Where to Sit at Table / Luke 14:1-14 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday August 31st 2025 / Season of Pentecost / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday August 31st 2025: Season of Pentecost / Luke 14:1-14 “Where to Sit at Table” 

One Sabbath, when [Jesus] went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching Him carefully. And behold, there was a man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they remained silent. Then He took him and healed him and sent him away. And He said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” And they could not reply to these things

Now He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honour, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

He said also to the man who had invited Him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends:

Part I

“How Much Work is Too Much Work?”

Pharisees were a complicated lot; they believed in the resurrection of the dead, they fought for the rights of the poor against the wealthy, they were ethnic nationalists with a strong dislike of anything foreign, they were in and of themselves a religious political movement, a complete way of thinking, as well as a social movement. In modern theological terms they were a sort of denomination of Judaism: they liked some of the things Jesus said, yet other things they weren’t sure about so they were watching Him very carefully. This is what was happening when Jesus came over for dinner on the Sabbath. A man with dropsy was there and the question came up, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”

Dropsy is a horrible condition where the body retains fluid in the tissues causing swelling – it was commonly caused at that time by contaminated cooking oil: why is this important? Well the Pharisees were very strict about following the law perfectly, including all the purity laws, which means if this poor soul with dropsy had been a good Pharisee he would not have had contaminated cooking oil in his house and therefore would have been well and would not have been sick. As far as the Pharisees were concerned the man with dropsy was no Pharisee, he was not one of them.

Seeing this Jesus nails them to the wall with their hypocrisy by asking them: “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”[1] You see Jesus was saying to them, ‘you’d heal him if you cared about him – but you are too busy worrying about your own salvation to care for others.’ This is a hard indictment; and Saint Luke says that the Pharisees “could not reply to these things.” To be charitable to the Pharisees they were worried that if they worked too much on the Sabbath they would break the third commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” but in their strict self centered view of life they forgot that their good works were always to be for their neighbour and not for themselves and that they were supposed to love their neighbours as themselves, to love them even as they loved their own children.

Jesus is trying to let them see that when you love someone no amount of work is too much work when they are in need, and the day in which you help them doesn’t matter. They had forgotten that the Sabbath day had ultimately been given to them as a gift, a reminder of God’s love for them, a reminder of His work for them; it was not meant to be a punishment with restrictions on everything from how many steps you could walk, to whether or not you could lawfully swat a fly. How often are we like these Pharisees, worried about what we can and can’t do as it applies to us alone – so concerned about our own salvation that we fail to act in helping others, fail to love our neighbours, fail in loving others.  

“How Much Work is Too Much Work?” For Jesus no amount of ‘work was too much work’ to save us – this is the good news this day – hear the words of Saint Paul when he wrote to the Philippians: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”[2] 

Part II

“How Not to Climb the Ladder of Success”

The Pharisees in their effort to follow the law perfectly had forgotten themselves – you see there is nothing wrong with trying to follow the law perfectly (in fact we are encouraged and commanded to do so); the real problem comes in when you think that you can, when you have convinced yourself that perfection is something that can be grasped by your own work. Rather we are to live through your baptism and strive toward trying to do everything perfectly even when you know you can’t – having a repentant heart, which honestly confesses its faults seeking forgiveness daily. Dear ones this is the healthy way of life provided to them us as Christians, a life lived under the protective umbrella of Christ Jesus’ revealed righteous, His perfection made manifest in His Good Friday crucifixion, Easter morning resurrection and His ascension to His Father’s right hand 40 days after that first Easter. The Pharisees had yet to witness any of this and they looked at Jesus as a sort of ‘Johnny come lately’ teacher and preacher, they were the ones who were ‘climbing Jacob’s ladder’ and had been for a while, “thank you very much!” and they thought that by keeping the law—in the way that they had interpreted it—they were actually getting closer to God, that each good work was pulling them up the next rung of that ladder of salvation.

Jesus had compassion on them and did not leave them thinking this false thought, seeing that they were left speechless after the question about work on the Sabbath, Jesus tells them the parable about the dinner guests at the wedding feast and the seating arrangements providing them an opportunity to reconsider themselves and their way of thinking. Now for people who believe they are always ‘getting better’ by their actions and are becoming closer to God with each ‘perfect’ step up the ladder hearing these words would not be easy: Jesus said, “… do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited …”[3]

In our current time it might be easier to think of a board room at some multi-billion dollar multi-national company like Toyota or Apple. Imagine that you are one of the vice presidents of the company and you finally just closed a big complicated deal that you had been working on for a long time – now you are feeling pretty good about yourself and are expecting some slaps on the back, you think to yourself that there might even be some Champaign and later they might even pass around the cigars. You walk confidently into the board room to discover that in the self congratulations of you mind you lost track of time and arrived early – the board room is empty, the question suddenly emerges, “where do you sit?” Forgetting the company’s special guests scheduled to attend the meetings that day you sit right up next to where the CEO sits and people start filing in. You get a couple of looks from your fellow workers who apparently read the agenda of the meeting more carefully than you, but this doesn’t phase you one bit, no you think to yourself ‘oh well they’ll see soon enough.’

And so they do – just not like you expect: In comes the silver haired CEO with a number of somewhat unfamiliar looking faces. ‘Oh the guests … they’re from that little parts company that your multinational-company was buying out.’ You think to yourself ‘there’s room for them down at the end of the table’ but the silver haired CEO looks at you and says “could you go sit down at the end of the table I want our guests to sit up here close to me.” Embarrassed you slink back down to your old seat, finding it full (the new occupant not wanting to get up) you go even further down the table until you find yourself as far away as is possible.

Grumbling to yourself you resent the newcomers who have taken your place. Believing still that your hard work earned you the right to sit up by the silver hair CEO – Forgetting that he is the one who makes the seating plan and not you. To add insult to injury, as you see it, the sound of the Champaign cork echoes in the big board room and you can see the new guests their cups running over, when the bottle gets to you its empty just like the cigar box. With the smell of fine cigars in the air and the sound of hard slaps on the back and laughter, you sit forgotten with shame burning in your cheeks. Remember what King David’s son King Solomon teaches in the Book of Proverbs:

“Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor
than to divide the spoil with the proud.”[4]

“How Not to Climb the Ladder of Success”

Jesus wants the Pharisees to reconsider themselves – they say they are interested in the poor (as long as the poor are poor Pharisees.) Saint Paul’s words echo again, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”[5]  

Jesus says to the Pharisees, and to us, “when you are invited [to the wedding banquet], go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Pharisees desired to be successful in keeping the law but only one person had the success that they sought and that was Jesus – but Jesus didn’t succeed by rubbing everyone’s face in His perfection, He was humble: “He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[6] Upon the cross of His crucifixion Jesus took the worst seat in the room, without grumbling and without resentment, so that you and I and all people can have the best seat. He was not so wrapped up in His own perfect completion of the law to ignore or abandon those for whom He laboured. His work was for His neighbours. And who is Jesus’ neighbour, Jesus’ neighbour is everyone who isn’t Him, we are all His neighbours, you are Jesus’ neighbour.  As Χριστιανός (Christianos) ‘little Christs’ as ‘followers of Christ’ we are to be like Him, we are to be like the one we follow: We are to care for the outsider and to be humble in our work. Yet because we daily sin much in thought, word and deed we need to be quick to repent, seeking to remain steadfast in our Christian lives.

“How Much Work is Too Much Work?” For Jesus no amount of ‘work was too much work’ to save us: ‘What kind of work do we do now as ones who have been saved by Christ Jesus?’ now there’s the question. Removing salvation out of the equation and trusting in Jesus’ redemption you are now free to walk the humble path, to do good for others without expecting anything in return, to consider the advice given to us in the Book of Hebrews where we are encouraged to let brotherly love continue and to show hospitality to strangers, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” To remember those who are in prison, as though you yourself were in prison with them, and care for those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.[7]

Among all the other trustworthy and profitable advice provided in Hebrews chapter 13 we are also encouraged to remember our leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. We are told to consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.[8] This is not a call to remember the Pharisees and imitate their faith, no this is a call to remember Jesus and consider His way of life and imitate His faith: The very Jesus Christ who “is the same yesterday and today and forever.”[9] When you follow Jesus people will have the opportunity to see this in your life, and hopefully they’ll remember the humble and good things you said and did in His name and they’ll consider these things and by the grace of God they will imitate them, but ultimately the desire is that they would look past you and see the one you have followed: Jesus, the one who says to you ‘Friend, move up higher.’ In this life you as a Christian are called to “bear the reproach He endured,”[10] remembering that there is laid up for you the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to you on That Day, and not only to you but also to all who have loved His appearing.[11] Better than any earthly slaps on the back, better than the sparkling champagne and fine cigars of this world, better than any pharisaical feelings of accomplishment or self righteousness, better than any seat of honour that men can award the crown the Lord has to give, the seat that He has prepared for you is earned by Him and given as a gift, it is not yours to take for yourself, you cannot work to earn it. Amen.  

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Luke 14:5
[2] Philippians 2:1-11
[3] Luke 14:8
[4] Proverbs 16:18-19
[5] Philippians 2:3-4
[6] Philippians 2:8
[7] Hebrews 13:1–3
[8] Hebrews 13:7
[9] Hebrews 13:8
[10] Hebrews 13:13
[11] 2 Timothy 4:8

Photo Credit: Main Photo table with chair (text added) from pixabay.