A supper to which all nations are invited by grace

Sermon for Trinity 2

1 John 3:13-18  +  Luke 14:16-24

Through the negative and the positive examples of the rich man and the poor man last week, the Holy Spirit guided us toward those two basic tenets of Christianity: faith and love. Today’s Epistle points especially to love once again, especially love “for our brothers.” But who are these brothers? Is it the “brotherhood” of all mankind, as we are all descended from one man and from one woman and are all united in one human race? Well, that brotherhood is real, and it’s important, but it’s not what St. John was referring to. No, the apostles in the New Testament and even Jesus Himself usually use the word “brothers” to refer to those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, to those who have been given the right to be called children of God, born into His family through faith in the One who became our human Brother—Jesus—in order to make us His spiritual brothers through adoption into God’s family, through Holy Baptism. St. John in the Epistle focuses on the love we Christians must show to one another as brothers in the same family, no matter which families we came from originally. The Gospel, on the other hand, focuses on how we have come together as a Christian family.

We have come together around a great supper to which God invited us all by grace. Today’s parable of the great supper is similar to another banquet parable Jesus told, recorded in Matthew 22, but that one emphasizes the things that went into God’s eternal election. Here the emphasis is on the grace of the invitation itself, and the tragic rejection of that grace by many. As with most of Jesus’ parables, it comes with both comfort and a warning. The comfort is in God’s gracious invitation to His supper, which goes out to all nations. The warning is in the refusal of many to come.

A certain man prepared a great supper. God has prepared a great supper, a friendly meal, a family meal around His own supper table. The supper is fellowship with God through Jesus the Christ. It’s peace with God, it’s reconciliation. When our race was plunged into sin by Adam and Eve, we were enemies of God, lost and condemned creatures. But He has given His Son into death for His enemies, so that we might be reconciled to Him through faith in the death of His Son as the atoning price that has been paid for all people of all nations. Christ was sent and the supper of reconciliation was prepared by grace alone, by God’s free, undeserved favor. No one deserved for God the Father to give His Son into death. It was His free gift to mankind, given for free, given because God loves to give free gifts to people who don’t deserve it.

The man invited many people to his supper. These many people were the Jews. Beginning with Abraham, then on to Isaac, then on to Jacob (that is, Israel), then on to all of Jacob’s descendants, the children of Israel. They were all told about this great supper God would prepare, about the Christ whom God would send to sacrifice Himself for their sins. As Paul wrote about the Jews in the book of Romans, To them belong the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship of God and the promises. To them were committed the oracles (or the sayings) of God.

For centuries, for nearly two millennia the children of Israel received those oracles and carried those oracles and preserved those oracles of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. They rebelled against the God who had told them about this supper He was preparing. They disregarded His commandments. They turned to false gods over and over again and to every form of wickedness and injustice imaginable. But the remnant, the leftover handful of believers, held onto God’s promise to prepare a supper for them, yet not only for them, but for the Gentiles, too.

Then the time finally came, when Christ was born of a woman, born under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law. The supper was ready. And John the Baptist went out to herald His arrival in Israel. Repent! John was sent out mainly to preach the Law, to expose the sins of the people of Israel to the people of Israel, so that they could realize how needy they were of the supper of reconciliation that God was about to provide. “You think you’re a good person? You’re not good enough. Repent! You know you’re bad? You aren’t wrong. But still there is hope! Repent!” Then Jesus came along and proclaimed the Gospel: The kingdom of God is at hand. Come to the supper! Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest! And so the Gospel was preached first to the Jews.

And you know how it went. The parable paints the sad picture for us even as it was happening. One after another, they all began to excuse themselves. “I bought some land, I bought some oxen, I just got married. I can’t come. Please excuse me.” It’s shocking, really. God had been preparing that supper—the giving of His own Son into the world to die for sinners—and had carried the people of Israel as a father, carried them on eagles’ wings. And now, as He offers them this free gift, they have better things to do. Most of the “good people” thought they were doing fine on their own. Most of the “bad people” wanted to keep being bad people.

The man who prepared the supper was angry, Jesus says. God was angry with the Jews who turned down His invitation and His supper. Now, there was also sadness in God when the Jews rejected His grace. We see that side of God as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. But there was not only sadness. There was also anger. Righteous anger. Controlled anger (not like the anger that takes people over and turns them into animals). But still anger, anger that caused Him to reject Israel and turn away from them, to “chop off those natural olive branches,” as Paul describes in Romans.

And yet they were chopped off only so that others could be brought in.

What does the master of the house say next to his servant, after becoming angry at the ones who refused to come to his supper? Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring the poor, and the crippled, and the lame, and the blind in here. God was going to create a family, in spite of the rejection of the Jews, a family of believers that would not be made up of powerful people or prestigious people, but entirely of “poor and crippled” people, people who didn’t deserve the invitation, much less the supper itself. And that happened already with the prostitutes and tax collectors and public sinners whom Jesus called and they did repent. They did believe. They did receive the forgiveness of sins from Jesus. They did come to His supper of grace and became sons and daughters of God, even as they became true brothers and sisters of one another. The servant told his master, Lord, what you have commanded has been done.

And there is still room, the servant said. So the lord wanted more. Go out into the highways and hedges, and make them come in, so that my house may be filled. And so Jesus foretells what the next two thousand years (and counting) will be all about: sending His messengers out, to leave the confines of Israel and to take His invitation out into all the world, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep all things that He has commanded them. The Gentiles—the pagans, the sexually immoral, the roughest people on the face of the earth—were to be invited to the supper, based not on their worthiness, but on God’s grace; based not on ethnicity, but on grace; based not on social or economic status, but on grace and they would come. Not all of them, but a good number. The Gentiles would be grafted into the olive tree as wild branches, made sons and daughters of God, made brothers and sisters of one another, no matter what their original tribe or race or culture may have been.

But as for the Jews who stubbornly resisted God’s Spirit and God’s grace, the verdict is pronounced at the end of the Gospel: For I say to you that none of those men who were invited will taste my supper. Now, if it’s just any fancy supper, that’s no big deal. You missed out on it. Oh well. Life goes on. But if you miss out on this supper, life does not go on. This is your one chance at life, eternal life, the life that is truly life, as Jesus once called it. This is your chance to be reconciled with God so that you have Him for a Father, so that you have Jesus for a Brother, so that you have Christians from around the world as your brothers and sisters instead of the alternative. The only alternative to having God as your Father, through faith in Christ, is having the devil as your father and hell as your eternal home.

So, as I said before, there is great comfort in this Gospel, because God’s grace extends to everyone in His gracious invitation, Come to My supper! Come to Jesus and be saved! But there is also a grave warning, which the writer to the Hebrews captured in chapter 3: Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ” Beware, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.

The Gospel invitation goes out in every generation, and every generation must hear. If you hear these words in this sermon and determine that you have better things to do than to come to God’s supper of reconciliation in Christ, if you think it’s boring or irrelevant or a waste of time, think again. Before it’s too late. God wants His home filled with guests, filled by grace. But there will come a time when the invitation is withdrawn, and the house will be full, but you won’t be in it, if you turn away.

So here. Here is the invitation once more. You get to hear it! Others? Already others do not. The invitation has gone out to all nations, but most are not here, or anywhere where the Gospel is still being preached. But you’re here. You heard the invitation and were baptized; you came to the supper. You heard the invitation and have come to church, with your brothers and sisters here; you keep coming to the supper. You know you need to keep hearing the invitation here in this world so that you can remain at the supper by faith. And you also know that you have been given an actual Supper—the Lord’s Supper—as a means of “grace,” as a means of God, in His favor, keeping you present at the Lord’s great supper of reconciliation in Christ, even as Christ makes Himself present right here in His Supper, for you. Amen.