The Second Sunday after Trinity - July 3, 2011

The Church Season of Trinity
The Second Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (July 3, 2011)

Readings:  
        Psalm 34 verses 12 - 22
        Proverbs 9:1-10
        1 John 3:13-18
        Luke 14:15-24

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the Gospel Lesson from the 16th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 14:15-24 (NIV)

15 When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” 16 Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. 17 At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ 19 “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ 20 “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ 21 “The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ 22 “‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’ 23 “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. 24 I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Christ our Lord gives some samples of why people miss the banquet of the Father's grace. One man says, "I cannot come to the banquet.  I just bought some land - now I have to go inspect the land."  What kind of a person would buy some land, sight unseen, without checking it out to make sure he is not purchasing some swampland or a garbage dump?  But the land was not really the reason - this was simply a silly excuse to avoid the king's banquet. Another man says, "I just bought ten oxen.  Now I have to go see them."  Another silly excuse.  Would you buy ten cows before you even know what they look like?  They might be dried-up bags of bones with one hoof in the grave.  You might as well say, "I just bought a car.  Now I have to go test drive it."

We all have silly excuses to avoid church.  "I don't like the pews."  "Someone hurt my feelings."  "You stand up and sit down too much."  "There are sinners and hypocrites here."  "I'm doing fine in my life without it."  "It's the one day I get to sleep in." “It doesn’t make me eel good.”  What do they have to do with receiving the all-gracious Word of the Father?  Christ Himself has offered to serve us the wedding banquet.  Would we rather sleep through it?  Would we rather miss it over some discomfort we feel that has nothing to do with the grace of God?

But that's what our sinful flesh wants to do.  It wants to magnify and inflate some reason until it's the most important thing in the world, when in reality it is only a silly excuse.  There is only one thing that is the most important thing in the world, and it is here in this House.

But the last excuse Jesus tells us of is the most devastating because it is the most reasonable.  A man says, "I am on my honeymoon.  I cannot come to the banquet."  Now, marriage is a great and holy union created by the Almighty God.  Jesus strongly upheld marriage.  It seems that surely a honeymoon is more important than attending a banquet.

Earthly unions of family and friendship are legitimate and real and important.  But the Great Marriage Feast should be more important than everything else.Now, let me be very clear.  I'm not talking about temporary and brief absences from worship.  For example, if a family member is in the hospital and you miss worship to be with them, no one would condemn you.  But when we find ourselves kept from God's banquet over and over, or when family members draw us to another church that does not teach the pure Gospel, then there is a real problem. Jesus said, "He who loves father or mother or son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."  Here is Christ, serving us in this place.  He must never be less important than family or friends.

Yet it is so difficult when family members and friends are drawing us away.  It is so heart-wrenching when feelings of love and loyalty pull us away from the Divine Service.  The reason it is so hard is that our hearts are not set upon the things of God as they should be.  In the end, even family is only an excuse to take us away from Christ and His banquet.

Consider what is here - the banquet of the King of the universe!  The food is eternal life received in Christ.  The drink is forgiveness from all our sins in His Blood.  How silly our excuses are compared to attending the Great Banquet of all banquets!  The bright Light of lights in this place outshines every earthly reason that might draw us away.  For this place is everything.  Here is life.  Apart from the Church of God, there is only death.

Yet so many use silly excuses to stay away.  Why?  Why stay away from the greatest treasure in heaven and earth over silly excuses? But that is the whole point of Jesus in the parable.  The excuses are silly because they are not the real reason.  There is only one real reason found among us, deep in our heart of hearts: We are self-righteous Pharisees.  We don’t feel that we need this place and this Word.  We feel like we are okay by ourselves.  So we can take the Lord’s Supper or leave it.  We do not want to be bothered with the banquet because we might have to admit that we actually need something.  We think that we are just fine.

But, in the parable, the King is enraged by mankind's self-righteous rejection of His Banquet.  After all, He has given His only-begotten Son into death for us!  Why would we treat Him as less important than our silly, petty excuses?

So the King sends out His messengers to the poor, the maimed, the sick, and the blind.  He invites the homeless people who sleep in the hedges and the ditches beside the road.  These are the people who will enter His Banquet of eternal life.  They are not strong.  Instead, they are broken down and despairing.  They know that they are not righteous.  They know that they are horrible sinners. If you want to be the strong people who stand on their own two feet and need nothing, then you will be the Pharisees who reject the Banquet.  But the lowly and the weak and the sick who cannot come to Christ by their own power are the ones who enter into eternal glory.

We are the spiritually crippled, yet you are the ones who come to the Marriage Feast.  You are homeless and outcast.  Yet God has called you to be His honored guests.  Those who think themselves strong (but really are weak) - will never taste His Supper.  Those who find excuses to reject Christ will not enter His presence.

But you will, because you are the chosen of God, the lowly who are lifted up into the highest place of all. So God is the Host who acts like a crazy man by inviting the homeless and the cripples to His marriage!  Who would do that?  What kind of lunatic would actually invite strangers who live in the streets, and cripples out of the hospital wards, who have to be carried on stretchers or led by the hand because they are blind?  We do not invite such people to our weddings.

But thanks be to God that He does not act as we do.  Instead, you who are sick, who were strangers to Christ because of your sins, have become the honored guests who sit at the right hand of the King in His glory. He has accomplished all this upon the Cross.  He has made all men equal to Himself by dying on Calvary.  He has absorbed all the spiritual sickness of man.  Then He poured out to you His glory and holiness and divine life and health.  He has made you one with Him, the Son of God, to enjoy His Great Feast without end.

The Feast was completed upon Calvary with His last breath.  He said, "It is finished!" The Wedding Banquet of the Lamb has been finished and completed.  Indeed, it has already begun in every house of God where the Gospel is preached purely and the sacraments administered rightly.  The Royal Banquet is already here.

And although it was our stupid, silly excuses that put Christ upon the Cross, yet it was also the Cross that erased your excuses.  In His Word, He has given you His invitation to the Royal Banquet.  More than that, He actually carried you into the Banqueting Hall since you were too crippled by sin to accept the invitation or come to Him.  Yet He lifted you up with His Spirit and brought you in, because He desired that you, His beloved, should share all good things that He has won for you.  He has given you who were spiritually homeless an eternal home that no one can take away.

Today we eat and drink the foretaste of the Eternal Wedding Banquet.  The Body and Blood of Christ is spiritual food that belongs to the New Age to come.  We sip at sinless glory in this cup that holds His Blood.  We taste unending life and health in these wafers which are His Body.  These are the immortal food placed upon our mortal lips. The Banquet is ready.  Blessed are those who are called to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
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