Trinity 2
Lk 14:15-24
6/13/21
This past
weekend I was at my brother’s house in Indiana to celebrate my nephew’s high
school graduation. Like the families of
many high school graduates, my brother and his wife put on an open house to
celebrate the event. And like other
families who have such an event, they put effort into getting things ready.
They had
sent out invitations. They had spruced up the landscaping and repainted the
railing of the porch so that the exterior of the house looked great. They put up graduation decorations. They
smoked a pig and prepared all kinds of food.
They had plenty of beverages in coolers – and note I use the plural – since there was a cooler with soda and
water, and another cooler with beer.
This is a Lutheran family, after all.
They had set up a tent outside with tables and chairs. They had done
everything needed in order to make it a wonderful event.
It was a
great day attended by many people who stopped by to wish my nephew
congratulations and best wishes as he prepares to attend college in the
fall. However, what would it have been
like if instead, nobody had showed up?
Certainly, it’s not possible for everyone who is invited to attend. Scheduling conflicts can always get in the
way. But how would they have felt if absolutely no one came to the celebration? Or worse yet, what if all the people who
had said they would be there, decided to stay away?
That is the
scenario that Jesus describes in the parable found in our Gospel lesson this
morning. In the parable, our Lord
teaches us how we should view ourselves.
He teaches us about the gracious love that we have received in him. And
he warns us that we cannot take this for granted.
Our text
this morning takes place in a setting of tension and conflict. The first verse
of this chapters says, “One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a
ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.” Now by the time we reach this point in Luke’s
Gospel, we know that the Pharisees have been attacking Jesus. These conflicts have involved meals. They
have also involved matters about the Sabbath. So when Jesus goes to the house
of a ruler of the Pharisees for a meal on the Sabbath, you know that there are
going to be problems.
First Jesus silences the Pharisees by
raising the question about whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, and
then he heals a man who is there. Next
our Lord notices how everyone is trying to get the best positions at the table
– those that afford the most honor. But
as the One who has brought the reign of God, Jesus teaches a very different way
– a way of humility. He tells those at
the meal to take the lowest spot, so that then the host may ask them to move
up. He explains this by saying, “For everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Finally, after talking about humility to the guests, he
then does so towards the host. He tells
him not to invite family or rich neighbors who can be
expected to reciprocate with invitations.
Instead, Jesus says, “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they
cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
just.” Our Lord teaches humility to the
host. He teaches the gracious mercy of the kingdom of God, and promises that it
is God who will take care of things on the Last Day.
At the beginning of our text, this
reference to the resurrection of the Last Day prompts one of those attending
the meal to say, “Blessed is
everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Now it is obvious that this individual
believes that he will be in that number. He assumes that he will take part in
the feast of salvation.
This assumption is the very thing Jesus takes up in the
parable. He says, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited
many. 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.’”
However, each of the those who had been invited began to make
excuses. One said that he had bought a field and needed to go and look at
it. Another said that he had bought five yoke of oxen, and needed to go examine
them. Yet another said that he had
married a wife, and so he could not come.
In order to understand what is really happening here, we
need to recognize two factors from the first century Palestinian setting. First, the announcement by the servant is
actually the second invitation.
All of those whom he goes to see have already been invited to the
banquet, and they have already accepted the invitation. They have said
they will be there. They know the day when the banquet is to take place and the
general timing. The announcement by the servant is the signal that now indeed,
all is ready and it is time for the banquet to start.
Second, all of these excuses are obviously bogus – they
are lies. No one bought land or animals
without examining them carefully beforehand.
A wedding was a major event that would never be scheduled at the same
time as a great banquet for which the invitation had been accepted. Instead,
each of these individuals was choosing to reject the host.
We learn that when the master of the house heard this, he was
angry. He says at the very end of our
text, “For I tell you, none of those men who were
invited shall taste my banquet.” With these words, Jesus is describing the
Pharisees who are there at the meal with him.
They are rejecting Jesus because he is not the Messiah they expect or
want. Yet because Jesus - the incarnate Son of God - is the presence of God’s
reign, they are rejecting the salvation he brings.
Rebuffed by
those who had been invited, the master did something unusual – unusual at least
if you are doing things in the expected ways of the world. He told the servant,
“Go out quickly to the
streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and
blind and lame.” The master told the
servant to bring in people you would not normally invite to a feast – the
very people Jesus had just told the host that he should invite.
Yet even when this had been done, the servant reported that
there was still room at the banquet. So the master said to the servant, “Go out
to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be
filled.” The master sent the servant outside the city into the
hinterland to bring in more people so that the banquet would be full.
Those who end up attending the banquet are the unworthy and the
unwanted. They are the poor and crippled and blind and lame. They are the ones who rank even lower than
that – the rural people who don’t even live in the city. This is a description
of you. There is no reason that God should want you at the great banquet – the
feast of salvation. You are
unworthy. You are sinners who reject
God’s will in every possible way. You
place God second all the time because there are things you love more. You place yourself first and your neighbor
second, because you are not about to put your neighbor’s needs before your own.
You are the spiritually poor
and crippled and blind and lame. And
actually, in the setting of the parable you don’t even rate there, for those in
the city are the Jews. Almost all of you are Gentiles – you are the ones at the
highways and the hedges. You are the ones outside the city – the ones who were
never part of God’s people in the first place.
But our Lord’s parable teaches us about the gracious love of God
that we have received in Jesus Christ.
We were not worthy of being invited to the feast of salvation. Yet in
his love, God sent his Son to win salvation because we are not worthy.
He sent his Son because we are sinners.
The placement of our text in Luke’s
Gospel reveals this truth. At the end of chapter nine we read, “When the days drew near for him to be
taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Our text occurs during Jesus’ final journey
to Jerusalem. Just before he began his
journey, in that same chapter our Lord said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Jesus Christ journeys to Jerusalem
because you are a sinner – because you are not worthy. Though without sin, he goes to be numbered
with the transgressors. He goes to offer
himself on the cross as the sacrifice for your sin. Our Lord died in the humiliation of the cross
in order to give us forgiveness.
Just before the parable, Jesus has
said in this chapter, “For everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Our Lord humbled himself to the point of
death – even death on a cross – for us.
But then, God exalted him. First,
the Father raised Jesus from the dead on the third
day. Through Christ he defeated death.
And then God exalted Jesus as he ascended forty days after Easter and was
seated at the right hand of God. It is as the exalted Lord and Christ that
Jesus poured forth the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
Because of our Lord’s death and
resurrection, we now have a place in the feast of salvation. But the parable this morning also gives us a
warning. It was prompted by someone at
the table who said: “Blessed is
everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” He assumed he was included. Yet the first
portion of the parable is all about how those who were invited excluded
themselves by rejecting the invitation.
Jesus Christ has called you to faith through baptism the
work of his Spirit. But the life of
faith is not the same thing as simply having your name on a church roster. It
is something that requires us to continue to confess our sin. It is a life in which we must continue to
receive our Lord’s gifts of the Means of Grace. Only in this way can we be
sustained as the forgiven people of God who are ready to confess Christ to the
world in word and deed.
Immediately after our text we read, “Now great crowds
accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me
and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and
brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.’” Our Lord says
that we must count the cost, for if we are faithful to him and his Word, there
will be a cost.
It’s the month of June, so unless you
are color blind, you are seeing the celebration of sin all around us in rainbow
colors. Why does our whole culture
embrace this movement, when only perhaps a little more than two percent of the
population is homosexual? In part it is
because most people wish to support the idea that people can use sex however they
want. They don’t want deny to others
that which they cherish in their own lives.
In this world, to confess and live
God’s will for sexuality and marriage will come at a cost. Most likely it will be an escalating one as
ever increasing social and institutional pressures are brought to bear. But in Christ, God has called you out of the
world to be his people – people who live according to his holy will and who
speak this truth.
To do this we need nourishment and
strength. And so this morning, I am the servant who is sent to say: “Come, for everything is now ready.” I invite you to the banquet – the Sacrament
of the Altar where Jesus gives us his true body and blood for the forgiveness
of sins. Here he gives you food for the
new man so that you can live as his people in this world. We live in the faith
as we look for his return and the feast of salvation that has no end.
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