Invited to the supper as you are, to come in as someone else

NOTE: The audio in today’s service has audio problems for much of the service.

Sermon for Trinity 2

1 John 3:13-18  +  Luke 14:16-24

Many people think they love God, think they want to be in the presence of God, think they want to spend eternity with Him. Until they meet Him in His Word. Until they get to know Him, and find out that He isn’t at all who they imagined Him to be. They thought He was a God who accepted people as they are. When they find out that He isn’t, they often walk away in sadness, or even disgust. Either that, or they continue to worship a god of their own delusions, one who will continue to accept them as they are. It’s why you can have “Pride month” celebrated even by people who call themselves Christians, because they’ve replaced the God of Christianity with a god who accepts homosexuals (and every other kind of impenitent sinner) just as they are.

But there’s an important difference here that we need to acknowledge. You see, the true God does call people just as they are. He doesn’t seek out the worthy or the deserving or the good. He calls everyone, He invites everyone to come into His presence and into His kingdom, no matter what sins they’ve been entangled in. He invites them to come in by grace, free of charge, without claiming any worthiness in themselves, without trying to atone for their own sins or buy their way in with their good works. He calls them as they are. But He calls them to come in as someone entirely different than they are, and that keeps many people away.

That was the great problem with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. They thought they loved God, because they thought that God wanted them to come into His kingdom just as they were, as those who deserved a place at His supper table, as those who were clean and righteous and obedient, as those who were better than the dregs of society out there who hadn’t worked nearly as hard at keeping God’s commandments as the Pharisees had. But then they met Jesus, and Jesus revealed to them a different God altogether, one who didn’t invite the worthy, but the unworthy, one who defined “coming into the kingdom” as repentance and faith in Christ Jesus. That wasn’t a God they wanted anything to do with.

And so they invited Jesus to their house for a Sabbath-day supper, not because they loved Him or believed in Him, but to watch Him and to teach Him a lesson or two. In the verse before today’s Gospel begins, one of them stood up and proclaimed his love for the God he thought he knew. He thought he would impress Jesus with his piety: Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!

So Jesus, the invited Guest at the Pharisees’ supper and the King of the kingdom of God, tells a parable about a much greater supper, to show the delusional man and all the other Pharisees how they were the very ones who were refusing to eat bread in the kingdom of God by refusing to come in as different people, refusing to repent and to rely on grace alone for their entrance.

A certain man prepared a great supper and invited many people. God prepared eternal life in His kingdom, a banquet of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, a place in His family, a home for eternity. And He wrapped up all those benefits within the Person of His Son, the promised Christ. He invited the Old Testament people of Israel, the Jews, to this supper. He told them ahead of time about the coming of the Christ, and the great sacrifice He would offer for sins, the sacrifice of His own body, and that He would rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Then, when the Christ finally came, the man sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come! All things are now ready!’ John the Baptist was the first to announce it, and Jesus and His disciples soon followed. God the Father has sent His Son down to earth to save poor sinners from their sins and to give eternal life to all who believe in Him!

“Poor sinners? We’re not so poor,” thought the Pharisees. “We thought God was coming to reward the righteous, to increase the wealth of the rich, to tell us what a good job we’ve been doing! As for believing in God’s Son, we are all sons of Abraham, and we have Moses and the Law. We already have all we need.” And so, tragically, they made excuses for why they couldn’t make it to this great supper, why they neither were willing to recognize their sins nor to trust in Jesus the Christ for forgiveness.

So the servant came and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘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.’ And the servant said, ‘Lord, what you have commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ Then the lord said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and make them come in, so that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited will taste my supper.’”

The master of the house, the Lord God, was angry with the excuse-makers, with the Jews who didn’t want to attend His supper through Christ Jesus. But the Lord wasn’t deterred by their refusal. His great zeal for sharing the supper of eternal life does not flow from the quality or the personality of the guests. This is vitally important. It wasn’t because the Jews were such close friends of God or such obedient children that He invited them. It was always grace, undeserved affection and love. So when they rejected His supper, He didn’t have to “settle” for others. It was His intention all along to bring the Gentiles, to bring all people into His house.

He turned to many others, to the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, to people who were obviously weak, obviously unacceptable as they were, to the people who are generally marginalized and rejected by everyone else. In other words, God calls into His kingdom the very people who are despised by the rich and the wise and the outwardly religious of this age. And He doesn’t stop with a few. He keeps sending His ministers to call more people, from the highways and the hedges, anyone and everyone, no matter who they are or what they’re like or what they’ve done. The only qualification is, they have to be unacceptable as they are. They have to be sinners. That’s the definition of grace! He keeps calling out through His ministers, calling them just as they are, until His kingdom, His Church, is full. And, of course, since God alone can see the structure of His Church, only He knows when His house is full. The fact that Jesus hasn’t yet returned for judgment means that “still there is room.”

But He won’t let them come in “as they are.” He insists on “killing” them with the Law, exposing their sins with the light of His Word, and calling them to repent, not just of this or that sin, but of the natural corruption of their whole self. Then He calls them to the new birth of Holy Baptism, where their old self is buried with Christ into death, and a new person is born and arises, so that they become entirely different people, people who still carry around a sinful flesh, people who still sin, but now as people who hate their sin and wish to be rid of it, who strive and struggle to be rid of it, now with the Holy Spirit’s help; now as people who trust in Christ Jesus, the Savior of sinners, now as people who are accepted by God only because they trust in Jesus. To come in, to enter God’s kingdom, to feast at His supper, is to repent of our sins and to trust in His promise of acceptance by grace, free of charge, through faith in Christ.

This is why so many are unwilling to come. Because they don’t want grace, that is, acceptance for the sake of Christ. They want acceptance for who they are, as they are, whether “good” or “bad.” Coming to the supper means being remade, it means denying your old self. It means the destruction of your pride, of your personal beliefs, of your personal record of works which you may think of as good, but which, apart from Christ, were only evil all the time.

You, dear Christians, have been called as you are to come to the great supper as someone else, as someone whose identity is wholly wrapped up in Christ Jesus. And having come, you have tasted how good the Lord is, how vital His continual forgiveness is. You have tasted eternal life, but just a little bit of it in this life, and even that—isn’t it worth losing your earthly life for it? You have come to know just how much strength there is in God’s Word and in His holy Sacraments, how good and pleasant and necessary it is to gather together around Word and Sacrament. You have come to know grace. You have met the true God, and you have loved Him, and you do want to spend eternity with Him, don’t you?

Now make it your first priority to keep coming to this supper, to remain in the kingdom of God by daily contrition and repentance and by using the gifts He has given, prayer and the Means of Grace. And make it your second priority to live such godly lives in the world that others may come to know God’s grace through you. The Master of the House is not yet satisfied with the number of guests. Still there is room, room for any, room for all. So show grace to people. Call them, invite them as they are, without prejudice, without hatred, without condescension. Invite them to come to the One who gave His life on the cross so that they, like you, could become different people, penitent and forgiven people, recreated by grace in the image of the God of grace. Amen.