by CCW | 22 September 2013 15:02
Spatial metaphors abound in the Scriptures. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho” or “We go up to Jerusalem”, to take but two familiar examples, the one from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the other from Quinquagesima Sunday just before Lent. The meaning of our comings and goings are captured in these metaphors; they are about the ups and downs of our lives but, even more, they are images about the nature of our relationship with God and with one another; in short, they are about sin and grace, about death and resurrection.
The Scriptural readings for today emphasize our identity in Christ. His grace defines us and in very dynamic ways. The Collect bids us pray to God that his grace “may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works.” Prevent here does not mean ‘hinder’ or stand in our way; no, it is about the grace of God going before us and then, following or coming after us. The point, too, is that our good works are nothing but the effects of God’s grace in us. It is really all about God’s grace but that does not eclipse, destroy or deny the reality of our human nature; quite the opposite, it is about its perfection. To use a wonderful theological phrase from Aquinas, “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.”
What is required of us? Humility. There can be no perfecting of our being, no going up higher, no being raised up to glory, without humility. In a way, it is the way of grace in us making us lovely where once we were unlovely. Religion cannot be about mere duty, checking off the boxes of all the forms of social and political correctness, as it were. It is radically and fundamentally about the transforming power of God’s grace. This is the powerful point of the parable which Jesus tells as the counter to the ways in which we trust in our own presumption about what is acceptable and proper, our own judgments about ourselves and others, which is really about our own pride. Pride cuts us off from God and one another. It often disguises itself in how we think and look at others, thinking ourselves invariably to be better than others and deserving of special attention.
The context of the telling of the parable is instructive. It is the Sabbath, the preeminent holy day in which there is an intentional rest from all our labours, a day dedicated to God in the deeper meaning of the purpose of his creation. Jesus is in the house of one of the chief Pharisees “to eat bread,” a celebratory and hospitable occasion. Yet Luke tells us that “they watched him,” suggesting a kind of critical, even hostile gaze. But then, “behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy;” in short, someone afflicted with a painful swelling in the body. Jesus speaks directly to this critical gaze of others. He is challenging them about their understanding of the Law. “Is it lawful,” he says, “to heal on the Sabbath day?” Without waiting for their answer, “he took him, and healed him, and let him go.” A Sabbath day miracle of the healing of the man which had the dropsy. An in-your-face kind of challenge and repudiation of the ancient Law? Or a deeper understanding of the very reality to which the Law itself points us?
Important questions but Jesus responds by identifying the hypocrisy of those who would presume to judge his actions in healing the man on the Sabbath. “Which of you” on the Sabbath, he asks, “shall have an ass, or an ox, fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out?” The man with the dropsy is surely more than an ass or an ox, mere beasts of burden. If they would come to the help of ox and ass how much more should they seek the good of a fellow human being and rejoice in his being healed, Sabbath day or no Sabbath day?
It would seem that the point has been made and the account could stop right there but, in the face of their silence (“for they could not answer him again to these things”), Jesus “put[s] forth a parable,” a most intriguing parable, it seems to me, and yet one which addresses the deeper issues in this scene.
The real issue is pride. Pride ultimately and paradoxically puts us down and is often expressed in our putting others down. There is a kind of wonderful and, I think, intentional irony here. It has to do with the associations belonging to ‘the dropsy’. The Greek word (‘hydropikos’) means being puffed up or swelled up with water, in other words, congestive heart failure as I was reliably informed this morning. But the image of being puffed up or swelled up, that is to say, full of yourself, is another way of describing pride. He has just healed the man who is physically puffed up with water but the greater issue is those who are puffed up with themselves, the lawyers and the Pharisees, who are in need of a far greater healing, a healing of their souls. That is the point of the parable.
It speaks directly to human presumption and pride. The condition of our being raised up is being humble. In a way, the parable is a retelling of Mary’s Magnificat. “For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden”; the word for lowliness is the same as one who humbles himself. “He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” the word for pride is the same as “whosoever exalteth himself.” The man with the physical dropsy is healed but what about us who are full of ourselves?
The healing on the Sabbath reminds us that the Sabbath exists for our good. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” as Jesus says elsewhere. Ultimately our good is found in the Sabbath rest of God, his grace perfecting our nature. What is required of us is humility, the awareness that we are the dust into which “God has breathed his spirit.” We have a close and intimate connection to the humus, to the ground. We cannot raise ourselves; we can only want God’s grace to raise us. It means waiting upon him and upon his voice calling out to us, “friend, go up higher.” We can only go up to him by way of his life in us. Pride and presumption inevitably stand in the way; they put us down. Only grace can raise us up. It is what Mary sings in her Magnificat; humility exalts us into the glory of God. If we are humbled it is only so that we may be exalted. Such is grace.
There is no greater humility than that Christ should call us friends. It signals something of the radical meaning of the Incarnation. God comes down to us that we may be raised up to him, transformed by the intimacy of God’s great grace in Jesus Christ, the one who bids us,
Fr. David Curry,
Trinity XVII, 2013
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2013/09/22/sermon-for-the-seventeenth-sunday-after-trinity-4/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.