Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Josh.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm Gabriel.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today, on reading the gospel. We are studying the event upside down. Priorities. This is found in Luke, chapter 14. And we're going to read from verse one all the way down to verse 14.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: 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 the Sabbath day. Will not immediately pull him out?
And they could not reply to these things.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: 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 the place of honor. Let 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 invited, go 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 the 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 neighbors. 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 this last statement that Jesus makes. Don't invite your friends. Who can repay you. Invite the crippled, the poor, those who need healing. Did not this chief Pharisee do just that? Because here we have the Pharisee is having this banquet, this dinner, and Jesus is there. But there's also a man there with dropsy. So what is dropsy?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: So dropsy is a kind of inflammation of the abdomen after retention water edema. Edema.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: And it's not only the abdomen. It could be anywhere. The joints, the legs, the arms. It's accumulation of liquid under the skin and causes swelling and pain.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: So we don't know if this person was invited on purpose, as Jesus Christ suggests at the end of the story, or he could have been part of the family or one of the servants in the house. The idea is that Jesus used this opportunity as a teaching moment.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: I find it interesting because here he starts by asking the question, is it lawful to hear on the Sabbath or not? And they remain silent.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: I was very surprised by verse three. Jesus was not asking the question. He was responded to a question that is not stated. That means Jesus Christ was reading their mind. They were about to do something. It was an uncomfortable situation. They were thinking about that reality and Jesus reading their minds. He responded and asked the lawyers and the Pharisees, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? And they were silent.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Why were they silent? I mean, wouldn't the answer have been no?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: They knew that they were kind of caught off guard many times. We know that we don't do something right, but we do it anyway.
We know that not all the teachings or not, the whole belief system that we have is coherent and correct, but we don't dare to change it. Yeah.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: And I mean, jesus goes on to ask them, which of you, having a son or ox that's fallen into a well on the Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out. And this is an easy answer because Moses gives permission for them to pull the ox out of a ditch. If your ox falls in a ditch on the Sabbath day, pull it out. So this is an easy question that they should be able to answer.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: And they didn't.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: And they didn't. Not only did they not, it says they could not reply.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: And this is the first upside down priority that Jesus Christ has revealed. In their minds.
They are looking at a cold rule as being more important than a relationship with your son or with one of your animals or even pets in the house.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And so their priorities are not straight.
And we talked about this last episode, that mercy and grace mess with priorities.
It's unmerited favor and withholding punishment. And this is something we're not good at when we hold to the letter of the law. Now Jesus transitions to tell them this parable of those sitting in the place of honor. And there's so much wisdom in know if you're going into an area, don't sit in the place of honor. Sit in the least place and let someone invite you up to the place of honor if they want to honor you.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: The problem is if you think that you deserve it and you fight for it.
We are educated in a society, when you have to sell yourself, to have a very good resume, and to use many words about your success, about your achievements, because otherwise you cannot get a good job, you cannot get a good pay. So how do we reconcile this business culture with the teachings of Jesus Christ?
[00:07:15] Speaker A: I think of that as the culture 2000, my dad's culture, that you have to be someone you're not, you have to pretend, you have to try to live up to that. And so I see that there it is in conflict when we're trying to get ahead of in the race, in order to be ahead, that means people must be behind for you to win, people must lose.
That idea that I ruthlessly must be the best, is not what a citizen of the kingdom of heaven should have in their heart. It's not the place they should take.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: And I like about Jesus Christ that he is practicing what he is preaching. So Jesus Christ was not born into a place of honor.
Jesus Christ was not born into a palace, into a rich family, into a context where his childhood would have been quite easy, being provided everything that he needed or wanted.
Jesus Christ really started from the bottom.
And after dying on the cross, he was invited to go up step by step until he was reinstated as the king of kings and lord of lords of the whole universe. And I like to continue this idea by making the contrast between Jesus Christ, who humbled himself from being equal with God the father, going multiple steps down until he became as one of us, and eventually he died on the cross, versus Satan, who felt that he deserves more and he exalted himself. There are two ways of thinking, and I see behind this story the backdrop of the conflict between Christ and Satan, between good and evil.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: There's a word that I would use to describe Satan, narcissistic.
It's about me.
The world revolves around me. And I think, in a way, every human being has a default to some sort of narcissism.
It might not be as bad as others. We can always look at people worse than us.
But like you said, for Christ it's opposite. It's about others, and he's come down all the way to the bottom. And as christians, we should be in that same place that we go down, that we serve, that we don't seek honor. I honestly don't care. I like to be in the background. I like to have things not seen. It's hard being a pastor for me, where people want to honor and glorify and lift up. I want to be invisible and even up in heaven. I don't want rewards up in heaven. I just want to be there. I want to be in God's presence.
That's my reward. I don't care about crowns or houses or mansions or whatever. Just being with God, that came through a long time of spending time with God, desiring.
There were times when I was a kid that, yeah, I wanted to be the president of the world church, or I wanted all these wonderful things.
And I think it's the work that God does in us.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: And I like how this event ends in verse eleven, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. So our own upside down priorities, which are marred by sin and selfishness, as you mentioned, narcissism.
God wants to bring them back to the right balance, because otherwise we cannot make it to heaven.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: And so, finishing this off where we started at the very end, when you invite someone to the feast, don't invite your friends and brothers, but invite those who are poor and crippled and need healing. Does this mean that we can't have friends over to our house for dinner?
[00:11:50] Speaker B: No, this is primarily about a banquet for display. Don't forget, these are the Pharisees who are always looking for the outside of the vessel or of the plate, who are very much interested into their image in the society. They were doing a little bit of good and paying others to trumpets in the public market and to announce whatever they did good. So that kind of behavior is being criticized here.
And as we studied in one of the previous episodes, it is a very direct conversation, as Jesus has more and more direct talks. As he was getting closer to the cross, he felt that he was running out of time and he really wanted to share whatever he wanted to share in every context. And that was the appropriate context to talk about the upside down priorities and how to make them right.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
So we need to get priorities right in our life. And the good news is, this is the work that God does in us, the work of the Holy Spirit. So as we spend time with him, he will start changing those things around.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: And sometimes he wants to grab our attention with special events in our lives which are being used by God as teaching moments like brokenness in our family, like a health issue, like losing a job, like a crisis in the nation, and so on. But would be better to listen to the words of Jesus Christ in this event and to watch him, and by watching him to be changed before the last resort, to grab our attention.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Let us pray. Father, we read many times in the Bible that he who is the least will be elevated to the greatest.
I pray that you will humble us, that you will change our lives. That you will place in us a desire to serve others, a desire to not need honor. I pray that you take away narcissism within us, that you place in us a desire for the lost, for the broken, for the hurting.
That we can serve those around us as you served us. In Jesus'name we pray. Amen. Amen.
