St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 15 – September 6th and 9th, 2007
Luke 14:1, 7-14
1One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 7When 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. 9If 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. 10But 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. 11For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
12Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Dear Disciples of Jesus.
I always wondered to myself, who in their right mind would want to be a major league umpire or referee. Every play or call that you make is watched by thousands and sometimes even millions of people at the game or on TV. You might make 1000 good calls, but there is one close call that happens in a split second where you think the runner was safe when instant replay clearly points out that you were wrong and the batter was out. At this moment you are blamed for losing the game or even worse losing the World Series because of your one bad call. A major league umpire named Don Denkinger blew a call just like this in a World Series baseball game in the ninth inning. Replay showed that he was wrong, but he didn’t find that out until after the game. He was blamed by the team, the fans and the city for losing the game and the World Series. For years after that game, he received death threats over the phone and in the mail. What a tough job these people have. Even when you make the right call and instant replay shows that you were correct, you have the fans and coaches who didn’t like the call booing you and even making your life miserable. People who have these types of jobs must know that there will always be lots of people watching them and that there will be many people who actually don’t like them at all.
As we live in this world, we as Christians might sometimes feel like that referee or umpire. Every move we make and every word that we speak is being watched and analyzed. There are people that will criticize us or even hate us for the things that we do or say even if they are the right things. We might feel that there is nothing we can do that will appease those who are against us. And guess what, this is true. We are being watched. With this thought in our minds, we will use the theme:
1. By your enemies
2. By your Savior
As we look at the opening verse of our text we see that there were people who were watching Jesus and his disciples, “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.” While it is true that we all need to watch Jesus to be saved, we also recognize that these people were not watching Jesus to find out the way to heaven. These people were Jesus’ enemies who were looking for way to trick Jesus or catch Jesus in a sin. These men were blind to their own sin and quick to notice the faults of everyone else. They knew a sin when they saw one and made sure that everyone else’s sins were recognized. The reason that these men were watching Jesus so closely was because Jesus was exposing their hypocrisy. They resented his criticisms and they knew that he was becoming more popular than they were. They wanted to be the spiritual leaders, but Jesus was becoming more popular than them. They thought that Jesus might ruin them and their positions of high trust. They wanted to find just one thing that they could accuse Jesus of to topple him and his popularity.
As we live in this sinful world we need to recognize that we have people watching our every move. As I have said many times before, not everyone in Watertown is happy that you are Christians. There are actually people here in town that would like to see you as Christians fall or at the very least stumble. They are resentful of you and your faith in Jesus. They might even be resentful of the God that you worship follow. Their motive in hurting you and your faith is very simple. They want to see you stumble and fall, and then they can use that as ammunition when you come and talk to them about Jesus. They want to see you stumble and fall so that they can say, “and you call yourself a Christian”. It might not be fair and their methods might not be very nice, but you have your enemies watching your every move.
For example in our text, Jesus was talking to the people about pride and humility, “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. 9If 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. 10But 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. 11For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus was warning us of thinking to highly of ourselves. As we live in this community, what do unbelievers or weak Christians see when they look at you? Do they see humble and respectful Christians who are always looking to build up others rather than trying to build up a big name for themselves? Or do they see Christians who are always looking for way to make themselves look better at the expense of other people? Our enemies would love to say to us what a hypocrite you are. You preach humility and love, but you live a life of pride and life revolves around you. They would love to say that you talk about loving each other, but you hardly ever show love out in the world. They would love to say that you condemn the sins of everyone else, but you have forgotten to apply this to your own life. And what kind of faithfulness would the people of this world see when they looked at your life. Would they see people who every Sunday get up and get ready to go to Church? Or would they see people who attend Church so sporadically that they might not even know that you attend a Church. And if the truth be told and our neighbors actually watched closely, how many Sundays do we get up and attend church – half the time or maybe even less. What do they see when they watch your lives?
This also applies to our own congregation. There are many people looking to see how St. Luke’s Church handles itself. I’m sure that there are even people who would like to see St. Luke’s collapse and close its doors. What do people see when they see our Church? Do they see a congregation that joyfully and generously supports the work that Jesus wants us to do – namely the preaching and teaching of God’s Word to all people? Do they see a group of believers faithfully week in and week out gathered around his Word eager to live their faith and share their faith? Do they see Christians whose hearts are filled to overflowing with God’s love and will do anything to make sure that all the people of St. Luke’s are growing in God’s Word and that more and people are coming to hear about the only way to heaven? Do they see humble and faithful people looking out for others rather than only looking out for themselves? Or on the other hand might people look at St. Luke’s and say there is certainly lots of room for improvement? The Church is only half full and only a small percentage of the people come to Bible Class and you call yourselves Christians.
And yet as we look at this, we also need to recognize that not only is the sinful world watching our every move, we need to recognize that our Savior Jesus Christ is watching us. Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees and the hearts of all those who were eager to be filled with pride and self-glory. He knew who was pretending to be one of his followers and who actually believed and trusted in him as their Savior. And in the same way we know that Jesus is watching our lives. Our life is like an open book before Jesus our Savior. He knows our every thought and desire. He knows our ever action long before we ever do it. He knows our motives. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses. He is present with us at our homes and during times of fun and recreation. He is with us during our work hours and during times we are all alone. He is with us when we receive our checks from work and we are deciding how to use this money, and he is with us as students when we go away to school and there is no parents watching over our every move. We can never escape the watchful eye of Jesus our all knowing God.
Now is that a bad thing or a good thing? Is it good that Jesus knows everything about me or is that something we need to be worried about? It depends what you mean by good and bad. To sinful human being like us, it is always a very difficult thing to know that Jesus knows every one of my sins. He sees every sin I’ve every committed from what seemed like a small sin to the large sins that many people might know about. It is at this point that we recognize very clearly that we can’t fool God and we never should try to fool God. We need to fall humble before our Lord and Savior and confess our every sin. We need to stand before God and believe and trust that we can’t earn heaven or please God for our salvation. Our sinful nature doesn’t like to admit that we have failed, but the faith that has been planted in our hearts will lead us to see that there is only way to move forward and that is through the innocent blood of our Lord and Savior.
At the same time, what a joy to know that our Savior watches over our every move and will continue to forgive us and strengthen us through his gospel message as we live in this world. He will daily be by our side and knows exactly what we need to make it through the next obstacle that is in our lives. What a joy to know that our Savior cares so much about us that he will always be watching over us and that he has promised to send his mighty angels to watch over us and to guard us. Let us live our lives as children who are eager to light our lights shine. The Devil and all his followers are looking for ways to trip us up, but we know that we are being watched even more closely by Jesus our loving Lord and Savior. Amen.