2nd Sunday after Trinity + Luke 14:16-24 + June 10, 2018

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This week someone asked me how I selected the texts for each Sunday. I explained the Lectionary, that is, the series of readings that we’ve received and how it works. The entire year has been crafted so that you’ll hear every doctrine you need to know within a year. The woman asking me this then asked me how I preach about current events if I follow predetermined readings. I told her that if the event really needed to be preached on I could “free-text,” though I really don’t care for that. It is more than that, however. The church’s business isn’t all that much about current events. You get enough of that from the television news networks, the newspaper, and the internet. The conversation reminded me of St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” On the Lord’s Day we gather in the Lord’s house to hear the Word of the Lord and the Word of the Lord is about Christ. On Sundays don’t deal with the things of this world. We do, but not in the way that the world deals with them. We gather to hear God’s Word. We gladly hear God’s Word and learn it so that our thinking about ourselves and the world can be conformed to what God has spoken to us in the Scriptures. We’re not here to hear about temporal things, current things, but eternal things.  

The reason I tell you about this conversation is because it intersects quite well with today’s appointed Gospel lesson. Jesus tells a parable about a certain man who gives a great supper and invites many. The man prepares everything. The guests are not required to bring anything with them. There’s no need to contribute to the feast. “Come, for all things are now ready,” he says. But the RSVPs all come back negative and include excuses. “The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’”  Land, business, and women. Everyone invited to the free feast have better things to do and the better things are temporal things. The excuses are the things of this life. Now there’s nothing wrong with the things of this life. There’s nothing wrong with buying property and working for a living. In fact, God has commanded us to do just this. Paul commands Christians to “work in quietness and eat their own bread” in 2 Thessalonians 3:12. Solomon says, “Ecclesiastes 2:24, “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). Nor is there anything sinful about marriage. God Himself instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden when He brought Eve to Adam and they became one flesh. Marriage is an honorable estate that God blesses with innumerable blessings. The problem wasn’t the temporal things. The problem was that these men loved those things more than the feast.

How does the master of the house respond? He becomes angry. He had prepared a feast free of charge for these men and these men spurned him. They reject something freely offered, a feast in which everything was prepared, and at the moment of the feast, food ready to be served, they called in sick with the most pitiful of excuses. But the feast will not go to waste. Feasts are meant to be eaten. So the master of the house commands his servants to go into the streets and lanes of the city and fetch “the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.” The first men that he invited were undeserving of the feast. But these men are truly undeserving. The poor can contribute nothing. The maimed and lame and blind can’t even make it into the banquet hall by themselves. Look at the mercy of the master of the house. He calls those who are utterly undeserving. He invites those who cannot even begin to repay him to a feast free of charge while he says of those whom were originally invited, “none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.”

This parable is about what all parables are about: the kingdom of God. The master of the house is God the Father. The feast He prepares is His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a feast in which the table is set with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross which atones for the sins of the entire world. Those whom God invites, that is, those whom He calls through the preaching of the gospel, are invited to feast on Christ, that is, believe in Him and trust than in Him they have the forgiveness of all their sins. It is a banquet table set with Christ’s perfect righteousness as the main course, absolution for every sin of that you sin in your thoughts, in your words, and in your actions and lack of action. It is a glorious supper that God the Father offers to all men in the Gospel. It is all free of charge. There is nothing you can contribute to the feast. It isn’t a potluck meal. He provides everything. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ crucified God the Father offers you Christ’s righteousness as your own while simultaneously taking your unrighteousness and absolving it for Christ’s sake.

And as it was in the parable, so it is in every age. Men hear the gospel invitation but have better things to do. They are more interested in the things of this world: land, business, and women, not as good gifts of God but as things to be loved and cherished more than the gospel. As our society regresses back into the darkness of paganism we see more and more who hear the Gospel but want nothing to do with it. The Lord’s Day is their day. Many prefer their own house to the Lord’s house. Droves would rather listen to their own words and thoughts, feelings and experiences, rather than the Lord’s Word. They take the good gifts of God, the creation, and prefer it to the Creator of everything and the Giver of every good gift and every perfect gift. Those who reject the Gospel through hatred or through ambivalence, exclude themselves from the gifts God gives in Christ and will by no means taste the feast of the forgiveness of their sins and life everlasting. They will have only the torment of Hades as we heard in last week’s appointed Gospel lesson.

The invitation continues to go out, though. It goes out just as is has for millennia. Come to the feast of your salvation, which God has graciously prepared for all mankind. Repent of your sins and feast on Christ. Trust the promise of the gospel that in Christ you have a God who is merciful and gracious to sinners. He shows you His mercy in this, that He calls you even though you are spiritually poor and have nothing to offer Him in return but your thanks and praise. He invites you to the feast even though you are maimed and disfigured by your many sins. He woos you and because you are spiritually lame and blind, unable to believe of your own strength and will, He creates faith in you that believes His promise. By that faith you have all that He sets before you, which is Christ crucified: His righteousness for the forgiveness of all your sins and everlasting life. This is why you gather here in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s Day: to hear the Word of Lord, not about current events or the things of this life, but to hear of eternal things that outlast all that is temporal and transitory, to hear again of Christ crucified for the forgiveness of yours sins. Amen.

May the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.