Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
The lawyers and Pharisees’ contempt, wearing silence, is not the only way they break the Third Commandment. Even before the healing, Jesus noted how they chose the best places, and in that vying for position, that same contempt wore pride ever before silence. So, now, He says to them, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him.” Well-versed in the Scriptures, they should know as much, for so Solomon taught in the Proverbs. Yet grasping for the highest seat is the same refusal to be taught that kept their mouths shut a moment before. The guest who thinks too highly of himself leaves no room to be taught otherwise: not by the host, and certainly not by God. Both are the same contempt, aimed first at the table, then at the Word that governs it.
You have been invited as well, not merely to some wedding feast, rather to the wedding feast, the very marriage supper of the Lamb. Even now, you are at that Table, in this House of the Lord. So examine your own place at it today. You have sat in this House on more days than you can count: listening for the sermon’s ending rather than hearing what is actually said; watching the clock rather than resting in the presence of the Almighty, desperate for the benediction, longing for the kickoff. Even if you have never said it aloud, you have thought, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, always Jesus; always Word and Sacrament,’ as though the same bread should have grown stale in your mouth by now. Or, perhaps, you have wished for a friendlier person in this pulpit, and teaching softened enough to draw a crowd, as though the trouble were a marketing problem rather than hearts already too full to be hungry: full of themselves, full of a theology of glory sweet on the ears and empty of a crucified God. Is any of that the way a guest at the greatest of feasts should think or behave? No; it is the same contempt for the Word proclaimed, dressed differently each time.
Readings:
Old Testament: Proverbs 25:6-14
Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
Holy Gospel: Luke 14:1-11
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