Grumble Grumble [Trinity 3]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Micah 7:18-20

• 1 Peter 5:6-11

• St. Luke 15:1-10

 

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4)
 
Who speaks to you today, saying:

“And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ’This man receives sinners and eats with them.’”

 
The real object that Jesus is searching for in His parables today is His Image. The world believes the image of God is found in human kindness and humanitarian beauty. As if, humans are divine and contain the divine and there is no other divine. The Image of God is not found, it is given. Jesus is the Image of God and He has come to restore His Image in Word and Sacrament and that is the “problem”.
 
On the surface, “receiving sinners and eating with them” is an easy Bible passage to interpret. We have the “bad guys” saying bad things about their neighbor and therefore will be punished. Jesus, the great philanthropist, always takes the side of the oppressed and down-trodden, so you too should fight for social justice. Jesus demands it.
 
On the other hand, Jesus has come for sinners, especially those wearied and heavily burdened with their sins. These usually tend to be those whom society looks down on and would rather not associate with and yet we see that Jesus does. You cannot tell which sinners will be received and which will not.
 
Jesus is the Great Teacher and so you should hear those words and feel guilty about how often you do not help the people that others look down on. But Jesus is also more than just another social justice warrior or teacher of morality. He is God. He is the Crucified and Risen Savior. He is the Alpha and the Omega. Simply eating with sinners, or lending them a hand, does not get the job done.
 
Our answer lies in the grumbling of the Pharisees and the scribes. Funny enough, the grumbling of Israel is made infamous by the books of Moses. More specifically, it is the Exodus from Egypt that set the Hebrew people to murmur greatly like a constant buzzing of negativity against Moses and, therefore, against God. And the grumbling was always about the same thing, as you will see, though it had different targets.
 
One of the first Sunday School lessons you learn is the wandering in the desert, where all the Hebrews grumble against God and Moses. From Exodus: “And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’” (Ex 15:24) and “what shall we eat?” You should’ve just killed us by the Egyptian meat pots (Ex 16:3). “Why is the Lord bringing us into the land of Canaan (sinners) to die by the sword?” (Num 14:3).
 
Do you notice what the grumbling is about? It’s not about having a nice bed to sleep in or indoor plumbing available in the desert. Its about sinners and its about eating and drinking with them. First, its about staying with Egypt: they were sinners, yeah, but they had all the food. Second, its about themselves: Egyptian sinners had food, we chosen and righteous do not.
 
And who do they complain to? Not God, He’s too scary. He’ll kill us just by speaking to us. They complain to Moses and Aaron, who are only men. But too bad for them, grumbling against Moses and A-A-Ron is the same as grumbling against God. So much so that St. Paul recalls in 1 Corinthians 10, “nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer” (v.10), referencing Numbers 11. 
 
Thus the first issue here is sin, not some good old boys club beating down the common people. It is the lack of the Image of God and a lack of recognizing the Image of God. We heard the indignation of the Jews last week when one said to Jesus, “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15). Those that eat and drink with God are to be blessed, worthy, not rabble and cut-throats. 
 
Repent. Sin against God is not just disobedience. Disobedience is down the line. Sin is not listening to God when He tells you what He’s saying and what He’s doing. “Why should a living man grumble about the punishment of his sins?” (Lam 3:39). He shouldn’t, he is guilty, after all. But its not fair to him, seeing as how he is the pinnacle of creation, and that’s why he grumbles.
 
Why can’t you just excuse the sin and love the sinner and that be the end of it, God? Grumble grumble. Why are people crazy these days? They’re all so entitled. Grumble grumble. 
I wasn’t like that when I was young. This is not what I’m used to at church. This is not how it was back in my day. Grumble grumble grumble.
 
You grumble against God day in and day out, but you make sure to stay away from the big sins. Instead, your focus is on your normal, day-to-day life. So what will God do in the face of all this grumbling? Is He going to change the way He does things? Is He going to get with the times? Is He going to make things more attractive to a new generation that doesn’t understand all His Church mumbo-jumbo? Is He going to bow to your grumbling? 
Well, in a way, yes. Jesus is God giving in to your grumbling.
 
If there’s grumbling in the Old Testament about eating and drinking and grumbling in the New Testament about eating and drinking, what do you suppose we have to grumble about today?
 
When Jesus gives us the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin to answer that question, we hear of an invitation sent out to friends and neighbors. An invitation to a joyful celebration. An invitation to rejoice in eating and drinking. For the Prodigal Father declares, later on in St. Luke chapter 15, “And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate” (v.23-24).
 
In the presence of the Lord there is eternal celebration. And celebrations always include a feast. We even have an old saying, “nothing brings people together like food”. How do we know the Lord is present among us today?
 
As our meal prayer from Psalm 145 states, “You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” (v.16) and that open hand is punctured. A puncture that spilled the Life Blood of God, which is so valuable it can even stave off death.
 
Jesus says, “my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:55). He has also prophesied that when we eat and drink, we see God (Ex 24:11). Eat and drink what?
Now we know. But how can an almighty and holy God justify receiving sinners and eating and drinking with them?
 
God declares sinners righteous for Christ’s sake; that is, our sins have been imputed or charged to Christ, the Savior, and Christ’s righteousness has been imputed or credited to us (LSCE, 166). In other words, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
 
How can this man receive sinners and eat with them? Because He has traversed life and death to find His dead-in-sin sheep to bring them to life again. “you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live” (Ez 37:13-14). I will set up one shepherd over you and he shall feed you: he shall feed you and be your shepherd (Ez 34:23).
 
Jesus, receiving sinners and eating with them, is Jesus receiving you and eating with you. Jesus gives in to your grumbling and gives you what you need, that is union with Him. The grumbling about His Way and His means is the temptation to prevent them from happening in our own lives. In sin we grumble. In the forgiveness of sins we celebrate.
 
We grumble because we sinfully believe that we will not have a place in the Kingdom, but we just misunderstand the Image of God. It is not something we produce within ourselves neither is it something we chase after like the holy grail, to find in someone’s heart. 
 
The Image of God and the Meal of God are all given and instituted without our prayer. They go on, regardless of how we act or what we believe. God calls out to His neighbors with His Gospel, inviting them to share in His joy. The joy of the restoration of sinners.
 
 

Rejected at the Banquet [Trinity 2]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 9:1-10

• 1 John 3:13-18

• St. Luke 14:15-24

 

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4)
 
Who speaks to you 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 now ready.’”

 
Today we hear God’s Word from the Gospel about a great banquet. His Great Banquet. Included for us in order that we see our Savior Who was not like us, in our sin, and so was tossed out of His own party. This points us to a better understanding of God choosing us, not us choosing God, and He wanting us to be more sympathetic in deed and truth.
 
What this means is that we should not be surprised when Jesus’ words about hate come true. He said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before you” (Jn 15:18). This verse does not give us free reign to play the victim card, that is, that whenever anything goes wrong or people disagree with us or excommunicate us, doesn’t mean we instantly martyr-up.
 
Our Holy Crusade from God is to war against our sin and live an honorable, peaceable, and godly life. It is not to bring down the wrath of God against His enemies, which you have hand picked yourself. God its this one!
 
Thus, today, to continue to think about Pride, we will conflate Jesus’ Great Banquet with His Wedding Feast and ponder the dilemma of being invited to a same-sex marriage. Maybe you haven’t had to wrestle with this one yet, but I’m sure your time is coming. 
 
At the parable of the Wedding Banquet, you’ll remember one person who was singled out for not having on the proper garments. He was trying to sneak in relying on his own power and resources, with no regard to the Lord Who Invites. No unbeliever gets into heaven, but likewise, no Christian gets into worldly banquets.
 
As a Christian, you would go to a wedding for three reasons. 1) To bear witness to the couples' vows and to give your approval. 2) To pray for the couple that God would enable them to live in ordered harmony according to God’s Word. And 3) To bless the couple as they establish a new household in God's Name. 
 
If you can't do these things, you can't go. I guess I shouldn’t say you can’t go, but you would endanger your faith and the faith of others if you were to go. You’d be becoming a part of the world, making it easier and easier for you to excuse sin as, “well its not hurting anybody”.
 
But even if you were to go, you would be the man without the proper clothing. You would be the one without the proper values and beliefs to be at such a place, and you would be kicked out. This is because loving your neighbor means keeping God’s commands, not rejecting them.
 
Repent. Who is the One without “proper clothing” in today’s Gospel? Its not the guests. And it certainly isn’t you with your propensity to victimhood. Look at the Gospel reading again. It is the Lord Whop is giving the Great Banquet. He is cast out, but in reverse. Those who were supposed to gather, flee and forsake Him.
 
The people you despise, the sin you hate, the behavior you can’t stand, the boogeyman on your TV are all in your heart. They are the sins you love more than Jesus. Your behavior and consent are the fuel of everything you hate in the world. You must believe that the devil has no power, wants to be hated, but everything, including death, is going to be ok.
 
Jesus is always surrounded. There are precious few moments in Scripture where Jesus is by Himself. The angels gathered at His conception, birth, suffering, death, and resurrection. The Shepherds gathered at His birth announcement. The Wise Men and Herod came together to celebrate His second birthday. 
 
And the crowds. There were very few people in the areas Jesus went to, that had not gathered around Him at some point. Even the Romans came to His trial, crucifixion, and burial. 
 
And yet, when it was time for the feast to begin, time for the main event, time to stand up for Jesus. Everyone left and made excuses. Oh Jesus, I can’t be here, I need to keep my job. You say and do wonderful things, but I didn’t think you meant it. I have a family, you understand.
 
And the excuses escalate from there. All from everyday life that we would think would be acceptable to God, as did the excusers in the Gospel. The excuses escalated to suffering and crucifixion. Not to end in punishment, but to end in the Holy Spirit.
 
The servant is the Holy Spirit Who Calls to faith and He uses Jesus. His Call is the Gospel, the free forgiveness of sins. His enlightenment is faith, freely given. His sanctification and keeping is the gathering, the crowding and gathering around the One Who Was Rejected, Despised: Jesus.
 
The rally point is His Word and Sacrament. The Promises we can hear and touch, taste, see, and smell. We reach out in faith and close our grip on His Body and Blood. There is no empty space. The empty space was our sin, refusing the Lord of Life’s invitation. We thought we could fill it with our holiness and earthly righteousness, but it was all vanity.
 
When the Holy Spirit moves, He removes the authority of sin, death, and the devil from you. He removes the authority of these men and brands that threaten to tell lies about you, betray you, slander you, and destroy your reputation, in love of course. Though those things will happen, they are not indicative of the Lord’s opinion of you.
 
Because now, you have been clothed with Christ, with the outcast. You are singled out in faith, because before, you wore the robe of the world. You were accepted in PC society. You went along to get along. You kept your your beliefs to yourself. But the world has found you now. There is no more hiding. You are at the microphone. What do you say?
 
So, love really doesn’t win. And it doesn’t win, because this world is upside-down. That is, that though God is being loving in setting high standards of love for everyone’s benefit, the world hates Him for it and refuses to acknowledge His work. Moreover, sinners believe they can make something better than God, when all they do is create hell on earth.
 
And yet love does win and will win and has already won, because Jesus is Love and Love suffers, dies, and rises again to change sinners. To change them from meek and lowly, to brave and courageous. 
 
There is no shame in the Gospel. Dear Christian, you do not need to be ashamed of your belief in Christ. Your faith is just as valid as the rest of the world’s faith in whatever. And not just as valid, but actually valid, that is True, because Jesus lives. 
 
And because Jesus lives, we live and get to bear witness to the Wedding of the Lamb and His Bride, the Church. We hear that couple’s vows and give our approval. Amen.
We pray for that couple that God would enable them to live in ordered harmony according to God’s Word forever. And we get to bless the Jesus and His Bride as they establish a new household in God's Name: the New Jerusalem.
 
That is why weddings and marriages are so important among us. It is not just playing house, it is physical proof that our God is with us spiritually and physically in everything we do. Everything we do has meaning. Where we spend our currency of attention and investment, it flourishes in our lives. Support it or it goes away.
 
The world hates Jesus, because He is True Love, not pretend. The world hates you, because you are proof of that love Who is living and active, even today. The wedding garment you now wear in Christ may not get you on the right side of this world, but look around in faith, and you will find yourself surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, martyrs, dressed in exactly the same robe as you.
 
The Lord was alone in His work of Salvation. You, He brings into His family. You do your work as a group project. You. You are not alone. Ever.
 

Pride and Prejudice [Trinity 1]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Genesis 15:1-6

• 1 John 4:16-21

• St. Luke 16:19-31

 

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4)

 

Who speaks to you today, saying:

“The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried”

 

The sin of the rich man is not being rich. It is believing that his clothing and his feasting are equal to or better than God’s. God includes this in His Word to reveal the pride and humility of His Son, Jesus, in order that it point us to our own life of faith in His Church and humility towards our prideful neighbor.

 

The currency of pride is attention. In the case of our rich man today, the wealth of his attention is spent and gained in his house. Not only away from the social problems of his neighbors, but also away from the fine clothes and feasts of His God. Note his Church language to father Abraham: “have mercy”, “dip in water”, “send someone back from the dead”.

 

Though he used the right words, he did not believe them, and instead “feasted sumptuously”, or “made good for himself” alone. In his pride, he relocated and reallocated the Lord’s Feast to his own table and excluded those whom God included: i.e. Lazarus. It was pride that he held onto even while in torment, as he ordered Abraham and Lazarus around, instead of repenting. 

 

This is what Jesus means when He says in Romans 1:22-24, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.”

 

Pride is the fear, love, and trust in the stability of earthly things. Life will always be this way and it is not changing no matter how much I despise God’s laws and violate human rights. It seems as if God permits men to fall into grievous sin in order to be put to shame in his own eyes and the eyes of all men. Not only as an example, but in order that he might have a chance to repent. That he might become aware of his wickedness, turn from it, and live. 

 

If we remember Pharaoh chasing after all Israel in the middle of the Red Sea, we see the sin of pride win out. Pharaoh refuses to repent and let the people go and God urges him on down the path of his own carefully and expertly planned wisdom: to destruction. God says to Pharaoh, ok, thy will be done.

 

There is also another sinful side to pride, as if there is anything else to it. It is unique among the vices in that all the other vices are practiced in evil works: greed, wrath, gluttony. But Pride is done in and through good works. It is the love of glory and self-satisfaction that outshines even God Himself, in doing good. 

 

Love is love, how dare you say different. You’re not being loving towards your neighbor. Don’t you want everyone to be who they want to be and live their life? You’re taking away my rights. Can’t you see you’re hurting me?

 

Repent. Pride is in all of us and it is the last sin you will ever face off against. Death is the last enemy to be defeated, pride is the last sin to be engaged. This is because it infects everything we do and all other sins. Our sinful nature cannot help it. When we do bad, its out of pride. When we do good, it is out of pride. We get puffed up. We love to be noticed. We love to paint it on walls and roads: we do good things. 

 

Yes, beloved, pride even affects your elite-level pastor, who is never wrong. Sadness.

 

The Law of God, which demands these good works, these works of love towards your neighbor, is holy. That is, you must do them, regardless of who your neighbor is. Every gift of God, my eyes and ears and all my members my reason and all my senses, is good. Everything that He has created is exceedingly good, as said in Genesis.

 

However, without the theology of the cross you misuse the best in the worst way. Whoever has not been brought low, reduced to nothing through suffering and the cross, takes credit for works and wisdom and does not give credit to God. This is the misuse and defilement of God’s gifts.

 

Can’t I be proud to be a Christian?

 

Dear Christians, we do not live in our own world. We did not create it. We do not live in our own bodies either. We did not make them, neither do we know how any of it works. We can observe to some extent, but beyond our senses we are at a loss. This is why there is no call to have pride or to boast in ourselves. 

 

So what do we do about pride? We kill it with kindness. How? By dying and rising again.

 

Jesus, the proud God of all that He made and accomplished, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:6-11)

 

Humility may be the antibody for pride, but humility can do nothing without the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the point of Jesus. That is Abraham’s point, in today’s parable. Both men died, true. Both were even resurrected to eternal life, you following? The difference is, there is life in the Blood of Jesus alone, not in purple robes or feastings. 

 

For the Purple Robe is the Robe of the King of kings. But the True King does not wallow in the purple robe of prosperity. He is robed in the Purple of joyful suffering for His prideful creatures. From St. Mark, “They clothed him with purple, and weaving a crown of thorns, they put it on him” (15:17). The Purple robe is the Robe of crucifixion.

 

The Feast is also only the Feast of the True King. But the true King does not give secondary, created food that melts in the morning sun or rots away from worms. True, heavenly food is from the pierced side of the Lamb of God, roasted over the fire of the cross, with His blood on the foreheads and hearts of believers.

 

The Feast is not celebrated until the last person who will be called is invited and the call goes out to the streets, the lanes, the outermost parts of the region, and to the gates. Lazarus was invited and was only admitted at the Resurrection. So it is, that the Robe and the Feast become gifts. Though they are marks of Jesus Christ, His final mark is to give them away, to you.

 

Isaiah 61, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (v. 10).

 

Dear Christians, the joy of the rich man’s robe is in giving it away, not having it for oneself. The joy of the Feast is in giving it away, not making oneself fat from it. The joy of our Servant God comes from giving His Kingdom to sinners He has made righteous, by His shed Blood on the cross. 

 

This is what we are to boast in: the works of Christ which last for eternity. Not His work in our life, not His coaching us in a tough spot, and not even His making us morally straight. Our boast, our pride is to rely and rest in the accomplished salvation of Jesus. We should have a godly pride and arrogance in knowing Christ in His Word and Sacrament.

 

This is the sanctified pride. The bold insistence that we are safe and secure in Christ in the face of sin, death, and the devil. No amount of road graffiti or protest signs accomplish such pride. Only the glorying of our crucified and risen Savior, Who has done all good things for us.

 

We accomplish nothing with our sinful humility, but praising the Christ who is in us and is granting us grace is a different matter. This we should do by all means, especially in light of the proud array of the Bride of Christ, the Church.

 

All of us should chiefly strive to learn to know Christ well that we may proudly claim for ourselves the triumph and the majesty we have in Christ and that we may bid farewell to the devil, however indignant and furious he may be. For in the glory of God we should be proud, not in the filth of our works and merits. 

 

We should be proud, because the omnipotent Bridegroom is in His Church of Word and Sacrament, which, though burdened with many evils, yet has a Bridegroom who assumes them all and bestows His power and glory on her. 

 

Jesus does not just say, “Pride cometh before the fall”, but He shatters that darkness with His Love. He does not just say that He “opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5), but He takes your sin of pride and humiliates Himself on the cross, for your benefit.

 

Pride is a forgivable sin. Your sin is forgivable. Your neighbor’s sin is forgivable, regardless of his lifestyle. You cast judgement in your pride and so you fall. Instead cast forgiveness upon your neighbor and upon your enemy. That is, give them the same Christ and His Gospel of the free forgiveness of sins that you have.

 

It is the Lord’s job to judge and to exact vengeance. It is your job to glorify the Only Begotten Son of God Who is the pride of Jacob, our heritage, and the One Whom God loves (Ps 47:4). For today, Moses and the Prophets have spoken to you, begged you to believe. God Himself, in the flesh, has preached to you and, risen from the dead, communes with you.

 

There is no more room for hate. There is no room for pride. You have to invite it back in, but do not! Jesus fills all, even you. And He does it in this way:

In order that our Father in heaven would not look upon our sins, nor deny our prayers because of them; for we are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them; but that He would grant them all to us by grace; for we daily sin much, and indeed deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us. (Small Catechism, 5^th Petition)

 

Our currency is Christ and He gives Himself in abundance.