oddly enough, to do that was allowed in their special Sabbath laws the Mishnah. But they don’t get it.
So Jesus seems to completely shift his topic, but actually is teaching them exactly why they don’t get it. “When you show up for a wedding, don’t grab the best seats. Somebody more important than you might have been invited and you would have to give up that place.”
In Jewish society the seating of wedding guests was incredibly complex. It had to do with age and rank and wealth and whatever else. And being seated at the right hand of the host was the seat of honor.
Of course, Jesus wasn’t instructing them on the niceties of etiquette. He was trying to teach them about their relationship with God.
The final line in today’s Gospel says: “Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” What does that mean? Understand who you really are before God.
Jesus is dealing with people with spiritual sickness, bloated with pride. He wants to heal them as well. But they believe they are fine, and not sick, so they don’t want a doctor.
They believe they can keep the Greatest Commandment, and they fail. And we fail too. But, when we look to Christ, and what he has done for us, and will do for us, we have a different story. One we see reflected in Christ’s Parable.
When he came into the world, he did not come taking the seat of honor. Jesus came and was laid in a feeding trough, a manger, with hay and in a stinky animal barn. If you’ve been in a barn, or a teenage boys bedroom, you know what it smells like.
Jesus came in a humble state, not seeking His glory but lifting us up, seeking our redemption and was willing to take the lowest place. Without glory he lived the humble life of an itinerant preacher who was despised by the religious leaders because he said love one another.
While we look back on it now as a Glorious Triumph, the cross was the most painful, horrifying means of execution a person could suffer. It was public, it was humiliating, and while no one today makes paintings or crucifixes like this, he would have hung completely naked in public for the six hours he suffered for our redemption.
Not only don’t we deserve a place of honor, we don’t even deserve a place at the table. But Christ comes along and says, just like the parable, dear friend come with me and sit at the front of the table.
That is who Christ is for you. He lifts you to the spot of Glory, even though we never deserved it he does it because he loves you. He is the great host, inviting the spiritually blind and lame.
