A Dangerous House Guest – Part 1 – Luke 14

It happened that when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Him closely. And there in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" But they kept silent. And He took hold of him and healed him, and sent him away. And He said to them, "Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?" And they could make no reply to this. (Luke 14:1-6 NASB)

I am jumping ahead in my search for Jesus.  I am skipping to another account of Jesus as a dinner guest.  The wedding guest idea prompted me to seek out one of my favorite accounts of Jesus.  I found the details somewhat different than I remembered, because I was mixing accounts, possibly between gospels (which is another reason I am pursuing this concept in a blog – I want to get Him as He is, not as I form Him to be in my mind).

In this account Jesus is invited on the Sabbath into the house of one of the Pharisee leaders (I’m not told which one).  The meal is punctuated by four elements: 1) The Pharisees test Jesus and they fail, 2) Jesus corrects the guests, 3) Jesus corrects the host, 4) Jesus insinuates they will not go to heaven (a cornerstone of the Pharisee life).  I want to look at each element separately rather than write an entry that would take an hour to read.

In this element where the Pharisees test Jesus I’m given the setting for all four.  It is the Sabbath, Jesus is a guest at the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, and everyone is watching Him closely. Clearly Jesus is not a guest so the Pharisee leader can play the gracious host.  The Pharisees feel confident by isolating Jesus from His popular following, and have stacked the deck against Jesus.    The reason for this becomes evident when the man with edema is found before Him.  The whole invitation is a trap, and a sick suffering human is used as bait.  So the Pharisees start out the whole episode demonstrating such callous regard for another human that their lack of compassion and inhospitality is shocking.

The irony is so rich I can almost touch or taste it.  “What do you want to do this Saturday?” “I don’t know what do you want to do?” “I know! Let’s trap the Almighty of Heavens Armies at lunch!” “Yeah! Let’s grab Old Joe with the swollen limbs and use him!”  “Hmm. What should I serve for lunch?”  They stacked the odds in their favor, or at least would have had Jesus been just some wandering Rabbi rather than the Son of God.  These Pharisees have no idea what they’re doing.  Fortunately for “Old Joe” they are trapping Joe’s Creator.  The listener’s ire at the Pharisee callousness is offset by the enjoyment of absurdity of the very idea.

In this account, the discussion is short.  Jesus’ opponents don’t debate with Him, He simply asks, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”  There may have been some dialogue left out of Luke’s account, but what Luke left in is sufficient to accomplish the effect.  No one answers Jesus.  He is surrounded by lawyers and Pharisee experts on just this subject.  These guys spent most of their hours of writing, contributing to the bulk of knowledge, on just this subject; what is legal on the Sabbath.  Yet no one answers.  They continue to stare, silently, waiting as the trap is sprung on their unsuspecting prey.

The trap springs, Jesus takes hold of “Old Swollen Joe”, heals him, and sends him away (to safety).  They have Him!  Except Jesus calmly turns to them and asks, “Which of you will have a son or ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”  Blink.  Swallow.  What?  A son or ox in a well, do we help them on the Sabbath?  Well duh, oh wait…dang it.  The trap snaps shut on the lawyers and Pharisees.  The Pharisee leader now has his prey loose at his Sabbath meal.  That’s not what was supposed to happen.  Hmm, maybe we should eat now and get this over with.

I see in Jesus here a few things.  I see willingness to enter into the fray, the very den of His enemies.  I know He is God and has nothing to fear, but His disciples didn’t have the same confidence.  They may have been observers, like “Old Joe”, but they had to be in panic as they saw the trap snapping shut.  I’m not God, yet the Spirit of my Master lives within me.  Why can’t I have this same courage to enter the fray, even the den of my enemies?  Often I fear my brothers and sisters in faith, and have less fear of my enemies.  Why fear at all?

Jesus addresses an important perspective here.  It’s one that reveals to me the heart of my Master.  People are more important to Him than silly rules.  Not that the Sabbath is silly, but using it as a bludgeon for the very people it was designed to bless is really silly.  But do I do this with other rules?  Jesus says in another encounter that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath (). Is this true for other rules?  That question is one of the things I hope to address in my other blog, but I raise the question here because Jesus does.  When do I let rules overrule my mercy?

I would say that in my home this is most common, which is a sad irony rather than this humorous one.  In training up my daughter, I am more often shocked and appalled at her lack of obedience to my rules than I am compassionate to her struggles at school.  Do I expect her to “measure up” before I show her compassion?  I can see that my Master expects something different from me.  The character of my Master is to accept before correction.  There is correction, but there is the environment of acceptance that it happens within.  That’s what I need to create at home.  Okay, this is getting uncomfortable, it may be time to move on.