Proper 22 Year C 10/5/2025
Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
I recently asked AI on my computer this question:
“How big is self in American society?”
Its opening response was this:
In American society, the concept of “self” is highly prominent,
driven by a deep-seated cultural emphasis on individualism.
This core value, which prioritizes the individual over the group,
traces its roots back to the nation’s founding principles and continues to shape national identity, social institutions, and daily life.
In the scriptures and in our theology of salvation we hold the idea of individual salvation and salvation for the people of God together.
We are saved individually into a people group…
By faith we are baptized into the community of God…
As a Christian we are members of the church.
We have a personal relationship with God that expresses itself in the community of the church and in the outreach of love to the people around us.
We are individual Christians within the greater community of the people of God.
Individualism is not bad or evil in itself…
But when it is out of proper alignment it can become unbearable.
And in today’s world, we live in a time of inflated individualism.
A super-ego that believes one’s self is the most important thing in one’s life.
This idea of self has impacted every bit of our public life, our personal lives, as well as our private life.
Self-importance… Self-righteousness… Self-focus…
And the more Biblical term – Selfishness, are pervasive in our world.
And just because we, as Christians, are made righteous in the ministry and work of Christ on the cross…
We still have a flesh…
And often, like our culture, an inflated “self” …
And so the people of God… the church…
Is not immune to the cultural and societal encouragement to hold individualism above the community.
It seems to me that the proper Biblical view is to hold individual salvation in tension with the community of God.
And two ways that this inflated sense of individualism impacts our Christian gospel is in honor-seeking and also in self-justification.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of humility.
It is in the death of our Lord on the wooden crucifix that he made atonement for our sins…
This Roman execution was a device of humility…
Not something one seeks for honor and glory.
Christ humbled himself even to the point of death on the cross (Phil. 2.8)
And so, as Christians we are to glory in the cross…
Focus on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ…
Not declare our importance, our rights, our individualism.
And many of us have seen this in the American church…
Ministers or churches with an over-inflated-sense-of-self.
It is also something we have to guard against in our church community… In our own parish…
Where we can have an over-valued sense of my role at church, my ministry, my needs, my preferences.
One of the paradoxes of humility, says scholar N. T. Wright, is that, unlike the other virtues, those who really possess humility usually don’t have the slightest idea that they do.[1]
We are not to be honor-seeking but to show honor to our Lord Jesus through the way we honor each other.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is also a gospel of grace.
That it is a gospel of gift.
We are justified by God’s grace through faith.
It is not something we deserve…
Not something we attain…
Not something we achieve or work for…
It is not a reward for what we have done.
Justification from our sin is something that is pronounced over us…
It is what God gives us by his grace through faith.
And yet when individualism is out of alignment…
When it is over inflated…
We tend to want to find ways and means to have self-justification.
Where we believe that we have done it…
We have done our part…
We have obtained a reward or that God now owes us something because of our good behavior.
Again, N. T. Wright reminds us: We can never put God in our debt.[2]
The gospel, the good news is not a salvation through self-justification, but salvation by grace through faith because of the cross of Jesus Christ.
And these principles of humility and grace is what the three verse parable in our Gospel reading is emphasizing.
At first reading it seems distant and out-of-place.
Jesus said:
“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table’?
Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?
So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'”
Now, there is a lot of time and history between these words of our Lord and our life today.
One of the difficulties we have with this reading is the word “slave”.
In our world we don’t have open slavery (Praise God!) and the word for most of us brings images and thoughts of pre-Civil War slavery.
Slavery here is within the culture of ancient slavery…
Jesus is giving a parable based on a common way of life in the first century.
In the parable, God is the master, and his disciples are his slaves or servants.
We are slaves of Christ in the same way that St. Paul understood his relationship with the Lord… when he wrote, “Paul a servant (or slave) of Christ Jesus” in the beginning of three of his letters.
In this way, we are talking about our dependency on the master as well as doing our duty for him.
Jesus begins with a rhetorical question:
“Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down and eat’?
The answer is obviously a “No.”
The reason is clear, in the first century Near East, for a master to serve his own servants is unheard of.[3]
Now Jesus does reverse this principle in great dramatic fashion with the washing of the disciples’ feet and even more so by laying down his life on the cross… but that is not the point here.
In the next line, Jesus gives the cultural context that the master doesn’t sit with the servants when they eat.
And then Jesus says, speaking to his disciples:
…Does the servant get special merit (or thanks) for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you.
When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say,
‘Nothing is owing us servants. We have only done our duty.’”
Our two themes of humility and grace are found here.
The phrase:
Does the servant get special merit (or thanks) for doing what’s expected of him?
The idea that is being asked is this:
Is the master now in debt to the servant? … No.
In this relationship, (in this 1st century near eastern culture relationship) the master is never in debt to the servant.
In other words, they are not achieving the relationship by self-justification, but by the gift or grace from the master.
Likewise, in the phrase:
Nothing is owing us servants. We have only done our duty.
The idea being expressed is that we have not served in order to gain, but only to do what we are expected to do.
Which is to do our duty in humble obedience.
So, in our lesson from the Gospel of Luke today, we find two key themes of the gospel – humility and grace.
And this is, of course, good news.
It’s good news, because both of these take the weight off of us and places that weight on our master, our Lord, that is Jesus Christ.
Jesus took on our sin so that we can be made free in him.
Jesus did not make atonement for our sins so that we can try to justify ourselves by good works.
If salvation was about getting God’s attention, that is honor-seeking…
Getting noticed…
We would have an insurmountable task.
We would have to outperform everyone around us.
Salvation becomes competition.
And if salvation was about doing good works, that is self-justification…
We would have an impossible task.
We would have to keep the law perfect for our entire lives.
No one can do that.
We are too broken to even consider we could do that.
This is why God sent his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ into the world.
Through his fault-less, sin-less life…
Through his perfect, atoning death…
Through his victorious resurrection…
Through his ascension in power and glory…
We can receive salvation through grace and humility.
Praise be to God!
As St. Paul so wonderfully stated in the beginning of Romans 8:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.
The good news today, is that we are not trying to get to heaven…
We are not trying to get good enough or saved enough…
If we confess that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, we are saved.
Not because of self-justification
Nor because of honor-seeking…
But because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rest in that grace…
Rest in the faithfulness of our Lord.
Rest in the humility of our God.
Because the more we understand his grace, …
the more we turn from the sin of this world.
The bigger Jesus is in our life, …
the more we reflect his grace in this world.
So as we worship today, considering the goodness and kindness of God….
May we be built up…
to take this good news to the world around us.
Amen.
[1] N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville: WJK, 2001, 2004), 202-203.
[2] Ibid., 204.
[3] Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 119.
