In the Name…
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you all from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. (2 Jn 1)
Who speaks to you saying,
“A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.”
As we gaze into heaven once again this week through the Gospel, we are met with
a new aspect of its perfection, that of food and drink. Since we confess the
“resurrection of the body”, it should be no surprise that heaven is an eternal
feast day and once given a taste, you always want more.
In this way, you can be sure that Adam and Eve spent quite a
long time at Eden’s gate, after they sinned, because they tasted life with God
and wanted more. Even though it was a constant reminder of the evil they had
done and the “very Good” they had lost, they stayed hoping that Cain would get
them back in, after he crushed the serpent’s head.
When that plan failed and time continued with no apparent
return in sight, a sad thing began to happen. Instead of continuing to repent
and wait for a return to Eden, Adam and all his descendants began to get used
to killing for food, gardening in sweat and thorns, and being buried in the
dust from which they came. They began to love evil and every intention from
their heart became wicked (Gen 6:5).
They began to forget God and His gifts such that when Noah
arrives on the scene, his 8 person family are the only ones in the pews.
Perhaps the others drowned in despair and said, “If God doesn’t want to give me
my best life now, Ill just have to love the life I’m with.”
In other words, God’s life for me outside of Eden is not
what I expected or wanted, so I will carve out my own life instead. With this
thought, we are brought to our Gospel reading today, hearing these men refusing
and declining their invitations to the Feast, and after first feigning our own
offense at it, “how dare they?!”, we secretly agree with them.
We hear from God’s Word about verdant pastures and abundant
fields, but we only see the infested fields we can buy and touch in front of
us. We hear of the majesty of lions and the nobility of lambs, but focus solely
on beasts of burden and profit. We claim to love God’s estate of Marriage, but,
well, you know what we’ve done with that.
Romans 1:28 says,
“And as they did not approve of having
knowledge of God, He gave them up to an unapproved mind so they do what is
unfit.”
Of course you reject the Feast. It is in your sinful nature
to do so. You can’t help yourself. Its not what you expected and far from what
you were promised. You were told there would be green pastures and still waters
(Ps. 23). You were promised deserts in full bloom (Isa 35:1-2) and feastings of
rich food and finest wines (Isa 25:6). You were promised abundance from womb,
animals, and fields (Deut 28:11). But all you are given is “this life”, which seems to be the exact opposite of all that.
Last week, we heard of how heaven is not what we usually
think it is. In that same way, today God reveals to us our disappointment in
Him and His Christ. We don’t want heaven to be a Man so we find "better" land and
say we must see to it instead. We don’t want a feast glorifying someone other
than ourselves, so we make other plans. We want power, riches, wisdom, honor,
and blessing if God is going to dwell with us. When that turns into church
committees, we stop believing.
Dear Christians, your God is not Whom you expect and you
should count it as your greatest blessing. It is a rule of thumb that if you
hear something on the television you should do the opposite of that and you’re
probably better off. Similarly, in our sin we want God and His things to be and
act in certain, approved ways, God hears and sees that and does the opposite.
Usually.
Hear about His sort of wisdom in our Old Testament reading.
He exhausts His materials in building His house. A house big enough for all
people, with 7 pillars, the perfect number of them. He slaughters His beasts,
it does not say some, and He mixes His wine. All of it. He empties His house,
His purse, and His inheritance all in order that He may fill the space next to
Him with the simple, who are ungrateful, but must be saved from their
ungratefulness, for He loves them.
So, we look at Proverbs 9 again. Wisdom "wastes" His infinite
treasure on those who don’t appreciate it, giving what is His, for free. He
reproves the scoffer and gains hatred and dishonor. And He does so in this way:
he becomes Man.
He becomes Man in order to show that the blessings of this
world are not entirely evil, but neither are they to be regarded as a godly
replacement for God’s gifts. They were made for your good, not for your
salvation. Fields, animals, wife and family were made to show God’s love, not
to be an excuse to get you away from God.
So God becomes man to purge you of those sinful thoughts. He
comes to you in your sin, speaking, and in your sin you only hear the opposite
of what He says. He says the Feast is ready, you hear “a big waste of time and
energy”. He says I will give you rest, you hear “there’s always something to be
done”.
Finally, God is done arguing. He remains silent and in our
sin we expect the worst punishment coming. And it does come, but it falls on
God Himself, the complete opposite of what we were expecting. God knows you can
not reason with the unrighteous sinners, so instead of punishment, He becomes
unrighteous in order to create in you a clean heart and a right mind to hear Him
correctly.
This is how the parable from the Gospel should be
interpreted. That the man giving the Feast is very generous, but He is so
generous that He becomes the sacrifice, being emptied at the end. He offers all
He has to those who will hear and believe and He is eager to do this. He sends
out His Apostles to call even those who are unworthy that they may be made
worthy.
Jesus, at the moment He is preached to, “Blessed is the man
who will eat bread in the kingdom of God”, is the only man at the table. He is
the only one sitting at the feast, just as the man from the Gospel is. But His
love does not allow that to be the case. In fact, you were created for the
express purpose of receiving God’s love.
There is such an abundance of God’s love, that not only were
you created to receive it, but you were going to get it regardless of what
happens. Even if you were invited and refuse, there is still a chance to
repent. Even if you are poor, crippled, blind, or lame, you get an invitation. Even
if you think you are the worst sinner ever, or the best sinner ever, Christ has
died for you.
So in the crucifixion of Jesus, God spends all He has upon
opening heaven to you. In the suffering and death of Jesus, we see the “folly”
of God as He corrects sinners thinking of Him. In the dying and rising again of
Jesus, God’s instructions are given to the wise and the unlearned alike and
though He still receives hatred, these instructions are the Gospel that
converts and saves.
These instructions are the same ones that have been handed
out since the beginning. The same ones that earned God the scorn and hatred of
all mankind. The reason this was so is that they are not instructions at all, at
least not as we would think of instructions, like commands. They are
declarations. They are invitations. They are that which give peace.
For, once again, we find the unexpected, in that the Wisdom
of God is none other than Christ Himself, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians
1:24. Which means that these instructions are none other than the life, works,
and words of Christ. Not just those we hear of during Christmas and Easter, but
even those words and works He performs among us today.
Yes, Jesus continues His work after Pentecost, He does not
just disappear from the scene as we would expect. Instead, He is working and
dwelling with us more fully. For now in His instructions, or the declaration of
His Gospel, His death is proclaimed as we await His return. Just as St. Luke
says in Acts 1,
“In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus
began to do and to teach.”
And this continued work is in the forgiveness of sins. The
sins of making excuses, of refusing the invitation, and of stopping up our ears
to the holy life God wants to give us. So He places His gifts out in the open,
makes His invitation open to all, and opens Himself to all. How easy is it to
get into this place where the Holy Gospel, Holy Baptism, and the Holy Supper
are offered?
Are there locks and keys, a green screen, or secret rituals?
Are there strings attached, a nefarious agenda, or underhanded dealings? No.
With Christ and His Church what you see and hear is what you get. In sin, we
make up malicious intent and fabricate lies, but those are merely what we would
do in God’s place. In Christ Jesus our Lord, there is no sin.
And part of His invitation, His instructions, is to remove
your sin from you so that you are free from all the pain and agony associated
with being afraid all the time and thinking the worst of things. In Christ, God
opens Himself up to you to see His will and His heart and prove to yourself
that God is love and desires you to live with Him forever.
For He laid down His life for you to bring you out of that
death into His life. He brings us to His food and drink that surpasses Eden and
grants forgiveness and eternal life and all this from His Word, in which we find no scheme
or lie.
Adam and Eve were not going to get back into Eden, they were
going to receive something better, but their sin could not accept that. In
opposition to that, God’s promise remained the same, to send a Son to crush the
serpent’s head and, not only return Adam and Eve to a state of bliss, but
everyone else too and this bliss would be infinitely more than Eden ever could
be.
I encourage you to be disappointed, but be disappointed in
this world and in your sin. Be disappointed in the corruption that the devil, the
world, and our sinful nature have worked here. But do not be disappointed in
God, not because He said so, but because of His works of salvation that He has
done for you.
Place in your heart the 4th stanza of our hymn of the day
and hear and believe that your Lord fights for you, through His death and
resurrection. For it is into that He has baptized and saved you. You hear the
promise and you see the mark of guarantee in the water in front of you. Jesus does not leave
you with a nod and a wink, but a covenant sealed with His Body and Blood which
you are given to approach and handle.
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