“FAITH FEASTS ON
THE MERCIFUL MESSIAH”
Saint Matthew
22.1-14
19th Sunday after Trinity (Trinity 20
Propers/Michaelmas skip)
6 October Anno
Domini 2013
Fr. Jay Watson
SSP
In The + Name of
Jesus
Heaven is communion and family. Being saved
for eternity is a family thing—a being loved and cherished and provided for
thing!
Heaven is a marriage, an intimacy and
oneness.
God is a loving Father (“our Father Who art in heaven” the Christ tells you) Who desires
love for His Son and love for His Son’s spotless bride (Ephesians 5.27). The special relationship between Christ and
His Church is on display in this morning’s Gospel parable.
The wedding and union between you and Jesus,
between believers and the object of their belief, is so joyous and satisfying
that it calls for a feast—a wedding banquet. It is an arranged marriage for
true love is not spontaneous or emotional. Love is, as noted by C.S. Lewis, the
ancients, and most especially the Word of the Lord, a commitment, a sacrifice,
a giving and bestowing choice & doing of the lover upon the beloved. Rather
than being a risqué bit of R-rated
poetry, the Song of Solomon is a love
letter from the Son of God to the Virgin Bride assembled this morning by the
best-man, the Holy Spirit!
Yes you are the Bride…but you are also all
together, collectively, the guests as well. And the only guests at this lavish ceremony
(hence the rubrics and the customs and reverence) are the specially INVITED
guests! Only those pre-approved and sent
invitations may enter the nuptial hall—NO gate crashers and no sneak-thief
interlopers.
And who is invited? “Many” are invited, but “what
does this mean?” Many is a lot, a whole-lot, but it’s a number known only
to God, for God’s family has been known IN-LOVE, in the heart of the Blessed
Trinity, from before the creation of the world or the establishment of time and
place. Let us leave the unfathomable gracious goodness and ineffable mysteries
of the Doctrine of Election to another time, and simply rejoice in the Word: “God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son…” Now “that” is a wedding invitation engraved
not on rich paper with expensive ink, but upon Immaculate Kingly Flesh in
Innocent and Sacred Blood.
All earthly matrimonial “shin-digs” pale in comparison to this regal sit-down affair. This
is no pot-luck, cafeteria, or drive-through lane…no grazing, no eating on the “run.” This is a catered and sumptuous
banquet: “my oxen and fatted cattle are
killed.”
As God fed Adam, as God fed Abraham, and
especially as God fed the Children of Israel for 40 years in the desert—God
provides! “The eyes of all wait upon
Thee, O Lord, and Thou givest them their meat in due season.” [Ps.
145.15] Oxen are beasts of burden. But it is The Son, Christ Jesus, Who is the
true and holy Ox “for you!” Jesus did the work of tilling, cultivating, plowing,
and ultimately planting His own body in the ground. He was the Ox killed and
laid out on the stone altar of the Law, like Elisha laid out his sacrificial
oxen; like Aaron and his sons received every Ox at the entrance of the
Tabernacle to be slain. For only in blood is life; only in the Sacrifice is
there admittance to the holy of holies. Only by the red marks painted on the
doorposts and lintels of + your bodies is their entrance into this safe-house
of mirth and mercy and pass-over!
This
wedding, this feast, this food—This Host, is all about love and togetherness:
family and peace. Man was not meant to be alone, hence Eve. Man and woman were not meant to be alone hence
“be fruitful and multiply.” The rugged, individual, and solitary
anti-hero might work in an Eastwood movie, but in matters eternal, bespeaks
only Satan and hell. Man as God created him seeks company, community, communion
and the love feast of Marriage. You are not Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Matheson’s I
Am Legend you are brother and sister of Christ and all of His Saints; you
are “surrounded by a great cloud of
witnesses.” [Heb. 12.1]
Paganism scoffs at this communal clan of
Christ. Unbelief, and yes “Old-Adam”
natures, make light of the free invitation & delivery of Grace; of the
Scandal of Particularity and monergism:
“No man cometh unto the Father, but by
Me.” [Jn.14.6] Sin eschews the
norms and structures and life-long covenants of marriage and mercy, and goes
its own way: Eve’s way, Your way, My way…all the way to the “farm[s]” of self and mammon; all the way to the “business[es]” of
self-righteous disciplines, schemes, programs, and works. And heaven knows (yes
It does) that the King’s servants are spitefully treated and killed. Just this
week the called & ordained Servant of the Word at Grace Lutheran Church,
Larned, Kansas, was wrongly and maliciously thrown out of His call. And other
pastors are judged without mercy by self-righteous parishioners who always want
the benefit of the doubt and the 8th commandment’s protections for
themselves but are unwilling to put the best construction on their own Shepherd’s
humanity.
The King demands settlement and
accountability.
As
Caesar, a mere trifling, passing, temporary “king”
burned apostate Jerusalem to the ground (following in Nebuchadnezzar’s stead)
so too the real King, the Holy Trinity, will at the Eschaton send all rejecting non-believers who have purposely walked
away and absented themselves from the Wedding Hall into the burning perdition
of hell’s destruction. Man’s city will be burned—but NOT YOU!
Hear the Good News! Christ the King’s Son, your Groom; Christ the
King Enfleshed, was burned in God’s righteous anger and just wrath
against sin—your sin—on the Holy Cross of Calvary, in your place and on your
behalf. The Ox, nay, The Paschal Lamb was
roasted for you and the meal is ready to be consumed through faith and through
the mouth! The wedding banquet is served, the Table awaits, the Groom eager to
serve now and in eternity!
The Jews were not willing; as many, many
others are not willing. But His servants have gathered you; plucked you from
the highways of the world; young, old, black, white, smart, dim, patient,
anxious, SINNERS one-and-all, but hungry for Christ and trusting in Christ!
You no longer trundle off into the
wilderness of Sinai or sin for you are not Cain bearing the mark of death. You
are ushered into the hall and to the head-table because you bear the mark of Abel,
of Abel the shepherd’s Good Shepherd…not Abel’s blood
crying to the heavens for justice, but Christ’s Blood gushing upon you washing
you clean; poured into your throats making you Holy and immortal. Your
invitation by RIGHT—the Righteous One’s rightness credited to you by faith—is your
Baptismal + garment of being washed in Jesus’ Blood and water. Since this is a
family meal only those with the robe of Jesus, with the family + crest and the
family + seal are admitted.
You are gently covered in His robe by His
hands. He was bound hand and foot for you during His interrogation and torture.
He was bound nail and spike to the wood of the cross so that you would swim
free and breath peace in the wood of His font and the wood of His Church’s
Nave; and that this day you would again eat from the wood of His altar the
fruit of the wood of the Crucifix.
You are chosen---
In The Name of
The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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