There are a lot of ways to tell the story of history. The
history that is taught in most of the schools is based on the story of the rise
and fall of political powers. So it tells us how this nation rose to the top
and what happened so that it was brought low. Then another nation rose to take
its place. But why should this be the only or even the main thing that is
talked about with history? Is it only the top nation or the top handful of
nations that can be talked about at any given time? What about the people who
live in nations that aren’t so powerful? Do those people not exist? Did nothing
happen—was there no history—among them? They get ignored.
This is why the nation of Israel during Old Testament times
is largely ignored. The nation of Israel was never more than a regional power
even during its greatest times under Kings David and Solomon. They never had
anything close to the power of the other great empires like the Egyptians,
Babylonians, Persians, Greeks or Romans. And yet the history of the Israelites
is worthy of study. In fact, there is no other history that is more important
to study. Why? It is because the most crucial factor of world history is at
work among them. The Israelites were blessed with the Word of God. They knew
God and his promises through that Word. The crucial factor in world history is
not who has the most money or power. No, the crucial factor is whether a
certain people at a certain time and place are blessed with the Word of God and
believe it.
Why is this factor so crucial? It is because it is only
through the Word of God that we can know of the meaning of life and its
destiny. It teaches us that we are sinners, breakers of God’s Law, and
therefore hostile to God. God, according to that same standard of the Law, is
also hostile towards us, because the Law is good, and those who break it are
evil and destructive.
But God’s Word reveals to us that God has a different
standard by which he operates, and that this standard is even greater than the
standard of his Law. We call this standard the Gospel, which means good news.
From eternity God has chosen to redeem and justify all sinners in his own
eternally begotten Son who became incarnate in the womb of the virgin Mary by
the power of the Holy Spirit. God united himself to us creatures in Jesus so
that we are now intertwined.
Through Jesus our sins are atoned for, and we are bound for
a blessed state in our eternal inheritance. Things will be set right in the end
when God judges everything and all that is evil will be locked up forever in
hell, and that which is right and good and true—including you who have been
washed by the blood of the Lamb and thereby have become clean—will be together
with God in heaven at the eternal marriage feast of the Lamb. Those who hear this
Word of God and believe it, receive it. Those who don’t hear or don’t believe,
don’t receive it. That is what makes the Word of God the most crucial factor in
world history. Not only is earthly life so affected by it, but it is what
affect each person’s life all the way to eternity.
Therefore, according to this factor, the Israelites and the
Jews were the truly great people—far exceeding all the other nations—because
they had the truth of God’s Word. When you read their history, it becomes clear
how important God’s Word was to them. God told them to put the Word of God on
the insides of their houses and between their eyes. It was to be on the right
and the left and everywhere they might look. The most important thing for the
Jews was that they should honor God according to the Word that he had spoken to
them. That is why they purged the evil from among their midst even if that
seems cruel or extreme to our jaded, utilitarian eyes. Folks marvel at the
greatness of Rome, or even the greatness of our own American power. But these
are nothing compared to the true princes and princesses of the human race—the
Israelites, the Jews.
But nobody has a monopoly on the Word of God. One of the
strange things that happens when the Word of God comes to a people is that it
doesn’t stay there indefinitely. This is not because of some defect in the Word
of God, but a defect in the sinners who hear it. While it might be received
with joy at first, that often goes away. People grow tired of it and don’t want
to learn anything about it anymore. They cease to be thankful that they know
this stupendous mystery at the heart of all existence and start hankering after
other things. There is nothing like ungratefulness and apathy for driving away
the Word of God and the Holy Spirit with it. And this driving away is not some
mystical, magical thing. It happens in a very ordinary way. Instead of
occupying one’s self with the Word of God and prayer, people just do other
things instead.
This is what is so clearly pointed out to us in Jesus’s
parable today. A great man has prepared a great banquet. He sends out
invitations far and wide: “Come, for all things are now ready.” But they all
alike began to make excuses. One had bought a field. Another had bought a new
tractor. Another had just gotten married, and that night was their wedding
night. The long and short of it was that they all had better things to do, than
to come to the banquet.
This is what the parts of the parable mean: the man giving
the banquet is God. The banquet itself is the marriage feast of the Lamb in his
Kingdom which has no end. The banquet is salvation and heaven.
The invitation that is sent out is the Word of God, the
Gospel, in its many forms. The Word of God is the Bible. It is also the
preaching and teaching that is done in accordance with the Bible, the
sacraments, the hymns and prayers of the divine service, the education of both
young and old that takes place in Bible studies and schools and confirmation
instruction. It is also the informal conversations that Christians have with
one another about the Word of God. Through all of these things the Holy Spirit
works in the Word to bring people to repentance and faith over and over again,
towards the end that we should be kept in that faith until the hour of our
death. Then, according to the promise of God, we will be redeemed and delivered
from all evil. To use the terms of the parable: we will go to the great
banquet.
The field, the oxen, the wedding, these are all just
examples of a great many things that our Old Adam always, without fail, prefers
over hearing the Word of God. In and of themselves there is nothing wrong with
fields, oxen, and weddings. In fact these are some of the greatest and finest
things on earth. In the same way, in and of themselves, there is nothing wrong
with money, business, sports, entertainment, or anything else that exists in
creation that is not explicitly forbidden by God. But what makes these good
things bad is that they are loved more than God and his call to the banquet.
This is not surprising when you consider the strength of the old evil heart
that still resides in this maggot sack of a flesh we are still carrying around.
But if it is not resisted and overcome, then God and his Word will take a back
seat to whatever else might be going on in our lives.
God is not satisfied with the leftovers of our heart, and so
he will just move on to other people. In the parable, these are the poor, the
crippled, the blind and the lame. And when there isn’t enough of these, then
the servants are even instructed to go out and beat the bushes and push and
shove the people into the house so that it may be filled.
At the time that Jesus was speaking this parable the poor,
crippled, blind, and so on are the Gentiles who would be invited to the feast
of salvation after the Jews rejected their time of visitation and crucified the
Lord of Glory, Jesus, their Savior. The Word of God moved from the Jews to the
Gentiles, even though the Jews retained the Old Testament and still read it to
this day. But a veil lies over their hearts when they read it so that they do
not see Jesus as the Messiah who is promised in those Scriptures. Because they
retain the outward trappings of some of the covenant God gave them they think
that they are fine just the way they are, but in truth they have been passed
over so that the formerly filthy Gentiles now make up the vast majority of the
people of God.
But the wisdom of Jesus’s parable is not locked away,
applying only to the Jews and Gentiles of Jesus’s time. It still has something
to say to us today. Although our ancestors of old, 1,000 years ago, were dead
and lost in their trespasses and sins—knowing nothing of the truth or of God—it
did not remain that way. God gave them the Gospel, and they have passed it down
to us. We are now in the position of the Jews at Jesus’s day. We have been
blessed with the Word of God and with a wonderful clearness and rightness to
boot. We as Lutherans have not been bogged down with the many errors that
obscure Christ and his salvation, leading people to believe in other things
besides him. No, we have learned of God’s love from eternity and to confidently
say, “Jesus, forgive me, a poor, miserable sinner, by your bloody cross and
passion.” This is the center of the universe and all existence, and it has been
made known to us.
But just like the Jews at Jesus’s time, the heart has grown
cold towards God and his invitation. Other things are what people hanker after
instead. Our thanklessness and apathy are driving the Word of God and the Holy
Spirit out of our lands. In one family after another God is saying those
terrible, horrifying words, “For I tell you, none of those who spurned my
invitation will taste my banquet.” One family after another is being
de-Christianized. And for what? Money, honor, pleasure, and so on. But what
happens to all these things in the end? Rust and moth destroy. Thieves break in
and steal. Finally, death robs every single person, no matter how rich or
honorable they might have been, of everything. All that is left behind, while
the body decomposes in the grave. The only two things that are eternal are
either blessedness together with God in heaven or being cursed and punished by
God in hell. And so it is incredibly foolish for people to slave away at all
the other things besides God’s Word, when they cannot truly and lastingly be
blessed by them.
We are given a bird’s eye view in this parable about what
happens. Those people who refused God’s invitation are not better blessed by
looking after their farm or even their family. That certainly wasn’t clear to
them at the time, because, otherwise, they wouldn’t have refused the
invitation. And so this parable gives us the opportunity to have a bird’s eye
view of our own life. It isn’t surprising to me if you should groan and grumble
and mumble at the thought of busying yourself with God’s Word, and wish to pursue
other things instead. But that is shortsighted, and by shunning God and his
Word you can’t possibly be blessed in the end, even if, in the meantime, you do
receive a measure of pleasure or other rewards from the prince of this world.
That is your compensation for your faithfulness to him.
The Word of God is slipping away from us. This is not
because we have failed to figure out the right methods or techniques for
increasing our membership. All that talk that has taken up the Church’s time
and energy for the past century is just fiddling while Rome burns. The Word of
God slipping away from us is God’s punishment for our ungratefulness. God
doesn’t drag people into heaven by the hair. If people want to despise his
crucified and resurrected Son in preference for other things, then he will let
them. He will just move on. And he is moving on from among us.
I don’t know the future. I don’t know what God will do. But
we might learn something from the way that the prophets spoke to the wayward
children of God in the Old Testament. They always told the people that if they
repented and changed their ways, then perhaps God would relent of the disaster
he had warned them of. That is sound advice for us too. If we just continue to
live with the values and priorities that we have nursed along all these years,
then the Word of God will undoubtedly go away. Our congregations will close and
our children and grandchildren will not know the Word of God rightly taught
even if they should want to know of it. But if we repent of our idolatry and
ungratefulness and apathy, and change our ways, and beg God to stay with his
Word and Holy Spirit, then there is still hope for us. This determination to
change and prayer for mercy is not somebody else’s responsibility, but belongs
to each and every one of us if we desire to remain the children of God. God
listens to the prayers of his children when they have been humbled. This is
what David says in his penitential psalm: “The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit. A broken and contrite spirit, O God, you will not despise.”
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