+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Maybe there once was a time when everyone or nearly everyone would have accepted an invitation to and attended a feast, or maybe there always have been some people who, for one reason or another, have rejected invitations to and not attended feasts. After all, food allergies reportedly date back to antiquity, and there were appetite suppressants long before there were G‑L-P-1s. Rich food full of marrow might sound good if you are on the carnivore diet, but not if you are a vegetarian or vegan. Well-aged wine might be enjoyable for some, but others are alcoholics. Then there are other issues related to wedding feasts, such as gifts, traveling to destinations, venues, and dress codes, whether cocktail, formal, black tie, or even white tie. Against such a background and context, we hear our Lord in today’s Gospel Reading, call us to “Come to the wedding feast”.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 25:6-9), the joys of the Messianic Kingdom are depicted as a banquet prepared for all people. Similarly, in today’s Psalm (Psalm 23:1-6; antiphon: v.5a), the Lord is said to prepare a table before us who believe, in the presence of our enemies. And then, in today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. We do not have to understand all of the differences between weddings then and weddings now. For all of the parable’s other details, the parable’s main comparison centers on the king’s repeated invitations and dress code, if you will, and the parable’s central truth is stated plainly at the end: many are called, but few are chosen, which is properly understood as saying, for example, that all are called, but not all are chosen.
In the parable, the king probably had already invited his guests to the future wedding feast, promising to call them when the feast was ready, and those guests probably had committed to come. But, when the time came, they repeatedly were not willing to come. Despite the king’s repeatedly sending servants, some guests paid no attention to, or “neglected” or were “unconcerned about”, the call, instead paying attention to their own interests, while other guests mistreated and even killed his servants, so the king, in turn, destroyed them and burned their city, as the Lord essentially had the Romans do to Jerusalem for the Jews’ rejection of Jesus. And then, the king sent his servants to invite as many as they found, and the servants gathered all whom they found, so that the wedding hall was filled with guests, both bad guests, who rejected the provided wedding garment, and good guests, who presumably accepted the provided wedding garment.
Obviously, all of us are here this morning, but others whom we know are not here, and maybe sometimes we are the ones who are not here. Some times the reasons to not be here are legitimate, and other times the reasons are illegitimate. As the Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews asks (Hebrews 2:3), how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? Do we express God’s and our own care and concern to those who are absent? How do those who reject the invitation treat the servant who is extending the invitation? Of those of us who are here, are there open sinners or hidden hypocrites? To be sure, on our own, none of us is able to “Come to the wedding feast”, apart from God’s graciously-repeated enabling‑invitation, extended by His Holy Spirit through His Word. Yet, some people’s perverse will rejects or perverts God’s Word and resists the Holy Spirit Who wills to work through the Word (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration XI:41). So, those people remain in—or, at their death or on the last day, they are bound and cast into—the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Notably, those people are not annihilated, but they suffer eternal torment in hell, their bodies even giving evidence of the pain experienced by their minds and souls.
Today’s Old Testament Reading describes sin’s result of death as the covering that is cast over all people, the veil that is spread over all nations, so the Lord prepares His feast of salvation for all people and promises to wipe away tears from all faces. When we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us: God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. In the Collect of the Day, we asked God, Who invites us to trust in Him for our salvation, to deal with us not in the severity of His judgment but by the greatness of His mercy, ultimately by grace for Jesus’s sake. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world and in love predestined us for adoption to himself as children through Jesus Christ, through whose blood we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins (Ephesians 1:4-7). The Son of God in human flesh, Jesus died on the cross for all people, and then He rose from the dead. In Him, we have peace with God, and so we can and do rejoice.
God’s invitation is extended and accomplished through His Word of law and Gospel read and preached to groups such as this group. The wedding garment arguably is given as God’s Gospel is applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, where, St. Paul says in Galatians, that we have put on Christ (Galatians 3:27). Similarly, through Isaiah and others, the Lord is described as clothing His people with the garments of salvation, covering us with the robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10; confer Ezekiel 16:10; Revelation 19:8). As the man in the parable was bound hand and foot, Jesus elsewhere tells us that sins are bound or loosed by His ministers’ exercising the keys to His Kingdom (Matthew 16:19; 18:18; John 20:23), excommunicating unrepentant sinners and absolving those who repent of their sins and want to do better (confer Luther, AE 40:335). And, having instructed and examined us in private confession and having individually absolved us, those ministers then admit us to the Holy Supper of both bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, which therefore give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Our Lord calls us to “Come to the wedding feast”, and elsewhere the Lord tells us that “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).
As peace-focused and so joyous as the Holy Supper is, it sadly also is an occasion for division. I mentioned earlier how in today’s Psalm we referred to the Lord’s preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Likewise, in today’s Gospel Reading, not all guests remain in the wedding hall, much less are all guests even at the feast. At the end of Romans (Romans 16:17), the Lord through St. Paul tells us to watch out for those who depart from the doctrine that we have been taught and to not commune with them. Similarly in Revelation, the Lord warns us of our communing with others’ sins and so sharing in their plagues (Revelation 18:4; confer Ephesians 5:11; 1 Timothy 5:22; 2 John 11). Our Pilgrim congregation is divided roughly in half over whether or not the Circuit, District, and Synod’s toleration, if not encouragement, of errors such as open communion warrant the congregation’s clearer confession against the errors, if not a separation from the Synod and so also from the District and Circuit. We understand that some people in the congregation may be open to instruction but are not yet fully convinced of the need for such action, even as we understand that other people in the congregation who are waiting for such action may not be able in good conscience to commune at Pilgrim at the present time, as difficult as that not-communing is, knowing what is offered in the Holy Supper. We continue to pray God to unify the congregation in both believing the true faith and confessing it in word and deed, so that more of us here together again might “Come to the wedding feast”.
As today’s Old Testament Reading describes, we wait for the Lord’s full and complete salvation on the Last Day, and we wait, as today’s Epistle Reading describes, always rejoicing in the Lord and, in whatever situation we are, being content through Him who strengthens us (Philippians 4:4-13).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
