Inclusivity [Trinity 2]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 9:1-10
• 1 John 3:13-18
• St. Luke 14:15-24

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

Jesus speaks to us today, saying,

“And at the time for the banquet He sent His servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is already ready.’”

In our Gospel today, we have a problem. And it is a very big problem, from our standpoint. In fact, Jesus creates this problem by ending this pericope saying, “None of those men who were invited shall taste my feast” (v.24).

The problem this creates for us is this: say, someone comes up to you and asks you, “So , you’re saying you believe that anyone who doesn’t believe just like you is going to hell?” This is asked, because the picture Jesus gives us every time we talk about a heavenly Feast in the Bible, is one of exclusivity. Some get in, some don’t. Some are saved and some are not.

This is very offensive to people, especially if you answer their question with a simple, unqualified “yes”. Though you will be technically and doctrinally correct, you will have lost that person, because all he will hear is you condemning him in God’s Name. Not very loving on your part. That is us closing our heart against our brothers and our neighbors.

The bad news is they are right. Jesus is very exclusive. Last week, in the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, Jesus had fixed a chasm between heaven and hell so wide that it was impossible to cross. The week before that, we recited the Athanasian Creed which is very blunt in its exclusivity saying things like, if you don’t believe thusly or think thusly, you’re out.

Same with the other times which Jesus talked about Feasts. “Many are called, but few are chosen” Jesus says of the feast in St. Matthew 22, which we’ll hear on the 20th Sunday after Trinity. When Jesus closes the door of the feast, it will not open, even for those who cry out “Lord, lord” as we will hear in St. Matthew 25 on the Last Sunday. Jesus even kicks people out of these feasts.

There is no doubt, as Jesus presents His Church and His Heaven in the Bible, not everyone will be there. If Jesus is going to be this bigoted and this intolerant, why does anyone need to believe in Him or need Him, in the first place?

Repent. What is your answer to your neighbor? Will you make an excuse for Jesus and say He only shuts the door on bad people? Then that person doesn’t need Jesus, but just has to be a good person. Will you tell them that Jesus accepts everybody just the way they are? Then that person still doesn’t need Jesus, they just have to be themselves.

God’s Law is holy and absolute. If you do not believe, you will not get into heaven. Jesus is the only way and you do not learn more about Jesus on your own, apart from His Church. But this still sounds pretty bad to your neighbor, so how does God remain God and you win your neighbor?

There is a small step you may take with your neighbor to help him along in understanding just why some are saved and some are not. The first step is to ask: do you believe that people who do wrong things should pay for them; be punished for them? 

The ratings-driven media has all forced us to think about this topic recently. When we see “bad things” happen on TV our indignation is stirred up and our blood pressure goes up as we shout and demand justice. We see a wrong committed and we clamor for common sense and decency to win the day. Of course wrong doings should be punished, what kind of world has no justice?

Good. You have them on the same page as you , there. And God would agree as He says in Proverbs 11:21 “Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished.” And again in 2 Peter 2:9

“…the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.”

The second step is one more question. that is, have you ever done any wrong things? 

You know what we call that? Bad news.

That is bad news because the answer is always “yes”. Now, it is not just that we haven’t done anything bad enough to end up in prison. It is, have we ever done anything with evil in our hearts, in selfishness and attempted self-justification. If we doubt the “yes” answer, we need only ask those that have been close to us and they will confirm that there have been times you needed forgiveness.

Dear Christians, God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, you or your neighbor. He would rather you turn from your wicked ways and live and come to a knowledge of the Truth. He accomplishes this by setting a heavenly feast on earth. 

He takes on our flesh so that there is no question as to Who He is and what He is doing. In spite of sin and death, He uses earthly means to prove that His Feast is readily apparent, readily available, and readily abundant. 

This means that the Good News that Jesus died for the sins of all people, freely, is both objective and subjective. We can find it promised and made ready outside of ourselves and our ideas of justice and tolerance, and we can also find it inside ourselves both spiritually, by what God promises, and physically by what we ingest.

The Eternal Wisdom of God builds His house upon the rock of the Crucified Christ and has hewn His pillars in the shape of a cross, as our Old Testament reading from Proverbs tells us. He has slaughtered Himself, not His enemies, and has set His own Lord’s Table with wine. 

Jesus has sent to us His Apostles and His pastors to call out “Turn in here”! Physically, turn in here, to this place. Come and eat; come and drink and live. By this we know love, as St. John tells us in the Epistle, that He laid down His life for US. He brings the world’s goods, the written Word and Sacraments, and sees us in need of justice and rescue from our sin, and does not close His heart against us, in Christ.

For His call is not a call for condemnation or guilt or sentencing. What does He say? What does the Wisdom of God say? What does Christ our Lord and Savior say to every single person of all time and all places?

“Come, for everything is already ready”. 

It is ready before you get there. It is ready before you think about it. It was ready before you were even thought of. You missed your court date to stand and be judged by God, because you were deaf, dumb, blind, and dead in your sins. Yet, the court convened. The judgment pronounced. The sentence commuted.

Jesus was found guilty, not you. Jesus suffered injustice and scourging. Jesus was sentenced to death, in your place. In this way, He made ready the path that leads to heaven. He made ready the seat that is next to Himself at the Table, for you. Jesus takes on the sin of the world so that there is no longer any sin at the Table He sets up.

In this way, and this way only, is heaven exclusive. the division is simple: is this feast, set before you today, for the forgiveness of your sins, or not? Is the salvation offered in baptism a rescue from your sin, death, and the devil, or not? Is the redemption heard in the Gospel, for you, or not?

All people are not saved, because they reject the Word and resist His Holy Spirit, thereby remaining in their unbelief and under God’s judgment through their own fault. Because of the havoc, chaos, and death that sin wreaks on us and all creation, there can be none of that in heaven or at the Feast. 

Heaven would not be heaven and justice would not be justice if just one wrongdoing was allowed. Here the Father gives us the cross of Christ. With Jesus on the cross, before our eyes always, we see what our righteousness truly is: filthy rags. We see what our sense of justice and inclusion and any other virtue we think we have is: sin.

On the cross, we see God enacting our tolerance upon Himself. He gives us the end of all our virtue signaling: the death of God. But God does not stay dead. For our sakes, He offers Himself in our place to show our sin which separates us from real life, and shows us our Savior Who gives us real life, for free. 

The excuses we offer only serve to condemn us in our sins. Sin keeps us apart. Sin keeps us all separated. Sin divides us. The forgiveness of sins, in Christ, unites us. We are locked out of the feast by our choice only. It took God almost an entire lifetime to close the door to Noah’s Ark, before the floods came. He will use your entire lifetime, if need be, to convict you of your intolerant sin and forgive you, in Jesus Name.

We deny ourselves and our sense of virtue and pick up our cross, to follow Christ. This means that we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. Believing in our hearts that all men are created equal and are equally deserving of salvation in Christ and confessing with our mouths that we all eat and drink the true body and blood of Jesus.

Sin is exclusive. Christ alone is inclusive. Death is intolerant. The Word and Sacraments alone are tolerant and unifying. Jesus died for all and wills all to be saved from their sin. That is universal grace, true for any and everybody. God also saves us by His grace alone; His work; His will. He has made hell for the devil and his angels.

Those these three don’t fit together nicely and reasonably and any answer we try to give just goes wrong. But we must answer and our answer is our response to any other mystery in the Church, we simply declare it and believe it. We confess what Scripture teaches us, we don’t try to answer. Men divide and condemn. God unites and saves, in Christ. And by Faith, we come to everlasting life. “O Israel, you have destroyed yourself, but in Me is your help” (Hosea 13:9).