“JESUS IS GRACE”
Saint Matthew
20. 1-16
Septuagesima: 27 January Anno Domini 2013
Father Watson
SSP
In The + Name of
Jesus
Grace
IS undeserved!
Jesus isn’t just God. The Holy Trinity isn’t
just a mystery. The Blessed Godhead is “The”
family of mutually flowing love. Jesus is the “householder.”
Better than Ben Cartwright and the
Ponderosa, or Elrond and Rivendell, Jesus is the best dad, big-brother, and
truest friend you have.
Jesus gets up early—“in the beginning” early, and “before
the foundation of the world” early [Gen 1.1 & Eph. 1.4]. He gets up to bring the spiritually
unemployed, i.e. the dead, into His
vineyard. Jesus’ vineyard is life and light IN HIM. The vineyard is forgiveness
of sins and salvation from eternal death and damnation. The vineyard is both
the Heavenly banquet which fast approaches, and the Church’s banquet which is
now! Jesus’ vineyard is no plantation of
slavery but the homiest house and most joyous dinner table ever!
You are poor and miserable sinners born and
raised from arch sinner Eve and proto sinner Adam. You’re nature makes you
brats, lay-abouts, intentionally unemployed (Baal’s bums) and street thugs to sin. Apart from Christ one can ONLY stand idle in
the market place, smoking Satan’s sulfur butts muttering and cursing everyone
else. Such is expected of pagans. This
is what you all were before your re-births. You’re not pagans. You’re hired.
There were what, appears to the human eye, early
hirings and special privileges. Looks are deceiving. Hear the Word of
God—believe it. Cain chosen very early
in the day presumed to work for his own reward and damned himself with an evil
eye—a jealous unbelieving heart.
Caiaphas was also born early into a Covenant reaching all
the way back to the “Father of the Jews,”
only to willfully reject the Testator Himself.
All those Jews plucked from the marketplace so early only to
self-righteously demand their own merits and just deserts.
Abram was chosen at the mature point of his
life—his unemployment and idleness. And yet, the city of Nineveh was greatly
blessed over the hard hearted people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, plucked from
the fire at the 11th hour.
Indeed, the entire Gentile nation was grafted in to the open wound of
Jesus on the Tree in both the “fullness
of time” and near the “end of the
age.”
From the beginning all stand idle, dead and
vicious towards God because that is what sin does. Only those who are “hired,” a totally passive act, are
saved. Every man in Jesus’ parable is paid, i.e.
is GIVEN the same—everything that
the “householder” has! It was only those hired at the first that
bargained for their share. The free
hiring was based upon nothing but
the will and heart of the “householder.”
The unilateral “hiring” is the Grace of God—Sola Gratia. Grace IS undeserved!
Repent
when you murmur the self-righteous envy of unbelief. The Kingdom of Heaven, the
“householder” is at hand. His “vineyard”
is yours free and clear because you are free—forgiven, and washed for
Supper. Turn from hatred to the
God-given equality of mercy and remission.
Embrace the last, the least, the wounded, and the despised. For so were all
of you before Jesus “hired,” and
carried you, a dead lost lamb in His own bloody wounded arms.
Third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh, the last
shall be first at this feast of freedom. At this “vineyard” the wine flows freely, the bread is resurrection fresh,
the Lamb is perfect, and… the more the merrier at Jesus’ feast; the Feast of
Mercy. Grace IS undeserved!
In The Name of The Father and of
+ The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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