First Year Sunday Sermon
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Aug. 31, 2025)
Blessed be our God who has not turned away from our prayers nor withheld their mercy from us. Amen. Welcome to the Memorial Church, or welcome back to the Memorial Church. It really is a joy to have you here this morning. Not just a joy, but a comfort also. It's a comfort to gather. It's always a comfort to gather, especially when the values we hold close and hold dear are threatened so powerfully and so aggressively. It's a special comfort to gather. It means something. It means something to me, and I pray that this gathering will mean something to you.
For those of you who may be new to this community, our scripture lessons each week are from something called the Revised Common Lectionary. This is a schedule of scripture lessons that we share with other mainline Protestant denominations. Most Protestants and even most Roman Catholics are reading these same lessons this morning. This lesson from the 14th chapter of Luke seems to have an obvious moral in its story. Give up the good spot, don't sit in the place of honor, lest you be dishonored, cast low, invite people who cannot repay you. These are good lessons. I have to confess, I don't love this lesson.
I mean, it seems a little bit too strategic, right? They can't repay you back, but you will get a better repayment later. Or wouldn't it be so much better to be taken from the low seat to the high seat? That will be much more impressive when people are looking at you. But the obvious takeaway from this lesson is something like be humble and welcome strangers. And I think those are good lessons, but I also think that this is an incomplete lesson. And in fact, the churches in their wisdom, when they scheduled these readings, they left some stuff out. There were five or six verses missing. We read the first verse of chapter 14, then we skip ahead to verse 7. So there's something that happens in between. When I was looking at this, I was thinking, "What happened in between?" And the scene doesn't actually end where this passage ends. Immediately after this, Jesus tells a parable to the people who have gathered.
And so I want to fill in those missing scenes for you because I think they actually make this lesson more complete. So what happens in verses two through six, what happens is there's a man with dropsy. Dropsy is an antiquated word for edema, which is a swelling of the skin. It can be very painful. This person shows up, and Jesus heals him. He asks them a question, the Pharisees, whether it's okay to heal on the Sabbath. I want to say about the Pharisees, too, that we tend to think about the Pharisees as this antagonistic force against Jesus. That's not true all the time, especially in the Gospel of Luke.
In the last chapter, the Pharisees actually warned Jesus that Herod was after them, and now they've invited him to dinner. This seems to be more a friendly sort of thing. And at this dinner, a man with edema, a likely painful swelling of the skin, comes in. So he's sick, and he's not just sick. Ailments of the skin had all these complicated laws for Jesus's people. If you had a swelling of the skin, you were supposed to have that swelling seen to by a priest, and a priest would determine whether it was the kind of swelling that would require ritual purification. And if you had a swelling that required ritual purification, then no one was allowed to touch you, or else they would also be deemed ritually impure.
Now, the fact that Luke says this person has edema means that probably he's already been checked out by a priest, but maybe not. All we know is that he comes in, he's probably in some pain. He is visibly disfigured and in a way that others in the room might see his swelling and say, "I should probably keep my distance from him." And so if something's at stake when Jesus heals him and not just heals him, it's verse five or six, Jesus takes the swelling in his hands, touches him, and heals him. So those are the missing verses, verses two through six. Then Jesus gives this lesson to his guests.
He says, "When you throw a party, invite people who can't repay you." That's where our passage ends this morning. Immediately after that, someone in the crowd shouts out to him, "Blessed is anyone who eats in the kingdom of God." And so Jesus says, "Let me tell you a parable about the kingdom of God," and the rest of this passage he says, "There was a man who threw a party and a bunch of people he invited didn't show up. So he invited everybody else. And the kingdom of God is like this. When those who have been cast out and cast aside, when they show up, that's what the kingdom of God looks like."
So there's an obvious lesson here in our passage, at least the passage that the churches want us to read this morning: be humble, don't seek repayment. But there's a hidden lesson too, which I think we need to lift up as well in this church on this day. As I was preparing the sermon, I was thinking about this man with dropsy, the man with edema. I imagine him walking into this dinner with all these religious teachers. I imagine him feeling their eyes upon him, wondering if he has been purified, wondering if he's pure enough to be there.
I imagine him feeling unwelcome, even if they don't intend for him to feel unwelcome, him feeling like he does not belong, like he is out of place. And it strikes me that the man with dropsy does the exact opposite of what Jesus recommends because he goes right next to Jesus and comes directly before him. Jesus is the guest of honor, and his seat is empty, and the man with dropsy comes right next to him, comes right before Jesus. He steps into that place of honor, and he doesn't do it... I don't think he does it because he believes he's going to be healed. So often in the Gospel of Luke people who think they're going to be healed come up to say to Jesus, "Please heal me. I believe you can." This person doesn't say anything. The only thing he believes is that he belongs at the side of Jesus.
The only thing he believes is that he is worthy, however marginal he may be to the eyes around him, however much they suspect or deride him, the child of God loves him because he also is a child of God. There is a message of humility in this passage, but it is directed to a certain set of people. The message of humility that echoes from this passage is one which is directed to the proud, to the outcast, to those who have been cast down there is another message. Jesus is not just saying or not only saying, "Make some room you proud folk." He's also saying, "Claim some room you who have been cast low or cast aside or cast down because the kingdom of God belongs to you and the places of honor belong to you. And in fact, we are throwing you a party and we will not start until you get here."
It is the year of our Lord 2025. There is nothing new under the sun. Christianity has been the religion of empire for 1,500 or so years more. And still we see this ethics of exclusion of condemnation. We still see it dominating our world. A year ago, I stood in this pulpit and welcomed everyone back to this space, and I had some fear for what might come in the next 12 months, but I could not have guessed even in my most pessimistic visions, I could not have guessed how people would be targeted and condemned and purged and punished and judged as they're now being purged and punished and judged, migrants and people of color and trans folk and gender queer folk, however much good they have done, you can ask our international students whether they are documented or undocumented, it doesn't matter.
This relentless and cruel exercise of punishment and exclusion. And I’m tempted, I'm tempted to stand in this pulpit and call it unchristian, but let's be honest, there is nothing new under the sun. And this religion of ours, which I find so beautiful for the way it tries to overthrow cults of purity, has been for so long and so much its own cult of purity. We have spent so much energy in the last 2,000 years deciding who is not worthy to sit at the side of Jesus, who is not pure enough, who is not good enough, who doesn't look the part so much so that when we offer this lesson, we cut out the parts, we leave out the verses that might suggest something else.
But if we look closely and we read all the lines, we know that Jesus is telling us something else. That his message echoes with the message of all the prophets of Israel, that God lives among the outcast, that the kingdom of God is theirs, that we will only be or become a nation under God when we invite those outcasts in and welcome them in and take them into our arms as Jesus takes into his hands, the man with dropsy. We will only be a nation under God when we honor them as Jesus honors them and as God honors them.
There's an obvious message in the lessons, the lines from Luke, we have this morning, "Be humble," and that is a message that we should take. Humility is a virtue. It's especially virtuous if you are one of the lucky ones who has been brought up to believe that you belong at the right hand of God Almighty. If you are one of those folks, Jesus is inviting you to step aside. But there's another lesson implied in all this, in the hidden spaces and the silences of this gospel passage. Because if you've been told you do not belong, if you have been cast low or cast off or cast aside, come forward, the kingdom of God belongs to you.
We are throwing a banquet in your honor, and your seat has pride of place. This lesson, when we read all the verses, when we hold it all together, when we take in everything Jesus wants us to hear, is about more than just humility. It is about humility, but it's especially humility for people who look an unsettling a lot amount like me, men in high places in long robes who stand above everybody else and offer condemnation and punishments and exclusions. It is a warning to them. This lesson is a warning to them to do different, a warning to us to be different.
But this lesson is more than just a warning. It is also a message of comfort and exhortation because if the men in high places have judged you and condemned you, Jesus is saying, "Come close, come to me," Jesus says, "Sit next to me," Jesus says, "A banquet has been prepared in your honor. It is in the home country of the Almighty, and you deserve the place of highest honor in that kingdom, and we are waiting for you to join us so we can celebrate you and celebrate, establish, make last the kingdom of God." I pray that this community will now and always be a herald and a beacon of that kingdom. Welcome back to church.