Called - and Chosen

 Matthew 22:1-14

And Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come.

"Again he sent out other slaves saying, Tell those who have been invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast."' But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire.

"Then he said to his slaves, The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.' And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

"But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw there a man not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

Sermon for Twentieth Sunday After Trinity 10/13/24

Called  -- and Chosen

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Many are called, but few are chosen. What a difficult and spooky saying. We like to think that if we hear the call of God and join His people, we are "the chosen ones". This passage seems to put that in doubt. We feel called, yet this passage seems to suggest that we may be among "The Called" without being among "The Chosen". Look at the man in the Gospel lesson this morning. He was invited, he came, and then he was thrown out. More than thrown out, he was condemned! He wasn't one of those who stoned the prophets. He didn't rebel. He just wore the wrong outfit, and, whammo!, he is cast out into that outer darkness. What could this mean to us? Let us take a look. Our theme is "Called and Chosen."

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son. This is a parable. We have to assume that every detail is not significant, but we can align some of the images Jesus uses in this parable to what the Old Testament used, and see what Jesus was saying. The King, for example, represents God, the first King of Israel, and the only true King. Until the people rejected God and demanded Saul, God was King, it is called "a theocracy."

The Son is the Son of God. Pretty easy stuff, so far. The wedding feast is the fulfillment of the Kingdom and the outpouring of salvation which we see as the Church. We speak about heaven as the wedding feast of the Lamb with His bride, the Church even today. God was all set to fulfill the Messianic promises, and to send His Son and to work our salvation, and when He sent out word through His slaves, the Prophets, to the people of Israel, those who, according to the story Jesus was telling, had been invited but were unwilling to come. They ignored the summons of the Prophets. They ignored the call to repent. They were all so busy with their lives and the blessings that God had poured out on them that they had no time for - and no REAL interest in - the God who had blessed them and made them a people. Too many choices, too much wealth, too much to do to pay much mind to God.

Was the King to be deterred? No. He sent even more slaves. Still, the people would not listen. Their farms, their businesses, their pleasures, and their families were just more important. They found the crying of the prophets growing more irritating by the day until they could bear it no longer and they began to punish and finally to kill the messengers. "How dare they tell me I am sinful?!" "How dare they tell me that my priorities are out of place?!" "How dare they preach repentance to me?!" "But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them."

Many are called, but few are chosen. It is interesting to note that the Jewish presence in the Christian Church died out about one hundred years into the life of the Church after the death of Christ. The whole nation had been called, and so few ever believed and received eternal life. The destruction of which this story speaks was Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the independent kingdom of the Jews which happened in 70 A.D. "But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire."

"Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.' And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests." Ahh! Here we are. These three verses cover the whole of the next two thousand years of history. This is the Christian Church. God has sent out His servants to invite everyone we can find to the wedding feast. That means the preaching of the Gospel. Anyone and everyone who would accept the invitation and come to the feast is welcome. But keep in mind how many - who call themselves Christians today - believe something other than the Gospel we proclaim, the Gospel that the Scriptures teach.

Remember the call that went out in the parable? It is the same call today. "Again he sent out other slaves saying, 'Tell those who have been invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast."' The dinner is prepared.

Jesus has taken our sins to the cross, paid for them, and met the justice of God in our place with His death on the cross. Our sins have been forgiven, and God is pouring out eternal life to all who hear the invitation to the feast of salvation, the wedding feast of the Lamb to His bride, the Church. All is ready, or as Jesus put it from the cross, "It is Finished!" The cry of the prophet is the same message as the proclamation of the pastor, "Repent and believe."

Now this second part of the parable takes us forward to the final day, what many call Judgement Day. The King comes in to look over the guests. The guests are all of those who have come into the church but not the Holy Church as the assembly of all those who believe, and only those who believe. This wedding hall is the church as we see her on earth, with believers and hypocrites mingled together. Some are truly Christ's, and then there are all those who are represented by that one man without the wedding garment.

In ancient times, I am told, the kings provided the wedding garment to everyone who came to the wedding. These garments were festival clothes, sometimes brightly colored, always brand-new. One of the benefits of being invited to such a wedding was that you got a new outfit. This was in a world where people generally wore their entire wardrobe every day. New clothes were almost better than money and often served in the place of money, for those who could afford to give it.

God has clothed each one of us who believes with the wedding garment of holiness, the robe of Christ's righteousness which is ours in the forgiveness of sins. In other words, you are both called - and chosen. To keep this image clear, remember Adam and Eve in the Garden. When they sinned, They realized they were naked. Sin is nakedness, and God's forgiveness, and the gift of righteousness which is ours in Jesus Christ, is true clothing. The wedding garment, then, is the forgiveness of sins, salvation, and the righteousness which is the gift of grace to all who take God at His Word and trust Him in other words, to those who believe. That is what tells me that this man was the hypocrite among us. He was in the wedding hall and among the wedding guests, but he was not wearing the wedding clothes. This is not just any unbeliever. They did not enter the wedding hall in the first place. They are already outside in the darkness throughout the story.

The question was simple. "Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?" If you are in the church, you are expected to be wearing the righteousness of Christ. Can some into the church and not wear the garment? Sadly, yes. They are in the vicinity of the true Church and look to be part of the true Church, but they are not, they are merely part of the visible church - the local congregation. Some belong to churches that claim to be Christian, but teach dependence on one's own works - or on one's own preparation for salvation - or on one's own decision and prayer for salvation. They think they have heard and accepted the invitation to the banquet, but they came in without the garment of the grace of God in the Gospel because they never really heard it - but they thought they were just as Christian as anyone else - more Christian, even.

On the other hand, how can anyone who hears the Gospel regularly not wear the wedding garment? Answer: They do not believe. One group of this sort does not believe that they are all that bad, you know, sinners. So they do not really ever repent, and therefore they never have forgiveness as their own, because they don't see any point in it. The Gospel has no value to them, and they don't bother actually believing. There are people like that in the church. They think everyone else is just like them. They come for the music, or how it makes them feel to come to church, or they come for the social interaction. They never understand that they are different except for being not like those religious fanatics who make them feel uncomfortable with all their God-talk and exaggerated (to them) piety and stuff.

Others don't wear the garment because they don't trust God. They want to earn it all for themselves. They don't understand this forgiveness stuff after all, they know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some of these people believe some of our doctrines, but they know that they can't accept all of that nonsense that the pastor preaches. They say, He has his opinions and they have theirs. It is a matter of interpretation, right!? They like the crowd, they feel comfortable in the congregation, and, so what if they don't believe all of that stuff the pastor preaches? They look around themselves and see that it is obvious many others in the Missouri Synod don't believe it either. They tell everyone they meet that they are just as good a Christian as any of them, and they pretend that they belong as much as the next man, and that they are hypocrites.

Yet another bunch just can't stop living their way long enough for the Gospel. They have their riches. They have their pleasures. They have their sins. Surely God isn't going to hold them accountable for that. They don't repent because they don't need to. They have a "right" to their sins, to their unfaithfulness, to their lukewarmness to the Gospel. They don't need to be in church every Sunday. They don't need to go to Bible Study to get into heaven. They give God that one hour out of the 168 each week that He gives them, and they are sure that they have done what they need to do. They never look back. They never examine themselves. They never give God another thought as they do that Old Testament thing of getting lost in the blessings and forgetting the One who blessed them.

The point is that, however, they make it to the wedding that Last Day they do so without ever really wearing the wedding garment they have been given. They may have even worn it for a while, but it got too hot, too restricting, too old-fashioned, and they took it off and never looked back. When the King enters, He will know the difference. He can see what we cannot. He can see who is wearing the wedding garment and who is not, who is real, and who is just faking it. The result, the outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, is hell. It is eternal misery and torment, augmented by the knowledge that they are cast out into it because they did not take care to wear the garments of salvation that Christ has won and God has freely given to everyone to wear. And notice that there is no excuse for not wearing the wedding clothes. He was in the hall, he clearly had been given the garment. Not wearing the gift is a deliberate act of rebellion, just as unbelief in the church today is never an "OOOPs, I didn't realize" but always a cold-hearted and wicked rejection of God, of His grace, of His love. Jesus said, And he was speechless.

Many are called, but only those few who place their hope and their confidence in Jesus and what He has done will enter the wedding feast of eternal life in glory with Christ. Those who trust in Him are also called "the Chosen". The number of the saved will not be small, it will just be few in comparison to those to whom the invitation has been given, that is, every single person on earth. The hypocrites will be separated from the people of God by the only person who can always see the difference, the person of the Son of God, who sees into your heart and knows what you believe and who you trust.

The feast is ready. You are all sitting in the banquet hall. We have the foretaste of the feast here at the altar. Today we invite you once again. Everyone who enters this church and hears the Word of salvation is invited - called. Each of you has been presented the wedding garment, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. You are Called, and chosen! Take care to wear the garment of salvation. Let the good news of the gift of forgiveness and of the love of God for you guide your thoughts, humble your hearts, and shape your actions. Your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus. Repent and believe. Examine yourselves daily, whether you are in the faith, and cling to Christ in His Word and in the Sacrament. For many are called, all of humanity, in fact, but few are chosen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

The Look of Faith and of Unbelief

 Matthew 9:1-8

And getting into a boat, He crossed over, and came to His own city.  And behold, they were bringing to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed; and Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, "Take courage, My son, your sins are forgiven."  And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, "This fellow blasphemes."  

And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts?  For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, ‘Rise, and walk'?  But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" – then He said to the paralytic – "Rise, take up your bed, and go home."  And he rose, and went home.  But when the multitudes saw this, they were filled with awe, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity                   10/06/24

The Look of Faith and of Unbelief

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Our Gospel, this morning, is one of my favorite Gospel lessons.  Jesus demonstrates His power to heal, and His authority to forgive sins, and He puts His adversaries in a quandary, and He does it all with such style and simplicity.  It is a marvelous text, and I love to preach it, and I have preached it often.

This morning, I want to focus on one specific element of the account.  These men carry their paralyzed friend to Jesus.  Mark and Luke also tell of this moment, and they tell us the other details - about how crowded it was around Jesus, and how the men climbed to the roof of the house that Jesus was in, and how they tore up the roof tiles and lowered their friend into the room near Jesus.  Matthew did not tell us these details, but they help us understand what the text says, that Jesus saw their faith.  That is our focus this morning, the look of faith - and of unbelief.

It is an exciting account!  Jesus has begun to draw crowds wherever He goes.  He is home in Capernaum, where He made His home during His adult life.  Once people found out, Jesus was swamped.  The crowds around Him were so thick that these friends of the paralytic could not shoulder their way into the presence of Jesus.  So, being creative, and convinced that Jesus could heal their friend, they climbed to the roof of the house and lifted the roofing material out of the way.  It wasn't like one of our roofs, all nailed down and weather-proof, but it took some work - and they had to fix what they tore up later, but the Bible doesn't go into that detail.

Anyhow, they lower their friend into the room.  He was undoubtedly lying on a stretcher-type thing.  It made for easy transport, and it made it easy to lower their friend into the room.  Just a rope at each corner, and they could lower him safely, as though it were an elevator of sorts.  Jesus saw how desperate they were to bring this man to Him, and how hard they worked to do it.  He could look into their hearts, too, and see what drove them to such extremes, but it was clear that they just knew that Jesus could heal their friend, so they came on.

Jesus' response tells us that He saw that they believed that He was the Messiah, the Savior promised for so long.  I can tell that by Jesus first words, "Take courage, My son, your sins are forgiven."  Why would Jesus speak these words of comfort and encouragement, except that He saw that they would be met with faith?

His bold pronouncement was met with immediate anger by the Scribes.  They didn't say anything out loud, but they were thinking, perhaps even muttering to themselves, that Jesus was blaspheming.  They judged Him so, because it was a fundamental article of their faith that only God could forgive sins.  By saying, "Your sins are forgiven", Jesus was declaring that He was God, or equal to God, which to the Jews of Jesus' time was the same thing.

Jesus could see that, too.  The text says "Knowing their thoughts" Jesus said, "Which is easier, to say ‘Your sins are forgiven,' or to say ‘Rise, and walk'?"  The difficult part of the question was that only God can do either thing.  Of course, it would be easier to say, "Your sins are forgiven".  No one could see if it was true.  That was the basis of the charge of blasphemy.  Who could tell?

On the other hand, "Rise, and walk" required that the paralytic be healed, made whole, and be able to get up and walk away.  I would guess that this paralyzed man was known in the community, perhaps well-known.  They knew that he could not simply get up and walk.  So, the answer was obvious, but no one could have spoken the answer out loud without also being charged with blasphemy!  But Jesus doesn't wait for any answer.  He never tempts people to think or speak evil.  He made His point with the question, and then He proved His authority.  He said to the Scribes, "‘But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins' – then He said to the paralytic – ‘Rise, take up your bed, and go home.'   And he rose, and went home."

Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, just as He has the authority to heal.  That is where the authority of the absolution you heard this morning comes from.  Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, and He has given it to the Church, and commanded us to do so, in His name.  That is why your hear me say, "I, by virtue of my office, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God to you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins."  It is the command of Jesus, who has the authority to forgive!  Your sins are forgiven, when I speak His absolution on your confession, just as surely and as truly as that paralyzed man got up and walked home, healed and whole!

What I wanted to take note of was that Jesus could see the faith of those men.  He could see it in their actions.  He could see that they believed that He had the power to heal, and He could see that they believed that Jesus was the sort of God who was willing to heal.  That they thought He was God showed in the fact that they asked Him to do what only God could do!  Their faith - even specific things that they believed about Jesus - was clearly visible in their actions.

The unbelief of the scribes was not so readily visible.  Jesus could see it, but many others might not have.  They were simply accepted as good and faithful church members.  They were leaders.  Some may have had their doubts about them, but there was no outward sign.  Evil doesn't always leave an outward sign.  It shows ultimately, but it can lie in wait for a time, and simply fester in the hearts and thoughts of evil men.  But it is evil.

The evil was simply unbelief.  They doubted that Jesus had the authority to do what He was doing.  They dismissed the power of the Word He spoke.  They accused Jesus of a terrible sin – and all of that falsely, because they could simply not accept Jesus for who He was, for who they knew Him to be, nor believe the truth that He spoke.

It is the same today.  Faith cannot help but work, doing things that reveal the specific things that the believers believe.  Do you believe that your sins are forgiven?  That faith will show in how you handle guilt, and how you deal with your sins when you come to see your behavior as sinful.  You don't hide it or deny it, not even to yourself.  You confess it, and repent, and believe the gracious words of forgiveness which Jesus speaks to you.  

Do you believe that the will of God toward you is good?  Then the hard parts of life are not so spooky and confusing.  Yes, pain is still pain.  When it is your loved one that dies, it is still a tremendous sorrow.  But You know that God is working all things for good for those who love Him, for those whom He has called according to His own purposes - and those purposes are good.  They are life and salvation!  So, when sickness raises its head, you know that God is still with you and will hold you by the hand and sustain you.  It doesn't make the illness less, it simply means that it doesn't rob you of the comfort of knowing that everything will be all right, in God's good time and way.

Do you believe that God has the power to heal, repair, and put things right?  Can God guide the course of your life?  If you believe that, and you trust that His will toward you is good, then prayer is one action that shows your faith.  Faithfulness is another - because you know that what your situation looks like and what it is may be two different things!  God can make anything possible, and turn every situation into blessings.  He doesn't call on us to win every battle, or to feel good at the end.  That is how fairy-tales work.  This is real life, lived in the presence of God, who loves you enough to send His Son to die a gruesome death in your place , and who pays such close attention to you that He knows the number of hairs on your head at any given moment!

Faith shows.

And so does unbelief.  It looks timid in the face of challenges.  It may roar with a false bravado, but it cannot face the guilt of sin, so it pretends that good is evil and evil is good.  Unbelief cannot trust God to fix things, so it has to fix them, often by denying God and doing what is wrong, rather that counting on God to make it work out all right.  Unbelief does not expect God to have a good will toward itself, and so it rails against God and grumbles about blessings and difficulties alike.  It expects no good thing, and so it gets angry, just like the Scribes in our Gospel.  Unbelief expects no healing from God, and so it falls victim to despair.

And every one of us stumbles at one time or another into the behavior of unbelief.  We do not believe as we should, and our flesh works to overthrow the Spirit that God has given us.  When we discover that we have been less faithful and less believing that we know we can be, it is no good to pretend that it is not so.  We need to confess our weakness and our sin, and ask God to create that "clean heart" that we sing about so often in our services.  We need to humble ourselves, and acknowledge our sins, and ask for forgiveness.

"And when we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  It is that simple, and it is that hard.  Have you sinned?  Then repent, and hear the word of forgiveness - Your sins are forgiven!  Those are the same words Jesus spoke to comfort the man who lay paralyzed before Him.  Your sins are forgiven.  But don't stop with my words, come and stand before the altar, and ask God to give you His assurance.  He will, you know.  He will feed you with the very body He nailed to the cross in your place so long ago.  He will give you the blood that He shed for your sins, to drink.  He will fill you up with Himself, and cleanse you of your sins.  And when you eat His body and drink His blood you can have no illusion that maybe it was meant for the man or woman next to you, and that God did not intend to be gracious and forgiving to you.  He places His body in your mouth, and His pours His blood through your lips for you, so that you may know with utter certainty, and you may be confident that Jesus love you!  Your sins are forgiven.

Then you may arise and go home, just like the man in the Gospel lesson.  You can walk, and walk in the way of faith, comforted by forgiveness, and living out your trust in God.  That is the look of faith.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)