Homily For The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity 2025
One of the key themes from today’s reading is a warning against pride. Pride is the root of all the 7 deadly sins - the other 6 sins, one could argue, are manifestations in some sort of the underflying root of pride. It is for this reason that our collect for today begs for the grace of God - his unmerited, unearned favor - that in the words of today’s prayer “may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works;” In our present context, prevent means to abort or to frustrate, but in the older English, prevent means to go before. In theological terms, we have the term of prevenient grace - a grace that goes before, a grace that paves the way, rolls out the red carpet as it were. Our collect, which you will recall is a term that refers to the formal prayer which gathers together and summarizes our request to God as we pray together, in this sense,
asks for a grace that goes before and then follows us all the days of our lives. It is a request that as a result, grace as opposed to pride, may make us motivated, given to all good works, all the good works that God has prepared for us to walk in.
Today, we are presented with the fundamental tension between the grace of God and the pride of man. In our Gospel, we have a man sick of the dropsy - an illness in which the victim’s limbs swell with excess body fluids. It was a condition that the Jews in Jesus day associated with excess of the flesh - too much food, too much wine. Some folks bring the sick man to Jesus and he asks if it is right to heal on the sabbath day because, they reason, it is the day of rest from work - a day in God’s economy to receive God’s power and restoration. The silence and pride of the Pharisees imply the answer is no. Perhaps it is more appropriate for the man whose wicked life had produced the problem to wait until the next day to be healed. Perhaps he is even undeserving because he caused his condition.
We have the scribes and Pharisees asking why this couldn’t have been performed on another day - why could not this dissolute man have been healed during a less holy day. Pride kept the men from seeing the problem of this suffering man, while Jesus points out they could rightly understand the burden and discomfort of their oxen and their asses if they fell in the ditch. Because of their pride, they could not see the value of Jesus releasing this man from the burden of his ailment.
Pride prevented them from seeing the needy man as a person formed in the image of God - one sharing with them the need for God’s grace to go before them and follow after them. Moreover, their response or rather the lack of response to Jesus’ correction indicated another aspect of pride - the inability to admit wrong or that one has sinned.
Contrast this with David when confronted with his sin with Bathsheba. Initially, he wants to mete out destruction on the rich man who would steal the sheep of a poor man so as feed guests rather than take from the multitude within his flocks. Then, the prophet Nathan tells him that he is the rich man who took Uriah’s only wife, Bathsheba. David, when confronted with the reality of his sin, confesses and repents.
In our Gospel, the Son of God asks questions of his creation; it is the height of pride and arrogance to not answer the question of one’s creator. Even Satan answered when questioned of God - we read that in Job that when God asked Satan where he had been, Satan answered the Lord and said he had been walking to and fro throughout the world. God then asked Satan - have you seen my servant Job? Satan again responds to the question of the Almighty. Here, we read of the Pharisees, “And they could not answer him again to these things.”
They had hardened their hearts to the truth and refused to confess the rightness of Jesus to heal on the Sabbath or the reality that they would show greater mercy to their animals than to this poor man.
Jesus shows them the blindness of this pride - the same pride that motivated their disregard for the sick who had been healed caused them to seek the places of highest honor and regard in their culture. Pride and status are social issues for all societies and the Jews were no exception. Status brings power, and power often gives birth to pride. This, in our Lord’s estimate, is destructive to spiritual health. That is why he tells his disciples that they must be humble. They must be deliberate in disregarding class and rank, for God himself is no respecter of men. The parable that Jesus tells in response to their pride is instructive in it shows how important humility is to following Jesus.
Our Lord tells the story of a feast - in which many are invited. Some prideful fellows, assuming that they are the most prominent at the feast, take the seats of honor. Later, the host of the party has the unsavory task of telling them that they are not as important as they think. They must take the seat farther away from the guest of honor, the host. Jesus gives some very practical advice about self-scrutiny: one is wise to view himself through the lens of humility - believing that he is the least worthy - than to embrace the folly of pride which is blind to the possibility of objective reality that someone else more worthy can come along and take the highest seat. It is a matter of wisdom, in the teaching of Jesus, for one to take the lowest seat possible - a posture of humility - and then be called higher - to a place of prominence. For pride keeps one from seeing oneself and the surrounding world through the proper lens - it distorts one's own worth by diminishing the contributions, the value of others around you.
C.S. Lewis, in a sermon that would later be expanded into his work, The Weight of Glory, speaks to the dignity of being created in the image of God and how we should tread carefully, in humility and remain reliant upon grace when we consider the value of others around us. He says, “... the load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”
He continues, “All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
Think about this when you see your neighbor, and consider there is more than meets the eye.
So what is the remedy to pride? The remedy to pride is an appreciation of the grace of God. Our faith, our liturgy is full of expressions of God’s grace to us because of our frailty and intrinsic need. In baptism, a baby is included in the baptismal covenant because of the faith, the belief and the obedience of others. Their parents and sponsors act on their behalf, and they receive the blessings of God because of the grace of God expressed to the previous generations.
In Holy Communion, God promises to present his Son in some mystical fashion to his Church through the elements of bread and wine, as his body and blood. We do not earn this gift; we simply receive Christ so that we might have power to continue in our walk with Him. For the Christian, rightly understanding his/her position and comprehending the challenges of the world around us, is aware that all good things come from God and they are gifts from our loving heavenly Father who gives because of His fundamental goodness and not our worth.
We pray for a grace that goes before us and paves the way for God’s goodness to us and a grace that follows behind, protecting us as we move through this world. Let us banish pride from our midst and embrace the love of God in Jesus Christ which is only known through humility. Amen.