The Seventy [Septuagesima]

 READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Exodus 17:1-7

• 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5

• St. Matthew 20:1-16

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

To all of you who are loved by God and called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who speaks to us today, saying,

“I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.”

“For twenty-three years…to this day, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened…therefore…This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years” thus spoke the Lord through St. Jeremiah in chapters 25 and 29.

This is what God’s Word said to those false prophets who were preaching, “Peace, peace” when there was no peace in Israel. The king was evil. The government had soured. Taxes were high. Mandates and totalitarianism were the orders of the day. And all this was happening to God’s “free” people and Babylon was coming for them, ready or not.

Here and now, we commune with the people of Israel. For today is 70 days before Easter, hence the name Septuagesima. With the weight of our sins, more like 70 years until we make it to Easter. Did we even have Easter last year? 

In that light, these 70 days of exile, mirroring Israel’s 70 years, are even more anxious for us for, since Easter did not happen last year, will it even happen this year? Will our exile in the Babylon of our sin ever come to an end? Will the rulers stop telling us how to do church and leave it to the Lord of the Church?

“The years of our life are seventy” says Psalm 90, “…yet their span is but toil and trouble” (v.10). Hopefully we can see that in the clown world around us. So what do we do? We practice what we preach. We begin our sorrowing for our sin with Israel starting with seventy days and also with 40 days of Lent. 

Though we have put away our Alleluias and Gloria, just as the Israelites hung their lyres on the willows beside the waters of Babylon (Ps. 137), we have not yet entered Lent. The true difference between these 3 Sundays before Lent and Lent itself is not in colors or sharp divisions, as we have been trained by other Lectionaries.

The difference comes in texts and practices. The texts of Lent differ from the Gesimas in that they focus on Jesus suffering for our sins and the historic practices have been to have Mass every day of the week; communion every day of the week. Each day of Lent has its own readings and propers for a full Divine Service, because how you celebrate Jesus is with Communion. 

All this on top of regular fasting. Talk about intense.

Confronting this intensity of God’s judgment against our sin, we do the only thing we can: repent. In the face of a world gone mad, we repent. In the face of out of control government we flee to confession and absolution. We look at the world around us and admit that we deserve it, since all things come from God. 

We have forgotten what Lent is and so we can’t distinguish it from the three Gesima Sundays. We have forgotten that we are in exile. That we are barred from heaven. That God turns His discipline upon us. We think that simplification of Service, cutting back a little, changing colors, not saying a few words, or giving up chocolate for a month is exile.

It was a bit more than chocolate that the Israelites gave up in exile. It was freedom. It was rights. It was the Temple and all the Services there to provide forgiveness and they chose that way. They chose to live in their sin. Everything that was Church was taken from them and they said, “…our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land” (Ps 137:3-4).

How? As we hear in the book of Daniel, most of the rulers of Babylon made executive orders to criminalize anything to do with Church, such as singing or worshipping. You’d get thrown into a burning furnace alive or into the lion’s den. Would you risk federal prison or death for the faith?

In Israel’s tribulation, you see your own. In sin, you are in exile and you cannot get into heaven. Your own sin leads you into shame and great vice and unbelief. So much so that no one is left to sing in Church, regardless of mandates, because they are all dead in their sins.

This is the scene that Jesus enters upon in today’s Gospel. He creates a vineyard full to bursting with ripe fruit, still waters, and green pasture and yet, there is no one running to work in it. This is because He has erected His paradise in the middle of a desert. To be more precise, the middle of a cemetery full of dead sinners.

Where there is no work, there is no action. Where there is no action, there is idleness. Where there is idleness, there is the devil’s playground. And the devil’s playground is hell and death. Our Gospel reading calls it the “marketplace”. Jesus goes to this non-working world, in this non-working marketplace, and calls out, “Here is work”. 

And here is the Gospel: that there is work, that there is a vineyard, that there is the Lord of Work and Vineyard, even in exile. Jesus calls out from the streets just as Wisdom does in Proverbs 9 after He builds His House and sets His Table, and says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight” (v. 5-6). 

In other words, “Here is Church. Attend and live the life of faith that is given freely in Christ.”  

Listen to what God tells St. Jeremiah to say to those going to Babylon in chapter 29:

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer 29:4-7)

Egypt. Babylon. Modern America. The command is the same: be fruitful and multiply. What does it matter where you live or how many laws are against you or how much they hate you on account of the Name of Jesus? They do not prevent you from following God’s commands or following God’s Son, which is exactly what St. Jeremiah is proclaiming. The Exodus was all about God securing this right of worship. 

It took the Son of God going into exile, to win and purchase work for us. Not just everyday work, mind you, but the title of Worker. In other words, believer. And we must be hired, we must be made into workers before we start working. We must be found and called, before we can rejoice and follow. We must be born from above, before we can rise from the dead.

“I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.”

In other words, Jesus chooses to give to those suffering great tribulation the same things He gives to those living in peace in Word and Sacrament. Jesus doesn’t change and neither does His gifts. His birth stays the same, cemented in history. His growing up, His words, His miracles, His sacrifice, His resurrection. Nothing changes with the changing of this world.

With or without harps, the Divines Service moves on. With or without the temple in Jerusalem, God’s Service carries on. With or without our prayers, God’s will is done and His kingdom comes, one baptized communicant at a time. 

Back to Jeremiah 29:

“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile” (Jer 29:10-14)

This means that remaining in weekly communion with God, we can sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land that is hostile to the Church. We can even watch the kingdom around us crumble, because the Church will never crumble.  

For the plans that the Lord has for welfare, a future, and hope is the Resurrection. And the plans the Lord has to gather you back to the place from which He exiled us is for us to be at Jesus’ side in His Church.  

In the light of the suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, the Exile is over. This is why there is a vineyard and not an office space, because there is to be a party, not just work. There is celebration in Church and rejoicing, even in the very midst of death. 

Because Life reigns as a result of the work of God’s only begotten Son. The water and the Blood rushing from the Savior’s side does not dry up. We all drink from the Rock, baptized and communing with the imperishable Christ. 

Who, this day, stands in your presence saying, “Behold, I stand before you, once stricken smitten and afflicted, but no more.” “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isa 55:1).

 There was weeping and tears, but no more. “…for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord”, in Jeremiah 31, “and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord”, for your future is full of life, not death, from everlasting to everlasting.