Bible Text: Luke 14:15-24 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
The excuses not to come to the banquet are really bad. He doesn’t have to test his oxen. No one buys an ox unless he’s tested it already. And he doesn’t need to go look at his field. No one buys a field without seeing it first. And marrying a wife obviously doesn’t keep you from a feast. The excuses aren’t true, in other words. They are straight-up lies. And this is what we have to understand about the rejection of Christ’s invitation to come to the feast of salvation, to Church. The excuses we make aren’t just morally wrong, obviously you should come to Church, God commands it. It’s that when we make these excuses we are lying, lying about ourselves, about God, about reality itself.
Family, job, and recreation don’t naturally conflict with Church and God’s Word. We only make them conflict because we don’t trust in God, who gives everything to us. Our families are stronger because we come to church and trust in the God who established the family. Our jobs are worthwhile, because we come to church and trust in the Lord who blesses our labor. Our enjoyment of God’s creation is true enjoyment, because we come to Church and know the God who gives it all to us, and by enjoying His creation we enjoy Him.
The separation of what God gives – and God gives everything: you have a husband, a wife, children, family: God gave that; you have a job, good friends, a house, talents: God gave it all – so to separate it from Him is to lie to ourselves. And that is miserable. It is to reduce family to something that perishes in the using. It is to make your job drudgery and pointless in the end, because everything is pointless without the God who gives it a point, a meaning, an eternal purpose.
It seems too much to say that church allows you to enjoy everything you have. But it’s true. Are people happier because they get to play sportsball or camp or hunt or sleep on a Sunday? Are they happier because they don’t spend their time in praying every night, in reading the Bible? The Christian can’t think this way. It is so far beneath us that it should seem the most absurd of all thoughts.
When my little daughter sits on my lap, when I see her little hands so obviously crafted by her Maker, when I tell her to look at the mountain God made for us and see her smile with wonder, I am dealing with a child God made in His image and whom He redeemed with the blood of His Son, one who will live with Him for eternity, and whom He gave to me and my wife, because He is full of a love that is simply incomprehensible for us poor sinners. How could the heathen rival that joy? But that joy is impossible unless you know the God who created you and forgives you and will give you eternal life through faith in His Son. When you look at all your enjoyment, all your money, all your stuff, where will it end and what joy will it possibly give when you are dead, and you will die, because you are a sinner and the wages of sin is death. But when you come to church and hear and read the Word of your God and trust in the blood of His Son, none of it will be actually taken from you, because everything you do in Jesus’ name will follow you into eternity and the love you show through all that stuff is the love that finds its origin and source in the love of God, which is what you will see in heaven in all its glory. That’s the truth. Everything that contradicts it is a lie.
The excuses are on the one hand common to us Christians and on the other hand totally foreign to us. First, they are common, because we are sinners. The selfish flesh that clings to us makes us lie to ourselves. So we again and again rob ourselves of true joy because we try to anchor our joy in stuff that perishes, that moth and rust destroy and that thieves break in and steal. Like Peter who takes his eyes off the Lord and sinks in the sea. So it is the constant work of the Christian – and this can make it seem like the Christian is miserable compared to the heathen who doesn’t think of these things – the constant work of the Christian is to put down this lie that rises up within our own hearts. And it is precisely this battle with sin – because you confront day after day the lie that living life without God is somehow preferable – that makes us realize how much we need Christ and what He gives us in His Church. It brings us low, makes us poor, and shows us that one thing is really needful and it is Christ, who satisfied the wrath of God against our sin in great love for us on the cross and rose to reconcile us to God and give us His status as sons of God.
Second, these excuses are totally foreign to us. Because they don’t win out in our lives. Look at the men in the parable. They don’t go to the feast. That’s what’s foreign to us, and pray God it always will be. They tell themselves the lie so much that they actually believe it. It’s pure absurdity but they believe it. And that describes no Christian. Christians struggle all the time with evil desires and not wanting to come to church. That’s common to us. But no Christian goes day after day, week after week, without repenting and coming to church and finding here our dearest treasure. That belongs only to the heathen, this rejection of the invitation, this refusal to come and feast, no matter if someone’s name happens to be on a church directory.
Notice what does not happen in the parable. The Master doesn’t get sad and insecure when they reject the invitation. He doesn’t rethink his feast, doesn’t think that maybe the fault is in him, that if he just gave these people what they wanted, maybe then they would come. This is what well-meaning Christians do in our day. Let’s give the people what they want so we can give them later what they need. And so they try to attract people to church with entertainment and all sorts of programs that you could find at a concert or at the Y. That’s a sure way to kill the church in a place. The Church herself will never perish. She isn’t in any danger. Jesus will fill her. He will protect her. She is His Bride and she is safe. But she can be in danger in a specific place. A specific congregation can fail. And those who compromise God’s Word because they think it isn’t effective enough to draw the people in, will soon have no church at all. The Church is where God’s Word is taught in its truth and purity and she doesn’t need a facelift. She is beautiful because she shines with the truth, and is clothed with the robes of Christ’s righteousness, and she is rich, because she feasts on the food that gives eternal life.
So the Master doesn’t change the venue or the menu. He keeps the feast just as it is. But he does change the guests. And this is by far the greatest punishment God can give. The Master is angry. That’s what Jesus says. God is angry with sinners who reject His Son and reject Him. And the worst punishment He could give is to stop inviting them to the feast. This is the lesson of Pharaoh, who hardened his heart, and hardened his heart, again and again, until finally God hardened him and he perished with all his host in the Red Sea. This is the lesson of the leaders of the Jews who rejected the Word of the apostles and refused to believe even when Christ rose from the dead. The message went to others.
Whom does the Master invite? He invites those who couldn’t possibly want to reject the feast He gives. The poor and the blind and the lame. They are hungry, and He feeds them. They cannot see the way for themselves, and He leads them to where they are safe. They cannot walk it, so He lifts them up and carries them. That is the picture. And that is the picture of us Christians. In the end, we come because we want to. That’s what describes those who come to the feast. They want to be there. They need what the Master has to give. And they can’t get it anywhere else in all the world.
Here you receive what the world cannot give and what the world desperately needs. Know that. With all the riches and happy faces and nice things they have, the heathen need Jesus. They need to be saved from death and separation from their God and lives without Him. They need to know that they are poor because they own nothing, God owns it all, and only he who has God has anything. Don’t envy them. Love them and tell them what you receive here. Learn to express through study and through listening to sermons and through reading your catechism and Bible, learn to give a reason for the hope that is in you.
But learn it especially by coming to church because you need it. You want it. Everyone in the church actually wants it. You are the poor. Once again, another Sunday comes, and you have failed and sinned and hurt those you love and worried about your future and doubted your God and lusted after what God did not give you. This is your poverty. And your God fills you with His riches. He gives you the righteousness of His own Son, the purity and innocence of Love incarnate, He reckons it to you, speaks the almighty Word that is always true. And your sin is removed and the favor of your Father rests on you and you have the inheritance of sons in His Kingdom. Blessed is he who eats bread in the Kingdom of heaven, the man said to Jesus. No, blessed rather is he who eats the Bread of Life from heaven.
The urgency of Jesus remains the urgency of His Church. There is still room. So live the faith, confess Christ at home, read His holy Word, hand it down to the next generation, pray, get rid of all the lies that serve as excuses, and see that the God who gives you His Kingdom and His righteousness will continue to fill His Church with the poor and the lame and the blind, and give joy beyond compare. Amen.