Text:
At the Table
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Pharisees believed the most important thing was where you sat, whether you were at the head of the table or the other end. But Jesus says that the most important thing is that you’re at the table. The rest of it sort of worked itself out. This is a picture of faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, which is what’s going on in our text. Jesus is going to eat bread at a Pharisee’s house, and a man with a horrible disease stands before the Lord. The man doesn’t say anything. He just stands there. It is obvious what this man wants and needs. He needs Jesus to heal him.
The Pharisees kept close watch to see what Jesus would do. Would He break the law of the Sabbath and heal the man? The answer, of course, is yes. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to heal the broken and to forgive the sins of the penitent. He healed the man and sent him home. The Pharisees were aghast! Jesus did work on the Sabbath, and this was a great insult to them. The Sabbath hearkens back to creation, when we hear in Genesis that God ended His work of creation, and He rested on the seventh day. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His creative work. It was the Day when He blessed His creation.
And then He blessed it again with Jesus. God set apart the Sabbath Day because that is the day Jesus rested in the tomb. He died on Good Friday, rested in death on Saturday, and rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, He was saying that He is the Lord of the Sabbath, and that He can bless His creation on the Sabbath day just as He did when He created the world.
You spend your life working and striving and trying to get ahead. Like the Pharisees in our text, we are all obsessed with the pecking order of things. We want to be at the head of the table; we want our place at the top. But you can’t do it. No matter how hard you try, you will fail. Like the man with dropsy, your failure before God is obvious to everyone, especially to the One who knows all and sees all. And the more you strive and work and struggle, the more obvious it is that you can’t make it on your own. You are trapped. Just like this man with the dropsy, just like the young man of Nain from last week, you’re trapped. All of your striving and working and struggling to be more spiritual or more Christian will never get you anywhere in the Christian faith. The only one who can get you to the Table and give you a place of honor is the Lord of the Banquet, Jesus Himself.
And He does invite you to the table. His great gift to you today is that He invites you to the heavenly wedding banquet. It doesn’t matter whether you’re at the head or the foot of the table. It doesn’t matter how dirty you are or how ill equipped for being at the banquet. That’s not your call to make. The Lord of the Banquet has called you to His eternal Table. He’s the host. It’s His decision, not yours.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, this is very good news. It doesn’t matter where you sit at the Table. The important thing is that you are at the Table. The Father has invited you to the banquet, where Jesus feeds you with His own body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. So come to the eternal Table of the Lord. The Table is set. The meal is ready. Come and feast on salvation for all eternity. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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