181014 Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14, October 14, 2018 (Trinity 20)

181014 Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14, October 14, 2018 (Trinity 20)

The history of the world is the history of the Gospel.  After the fall into sin God promised salvation by the Messiah who would be born of the woman.  Ever since that time God has continued to preach the Gospel through the testimony of his Christians, and that has always provoked a response.  This is something that we also see from the beginning.  Adam and Eve believed and lived by their faith.  But their first born, Cain, did not believe and this provoked him into murdering his brother Abel.  The very first man born after the fall into sin was a murderer, and the reason why he murdered is because he couldn’t stand to see the image of Christ in his brother.

This is a story that continues on from that point to the present day.  It is very important that we learn from the Bible about the reactions the Gospel will produce, because the Bible teaches very differently than what most people believe.  The Bible clearly shows that the Gospel will bring division and trouble as it separates the believers from the unbelievers.  When Jesus sends out the twelve to preach the Gospel to the towns of Judea he says to them, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”  The most intimate ties that we know of by nature are the bonds of family.  But there are bonds that are supernatural and greater than the bonds of family: the bonds of belief and unbelief—the bond to Christ on the one hand and the bond to everything else that is not Christ on the other.

The Bible speaks of these two different groups or ways of living as being opposites.  There is the way of life and the way of death.  There is darkness and there is life.  There is righteousness and there is sin.  There is salvation and there is damnation.  In all of these things there is no middle ground.  Something is either one thing or the other.  Either you are dining in the banquet hall or you are in the darkness outside where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This kind of talk makes people nervous because it raises the stakes of what might otherwise be considered something optional.  Most people think that the Gospel invitation is something a person can either take or leave and it won’t make too much difference either way.  Life will go on, as they say, whether a person becomes a Christian or not.  The importance of Christ’s redemption is never clear to those who remain unbelievers until the end of their lives and the end of the world.  In the meantime they can eat and drink, buy and sell, marry and be given in marriage.

But this injustice cannot go on forever.  It must come to a stop either through repentance in this life or eternal confinement in hell in the next.  God does not take delight in the death of the wicked, but desires that all people be saved, and so he sends out his messengers with the Gospel as we heard about in Jesus’s parable today. 

In Jesus’s parable the messengers are entrusted with the invitation to the King’s wedding feast for his Son.  The King is God the Father.  The Son is Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is in words of the messengers’ invitation to the wedding feast.  The sacrifice for sin that Jesus has brought about is indicated by the slaughtering of the oxen and fattened calves for the feast of victory.  There is an abundance for the people to enjoy. 

And this kind of language is not just parabolical and symbolic.  Christ says in another place that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life.  Eat and drink while you believe his promise and you will live have exactly what the words say.  Who wouldn’t want good food?  Who wouldn’t want eternal life?  The message that is given in the Gospel is not a summons to a concentration camp or forced labor.  It is an invitation to leisure.  God says, “Put aside the work you do, so that I may do my work in you.”

But how is it received?  Most people respond with a polite, “No, thank you.”  They have better stuff to do.  Their joy is in their business or recreation.  They’d rather be active and busy in whatever it is that they enjoy so that the time flies by as they rush onward towards their death.  They much prefer that to sitting in a pew, being the guest of the king, eating and drinking.  And so they might say all kinds of things to themselves. 

They might say, “Well, I don’t need to go to Church to be a Christian.  I can go there when it is more convenient.  I’ll skip this invitation, but maybe next time.  I’m a supporter of the King and all his banquets, but I don't want to be fanatical about it.  It’s not like these banquets are the only thing that matter.  Maybe if these banquets were a bit more lively, I’d be more interested.  As it is, they can’t really compete with the various alternatives for my attention.” 

Some of this stuff that people say to themselves has a little bit of truth to it, but really they are lies.  The little bit of truth that is mixed in with it only makes the lies that much more powerful.  It makes their justification to themselves stronger for doing what Jesus says of those who received the invitation to the banquet in his parable: “But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business.”

But let’s say that the messengers are really insistent.  They forcefully press upon their hearers that Jesus is exalted above all things and that this banquet is more important than money or pleasures or cherished memories.  And that those who love father and mother, son or daughter, husband or wife more than they love Jesus are not worthy of him.  If the messengers insist on these words of Jesus, then you can be sure that the claws and the fangs will come out.  The messengers are attacked in such a way that is essentially no different than the way that Cain attacked Abel.  They will say all kinds of evil against the messengers falsely, but a lot of their lies will have a little bit of truth mixed in with them to make the lies especially powerful.  The power of the lies will make it so that their denunciation of the messengers and perhaps even their deaths seem completely justifiable.  Dying for confessing Christ is not unusual, as we learn in the Scriptures, even if for the time being the wrath of unbelievers does not go to such great lengths among us.

And realize that these messengers are not just pastors.  It is not just pastors who must bear the cross.  These messengers can be any Christian who boldly speaks the Gospel message.  St. Stephen, the first martyr after Pentecost, was not a pastor.  But when he told the Jews that they were stiff necked, uncircumcised in heart, and always resisting the Holy Spirit, they rushed upon him and stoned him.

But being treated shamefully and killed can easily be avoided, if that is what a person wants to do.  All that is necessary is to say, “To each their own.  You do what you want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do.”  If Stephen had not called the Jews stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart, and always resisting the Holy Spirit, then they would have just paid no attention to him and went off to their farms or businesses.  Because we do not want to suffer, it is an incredibly strong temptation for Christians to validate sinners in their sins and make peace with them.  Insisting on Jesus’s words makes those who stubbornly fight against those words angry.  But we must resist the temptation.  Never be ashamed of God’s Word.  Never be ashamed of the Gospel.  It is the power of salvation to all who believe it. 

If we become ashamed of the Gospel then we simply won’t proclaim it anymore—at least not in its fullness, which is always divisive.  And if this being ashamed of Jesus and his words is not turned back, then it will result in the loss of the Gospel altogether.  It will just move on to another people, which is what happens to the Jews.  The Gospel moved on to the Gentiles—those who are not descendants of Abraham.

Jesus’s parable prophesies how this happens.  The king became angry with the way that his messengers were shamefully treated and killed.  God loves his Christians.  He loves those who love him and his Gospel more than they love the flattering lips of unbelievers.  When his Christians are insulted and belittled and called names and run out of families, towns, and congregations, it makes him angry.  When the Jews refused Jesus as his eternally begotten Son and the Messiah and killed him on the cross, this provoked God’s wrath.  And when they still would not repent with the preaching of the Christians and the apostles, but imprisoned and killed them instead, he had had enough.  He sent the Roman army to destroy Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D.  This corresponds to the words of the parable, “The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.”

From that time forward he no longer blessed his people with the preaching of the Gospel as he had previously.  Instead, he sent his messengers and the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, so that they may believe and become his people.  These people formerly worshipped the devil and his demons.  They knew nothing of the true God and the life of the world to come.  They were not the proper people to be invited to the wedding feast—the proper people who should have been there were the descendants of Abraham. 

But God is not a respecter of persons or families or heritages or congregations or synods or denominations.  Those who receive his invitation with glad hearts will be blessed in this life and the next, whether they are rich or poor or upstanding citizens or prostitutes, tax collectors, and drug users.  But those who refuse him cannot be ultimately blessed even though they might enjoy many blessings from God in this life and be quite happy and respectable in the eyes of their peers.  But we do not live forever.  And one day we will all meet the king, and he shall inspect us.  If we are not justified before him then we will be tied hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness. 

It does not matter if you are a Missouri Synod Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or a Southern Baptist.  A person might be outwardly associated with whatever sort of group, but what matters is what you say of the Christ.  He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  All who trust in him will not be put to shame, but whoever loves and trusts in whatever else besides him will be condemned, even if they should have the most perfect churchly credentials outwardly.  God looks to the heart, not to the outward appearance or membership in any Church body.  The Holy Christian Church is a fellowship of believers in Christ, no matter where they come from or who they are.

And so today, no matter who you are or where you come from, so long as you are hearing the words, you can be sure that you have the invitation to the King’s Son’s wedding feast: “Come!  All things are prepared. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, eat Christ’s flesh and drink Christ’s blood for the forgiveness of all your sins.”  Now we are living in the time of grace.  While we live in the time of grace all may repent of their sins, believe on Christ, and be saved.  You can see this with the main thrust of Jesus’s parable: the King is good and generous, the feast is rich, no merit or worthiness is required for the invitation.

But the parable also warns us against offending God with our sins and coldness and resistance to the wooing work of the Holy Spirit.  This is not an optional invitation that you can safely despise with your preference for other gods.  God will move on with his grace.

And so, as God says in our Old Testament reading, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”  Here God explicitly speaks to those who are wicked and unrighteous.  He is speaking to sinners.  He is speaking to you, no matter what it is that you have ever done.  Return to the Lord, and he will have compassion.  Return to our God, and he will abundantly pardon.  Come to the wedding feast.