Exercising Good Judgement

Text:  Luke 12:54-13:9

WE ALL FACE DEADLINES IN life.  In school or at work, the time comes when the project or assignment is due and it's time for it to be assessed.  Someone's going to come and judge your work, and will you pass the test?

But what if you don't know when the deadline is?  Or maybe, what if you claim you don't know when the deadline is?  Is that any excuse?  Or will the judge come and tell you you had all the information you needed; you should have been ready, you should have known?

Most Christians know that Jesus Christ is returning at the end of time to judge the living and the dead and to inaugurate His heavenly kingdom.  But we may not know that one of His most important roles during His time on earth was that of Old Covenant judge.  He came to wind up the old way of relating to God, based on works, and to bring in the new way, based on faith in Him.

The sayings of Christ in our Luke reading today are primarily addressed to the Jews of Jesus' time.  But we, too, can take warning from what He says, and be ready.

Our Lord is teaching the crowd.  He draws an analogy with the weather.  "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It's going to rain,' and it does."  The people of the day are really good at interpreting the appearance of the earth and sky.  So why don't they know how to interpret the present time?

What is Jesus referring to?   It goes back to the days of Moses.  God called His people Israel out of the land of Egypt and chose them as His own nation.  At Mount Sinai God gave the Law.  The Law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, was more than just a list of dos and don'ts; it was the Covenant between God and His people.  It drew a picture of what they were to be like in order to please Him and to be worthy to call Him their God.

We know what happened, don't we?  The Covenant of Sinai was broken more than it was kept.  God's people frequently behaved worse that the pagan nations around them.  But the prophets of God always foretold the time when a new and more perfect covenant would be made between God and Israel.  A time was coming when the Promised One would appear, the Messiah, and He would perfectly keep the Covenant.  He would be the perfect Israel, and would embody the obedience that God demanded.  But this would be a time of cataclysm and change.  When He came He would put to judgement the disobedience of the people, and prove who was worthy to enter into the kingdom of God and who was not.  John the Baptist said what this one would be like.    He predicted, "One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

We know that when Jesus came He did not carry the program of God's covenant judgement as far as John the Baptist expected.  This was due to God's mercy, to give the full number of God's elect among the Gentiles the chance to come in.  But Jesus by His coming did exercise covenant judgement upon Israel.  And as He speaks to the crowd, He judges their tendency to fool themselves about God's times and seasons.  They knew the prophets, they knew what was to happen when Messiah came.  It was as clear and certain as the rain clouds rising in the west and the wind blowing from the south.  But they wanted to deceive themselves about the implications of what was happening.

They should stop deceiving themselves and exercise right judgement.  For the time was coming when the sin of the people would be judged.  Jesus gives the analogy of someone going before a magistrate.  The scenario is that of a civil lawsuit, and the idea is that you, whom Jesus is addressing, really are guilty of harming your adversary.  The point is clear-- Israel has broken God's covenant and He has the right to satisfaction.  So don't deceive yourself and think that when judgement comes it'll be all right.  No, repent now, be reconciled now, for when the day of judgement comes it will be too late and there will be no help for you.

Jesus wants His fellow-Jews to understand that judgement is coming, it's imminent, and they deserve it.  But there are always people who want to concern themselves with other people's sins and other people's judgement, in an attempt to make themselves feel better about their own situation. So we hear that at that time, as Jesus was teaching these things, there were some who mentioned to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  This was a famous incident involving a power play ruthlessly executed by Pontius Pilate.  You have to wonder if this situation was brought up so the people present with Jesus could comfort themselves with the idea that  well, at least they hadn't done whatever those men did!  Jesus knows this is exactly where they're coming from, which is why He asks then if they thought those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because this horror had come upon them.  Yes, of course they thought that.  At least, they hoped so?  But no!  They were no worse!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."  Not necessarily by the hand of the Romans, but in whatever way God will in His judgement ordain.

And if people are going to bring up cases, what, Jesus says, about those eighteen people who died when the tower in the Siloam district of Jerusalem fell on them?  Was their guilt greater than that of anyone else in Jerusalem?  Absolutely not!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Why?  Because the time of judgement is at hand.  The time is coming soon when God will settle His scores with disobedient Israel, and the only escape will be to repent of their sins and throw themselves on the mercy of God.

To drive home the point, Jesus tells a parable regarding a fig tree planted in a vineyard.  Both the vineyard and the fig tree were well-known Scriptural images for Israel, and the expectation of fruit was a standard analogy for God's expectation of righteousness and good works from His people.

And now the One who has the right to look for those good works has come, but doesn't find any fruit.  For three years He's been coming and hasn't found any.

It's tempting to think the three years mentioned in the parable might refer to the fact that it's now towards the end of His three-year ministry.  But God had been looking for good fruit from Israel; that is, covenant faithfulness, for a whole lot longer than that.  The crowd listening to Jesus knew that if a fig tree was going to bear fruit, it'd do it in three years.  The owner of the vineyard has the right to expect fruit from this tree, but where is it?  All it's doing is taking up room in the vineyard.  Why not cut it down?  But the gardener asks for more time for the failing fig tree.  Jesus doesn't want us to go overboard with identifying the people in the parable with particular members of the Holy Trinity.  The point is that the fig tree, that is, God's Old Covenant people, are being given another chance to bring forth righteousness before God.  It's one more year in the parable; in real life the time may be even shorter.  Jesus' hearers had better not take any chances when it comes to themselves.

We know from history that judgement came upon the Jewish nation in A.D. 70, when the Roman legions under Titus marched in and destroyed Jerusalem, including the temple and its walls.  Judgement was complete and terrible.

But what about us?  Is it good judgement on our part to ignore the will of God and behave however we want, because we're covered by the grace of Christ?  Not at all!  It's true that our new covenant in Him is sealed by His blood and righteousness and not by sacrifices we might offer or deeds we might do.  But we, too, are called upon to repent, to exercise good judgement and depends on Jesus utterly.  For as the writer to the Hebrews says,

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.  For if the message spoken by angels was binding [that is, the covenant of the Law given on Mount Sinai], and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?

The cross of Christ brings us mercy that covers the sins of all who believe.  But we cannot expect our Lord to overlook the sins of anyone who takes His mercy for granted and presumes upon His righteous judgement.

Not only in this season of Lent but all year round, let us flee to Christ for forgiveness and safety in the day of reckoning.  For the day is coming when Christ surely will return.  Can we stand with confidence in that day?  Let us do the deeds that belong to repentance, not because we think we can put God in our debt, but because we are humbly grateful for what Jesus our Savior has done for us.  For He is the righteous Judge who surely will come, but He is also the Lamb of God on whom judgement fell that we might escape the judgement we deserved.  He has paid the uttermost penny for us; He is the fruitful fig tree that national Israel could never be.  So exercise good judgement and trust in Him and Him alone.  For then, when He, the Good Judge, comes to judge the living and the dead, you will be able to stand before God in confidence and joy, trusting in Chris and His merits, and giving Him praise and thanksgiving throughout all eternity.

Last Things First

Texts:    Isaiah 64:1-9;  Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

    WHAT IS OUR HOPE as Christians?  What is the goal and object of our faith?

    To hear some people talk, you'd think it was to make us nicer, more fulfilled individuals, with better marriages, families, and careers in this life.  And with higher self-esteem, too.  In such an understanding of Christianity, the Baby in the manger at Bethlehem is a nice encouragement, but the Son of Man coming again to judge all humanity is not to be thought of at all.  After all, in this world we're taught to put first things first.  But the Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, isn't interested in the teaching of this world.  After he greets the saints, about the first subject he mentions is the second coming of their Lord and ours, Jesus Christ.  Hear what he says in verses 7 and 8:

    . . . [Y]ou do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The church in Corinth was eagerly waiting for Jesus Christ to be revealed.  And so they stood in the tradition of the true people of God, for this is the object of our Christian faith: that the great day of the Lord will surely come, when Christ will return as King, the heavens and the earth will be made new, and we will enjoy the kingdom of God in all its perfection.  These things-- The end of the age, the second coming of Christ, the Judgement, and so on-- are known as the Last Things.  And St. Mark, St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John, and all the New Testament writers follow their Master Jesus in urging us Christians to keep Last Things first.

        But why? 

    Because when we keep our focus on the second coming of Christ, we keep our eyes on God's goal for all creation, and when we keep our eyes on God's goal for all creation, we maintain and strengthen our hope in Christ, even in the midst of the troubles and worries of this world.

    And we need hope in this world.  Not the hope that consists in wishful thinking, but the firm and sure hope that depends upon a promise made by Someone we can trust now and into all eternity.  In our Gospel reading from St. Mark, our Lord Jesus declares that the time will come when

    . . . men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.  And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man in this discourse.  And thus the disciples know that He is the coming King the prophet Daniel saw in his vision of the Last Things in Daniel 7.  But more than that, the title "Son of Man" tells us that it will be His own human Self, Immanuel, the Child born of Mary who rose from the tomb, who will sit on the throne of God.  And He is God, for the angels are His, and it is His to command them to "gather his elect" from wherever they may be.  That's us, who by the grace of God, have been called by the Holy Spirit into faith in our crucified and risen Savior, all of us in every time and place who have been washed clean by His blood.

    But not all of humanity shares this hope.  Not everyone knows that their eternal happiness depends on their keeping Last Things first. 

    Some don't believe there will be any Last Things at all.  I heard an interview the other night with a man they called an expert on the subject of the Apocalypse.  He admitted that cultures all over the world for the past three thousand years have had prophecies and stories that someday the world as we know it will be destroyed and then made new.  But, he said, all that was false; it was never going to happen.  No, he said, all talk about the end times is just a way for priests and rulers and others in authority to keep people focussed on some future state of perfection, instead of working and maybe fighting and rebelling to make things perfect here and now.

    What do we say to such a man and those who believe like him?  Do we let him undermine our hope, so we stop keeping Last Things first?  He quoted the famous atheist Richard Dawkins, to the effect that it's only some outgrown evolutionary stage that makes people look forward to a end to this age and the birth of one that is new.  Do we tie ourselves in knots trying to prove Richard Dawkins wrong?  There are people who have the gift of apologetics, and God strengthen them as they exercise it.  But there's something even better we can show.  When we speak of the second advent of our Lord and the end of this age, we're not just passing along some gut feeling or old tribal legend.  No, we are quoting the very words of the Son of God.  This Man told His disciples that He would be crucified by the authorities during His next visit to Jerusalem, and that three days later, He would be raised from the dead.  You could say it was inevitable that Jesus would be crucified sooner or later.  But no mere man, not even the wisest and cleverest, can say that He will rise again-- and actually do it.  It is not in the power of any ordinary man to make such a thing happen.

    But Jesus our Lord foretold His resurrection and it did happen, not in myth, not in legend, but in real history, under the authority of a Roman bureaucrat named Pontius Pilate.  When Someone like that tells us that He certainly will return and that by His power death and hell will flee away, you can believe Him.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away.

    But others, while they may believe this world will end someday, aren't looking forward to it in hope. They can't imagine a better existence than they might achieve in this present age, and the idea of living in fellowship with the Son of God means nothing to them.  Why would they keep Last Things first?  Any second advent of Christ would ruin their whole day!

    And indeed, when we think of our sin, and the judgement to come on the world, how should creatures like us hope and pray for the day of the Lord?  In Isaiah 64 God's people plead that He would come save them in their day of distress.

        Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
               that the mountains would tremble before you!

They look forward to the Lord taking vengeance on His enemies and theirs--

        [C]ome down to make your name known to your enemies
           and cause the nations to quake before you!

But there's a problem.  God's people have been acting like His enemies themselves.  True,

        [the Lord] comes to the help of those who gladly do right,
        who remember your ways.

But Israel has not gladly done right.  They've continued to sin against Him.  "How then," Isaiah asks in behalf of the nation, "can we be saved?"

    What do you do when the One who is your only hope is also the One you most need to fear?  Not because God is some kind of abusive father, but because we have been like adult children who have taken advantage of and robbed and harmed and disgraced Him.  For know this, this passage in Isaiah is not simply about an incident in the history of ancient Israel, it also describes our position before God when we forget Him and go our own way.  In our selfishness and idolatry even our attempts at righteousness are like filthy rags.  How can we who neglect to call on the name of the Lord, who fail to lay hold on God and His goodness find hope in the coming of Christ?  Why should we want to put Last Things first?

    Because the Lord our God is our Father.  He is our Father because like a potter He has formed and made us.  But even more, He is our Father because He has remade us in the image of His Son Jesus Christ.  To cite St. Paul in 1 Corinthians again, thanksgiving can be made for us because of the grace that has been given us in Christ Jesus.  In our sins we were ragged and filthy, we blew away like dried-up leaves.  But in Christ we "have been enriched in every way."  Perhaps not in the material ways this passing world values, but in speaking and knowledge, in ways that build one another up in the faith of the Gospel of Christ.

    Or have we?  This was true of the Corinthians.  Whatever problems they may have had in other areas, they recognised and used the spiritual gifts God had given them.  Paul is saying that God the Father will keep them strong and faithful in the use of these gifts, so they might be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus.

    God has given us gifts by the Holy Spirit to serve Him in the Church as well, till Christ comes.  You do not need to take a spiritual gift inventory to find out what yours is.  Whatever the Holy Spirit is urging you to do, and you know it's the Holy Spirit's urging because it is confirmed by the Word of God, do it!

    This is what our Lord means by saying in Mark that we're like servants a master going on a trip has put in charge of various jobs to do while he's away.  So let's do them!  Let's put Last Things first by loving our neighbor with food and clothing and shelter.  Let us tell them that Jesus died for them just like He did for us, and invite them to church where they can hear the saving good news of eternal life in Him.  Let us do our daily work in ways that benefit others and glorify God, the Master Workman over all.  Let us live holy and gracious lives in the midst of this perverted and wicked world, so that when Jesus comes again we will have no cause to feel ashamed.

    Jesus says, "Keep watch!"  So live the life He has given you on earth to His praise and glory, always with an eye open and an ear tuned to His footstep at the door.  He may come tomorrow; He may for His good purpose delay another thousand years.  But it is the promise of Christ's second advent that gives all our work in this world its meaning and gives our earthly existence its hope.  This life is not one endless grind of things going on the way they always have; it has a purpose and a goal.  Christ came into this world as the Baby of Bethlehem to bear our sins and keep God's righteous commands for us the way we never could.  He will come again as the glorious Son of Man to gather His own that we may be with Him forever.

    Live in this blessed hope.  By His Spirit's power, serve Him in all you do.  And always remember to put the Last Things first.

The Word of the Shepherd King

 Texts:    Acts 9:1-6; Galatians 6:7-10; Matthew 25:31-46

     IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A lot like Christmas!  At least, the merchants have had the decorations up for the past three weeks or more.  And up where I live in B--, some people already have their wreaths up in their windows.  However you feel about rushing things like this, in five weeks Christmas will be here.

        But there may be signs something else is coming soon, too.  A lot of people are asking, "Could we be getting closer to the end of the world?"  It's not just false prophets like Harold Camping and chatter about the Mayan calendar and December 2012.  We've got natural disasters coming so thick and heavy.  Civil unrest all over the world, especially in our own streets.  Our whole economic system seems to be headed for collapse, with greed and selfishness championed all the way up and down the economic ladder.  Our moral standards are getting worse and worse, faith is growing cold in many hearts, and even those who call themselves Christians proudly follow their own devices and desires instead of clinging to Jesus their Lord.

    Could these all be signs of the end?

    Maybe, maybe not.  As Christians, we need to be ready for our Lord's return as King and Judge no matter when it occurs.  In Matthew chapter 24 Jesus' disciples asked Him what will be the sign of His coming and of the end of the age.  He told them, and us, that no one knows that day or hour, and that He, the Son of Man, would come as a thief in the night.  Therefore, we must be prepared.  But prepared for what?  Beginning in the 31st verse of Matthew 25, Jesus our coming King tells us what will happen when He returns.

    First of all, Jesus will come as King, King of kings and Lord of lords.  And He will come as the Son of Man.  He will sit on the throne of the universe as a glorified Human Being, in the same flesh He brought with Him resurrected from the tomb.  In Christ, for our sakes, God has become Man forever!  He will sit on His throne as King in heavenly glory, and all the nations will be gathered before Him.  All the nations.  Not just the so-called Christian nations, but all of them, regardless of what religions they professed here on earth.  All people will learn that Christ is King, and Christ alone.

    But what does Jesus mean by "the nations"?  Remember, God ordained that Jesus should be born a Jew.  Jesus was speaking to Jewish disciples in a Jewish context.  For a Jew, the word "nations" (ethne in Greek and goyim in Hebrew) meant the Gentiles.  That is, everyone who wasn't a part of God's chosen people Israel.  The disciples would assume-- and assume rightly-- that God's faithful remnant would find blessedness when Israel's Messiah and King came as Judge.  But what was going to happen to all those other people Out There?

    Something the disciples would not have suspected.  Jesus says He will take the people of the nations and separate them from one another, and some He will put on the right as sheep, and some on His left as goats.  That tells us first that all mankind are under His staff as the universal Shepherd, whether they ever confess faith in Him or not.  In verses 37 and 44 we see that all the dead acknowledge that, they all call Him "Lord."  When Christ sits on His glorious throne, all nations will bow the knee and every tongue will confess that He is King and Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  But on that day He will sort out some who did not visibly belong to His chosen Israel, and He will put them with His chosen ones, with the sheep He loves. 

    These days, we often assume that almost anyone can be saved, if only they're nice enough.  For good 1st century Jews like Jesus' disciples, it would have shocked them to think any Gentiles who didn't convert to Judaism could get into the kingdom at all!

    To these unexpected sheep Jesus the King will say, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."  Who could have thought it?  Ever since the world began God had included these sheep from the nations in His glorious kingdom, along with His chosen people Israel!

    But why?  On what basis?  Because He was hungry and they fed Him; He was thirsty and they gave Him something to drink; He was a stranger and they invited Him in; He needed clothes and they clothed Him; He was sick and they tended to Him; He was in prison and they came to visit Him.

    These righteous from the nations are amazed.  They don't understand how they could have rendered all these good services to Him, the Lord of glory.  And the King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

    We think we understand this.  But again, Jesus is out to undermine our modern understanding of how things will be at the Judgement, just as much as much as His word subverted the ideas of the typical 1st century Jew.  Here's the question: Who are Jesus' brothers?  Who are His sisters?  Who are this family with whom He identifies so closely?

    Two thousand years ago, the assumption would be that since He was the Jewish Messiah, His brothers and sisters would be the nation of Israel, people who were born Jews by blood.  But over and over again in His teaching Jesus kept letting everyone know that the true Israel was not those who attempted to keep the law in their own righteousness; rather, His brothers and sisters are those who do the will of His Father in heaven, as we read in Matthew 12.  And what is the will of the Father?  St. John tells us that the Father's will is that we believe in the One He has sent, the Man Jesus Christ.

    The consistent teaching of the New Testament is this:  that Christ's brothers and sisters are His believers, the Church.  They-- or rather, we-- are His Body, the New Israel made up of ethnic Jews and ethnic Gentiles alike, formed by the new covenant in His blood, shed on the cross.

    So in Acts 9 the risen Christ casts Saul of Tarsus down on the road to Damascus and demands, "Why are you persecuting Me?"  Like the righteous from the nations at the Judgement, Saul can't understand.  He'd been attacking a rabble of Nazarene heretics, not this heavenly Being he now had to call Lord!  But Jesus identifies with His Church and says, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."  To do evil to His disciples is to do evil to Him; to do good to His disciples is to do good to Him.

    And who are "the least of these"?  Please note that this doesn't mean "only the least of these."  No, Jesus is saying that the surprised  righteous have done good to Christians even when those believers were so humble no earthly credit could possibly come from it.  Jesus taught us in Matthew 18 that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven are those who humbly repent and become like little children and follow Him.  In Luke 12 Jesus calls His disciples His "little flock" and says that the Father has been pleased to give them the kingdom.  Jesus exalts the humble in His kingdom, and at the judgement the nations will share in their exaltation.

    I realize that this goes against much popular thought on what this passage in Matthew means.  The usual interpretation is that some people will enter the kingdom by believing in Christ, while others can get in by doing good to the financially poor.  But nowhere does the Scripture hold out any possibility of any man or woman entering eternal life on the strength of his or her own good works.  It is only through the blood of Christ shed for us that we can inherit blessedness forever with Him.

    Yes, you might say, but if "the nations" in this passage are those who didn't identify with Christ's Church in their lifetimes, doesn't it sound like they can earn their way in by good deeds done to those who belong to Him?

    Well, think of it this way: When are Jesus' disciples most likely to be hungry, thirsty, refugees, naked, sick, or in prison?  In times of persecution for the faith.  Today, particularly in Muslim and Hindu countries, Christians are being harried, arrested, burned out of their homes, put to death-- all because they dare to confess Jesus Christ as Lord.  Now think of yourself as a Muslim neighbor of one of these despised Christians.  Everyone else is pouring on the violence.  But something moves you to step out and help the followers of Christ.  Even though your friends will shun you for it; even though you could be arrested yourself as a Christian sympathizer, you go ahead and open your home to the refugees.  You visit the tortured pastor in prison and work for his release.  You make sure those orphan Christian children are fed and clothed, and you don't pressure them to convert to Islam. Whether you realize it or not, you're identifying with the believers and identifying with Christ.

    In Matthew 10 Jesus sends His disciples out with the good news of the kingdom, warning them they'll face danger and hardship for His sake.  But in all this, He says, "He who receives you receives me," and "anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward," and "if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."

    At the Judgement there will be many who never considered themselves to be part of Christ's flock the Church, but they sympathized so strongly and actively with Christians because they were Christians that Jesus will recognise them as His sheep themselves.  To their surprise they will receive eternal life, the righteous man's reward.

    But what about those on the left, the "goats" who did not minister to Christ's faithful in their need?   To say they didn't identify Christians with Christ will be no excuse.  When they see the King enthroned in glory it's too late to say, "Oh, my Lord, I'd do anything for you!"  What about that insignificant Christian they saw beaten, tortured, starving, or simply slandered out of a job, and they did nothing to intervene?  The King will reply, "If you did it not for the least of these my brothers, you didn't do it for Me."

    So.  Here we are, and we belong to Christ's church on earth. Can we sit satisfied and sure we'll go to the King's right hand in the Judgement?  Not necessarily.  This passage is a warning to us, too.  A lot of people are members of Jesus' New Israel on paper, but actually they belong to the unbelieving nations.
    We have to examine ourselves!  How do we treat our fellow members in the Church?  The truly committed disciple will feed and clothe and help and heal their fellow Christian precisely because he or she is a fellow Christian.  A true believer in our Shepherd King will strive in the Spirit to see and serve Christ in everyone in the congregation, no matter how humble or struggling that other believer may be. 

    In the course of my life I've seen too many churches and church people focus all their ministry on those outside the church.  And yes, like Christ Himself we do extend the love and grace of God to all.  But sitting all around you are brothers and sisters who are hurting.  They're struggling with troubles of body, mind, and spirit.  They need someone to help them repair their house, to watch their kids for an afternoon, to sit for awhile and just listen.  But there's this assumption in the Church today that as soon as someone becomes a believer, they're set up for life and have all they need.  No!  Jesus calls us into His little flock because we do need each other, and He expects us to minister to one another for His sake.  As St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers."

    Remember, Paul puts the command for Christians to do good in the context of judgement.  If we take one another for granted, if we live to please our sinful natures, we will reap destruction.  Goats all along we will show ourselves to be, and as Jesus says, we'll go into eternal punishment.  But if we follow the Spirit of Christ who has saved us and do good to one another, we will show that we are His sheep. We will reap eternal life and enter into the blessed inheritance prepared for us by our heavenly Father before the creation of the world.

    As baptised believers, we no longer belong to the nations; we are citizens of Christ's new chosen people and sheep of His little flock.  Since this is true, let us strive in the Spirit to do the things that belong to Christ.  Do good to all, but especially to your brothers and sisters in the faith, from the greatest to the least.  Care for, help, and build up one another because you belong to Christ.  And so by His grace, His judgment at the end of the age will bring no fear for you, but only exultation, blessedness, and joy as together with all the saints you enter the realm of your Shepherd King.

The Master's Property

Texts:    2 Timothy 4:1-5; Matthew 25:14-30

    HAVE YOU EVER DONE RENOVATIONS to your house?  Or maybe you watch DIY programs like Holmes Inspection on TV.  If you do, you know how it goes.  You start out to do some improvement, to put in a new bathroom or whatever, but when you do the tear-out you discover there's rot in the walls or the foundation is weak or the plumbing is about to burst.  And instead of getting straight to the fun things like tiling and painting, you have to go back and redo the basic structure.

        We're in that position this morning as we look at Jesus' parable of the talents as it comes to us in Matthew chapter 25, verses 14-30. We've got to do some tearing out before we can begin to build.  The problem is this word "talent."  In ancient times, it had nothing to do with someone's personal endowments or abilities, it was simply a unit of weight, used especially for mass quantities of precious metals.  Over the centuries, however, the English language has taken this word, from this very parable, and changed its meaning to connote our God-given natural abilities, or, as we say, our talents.  So we build on that to conclude that Jesus will hold us accountable for how we put our natural gifts like singing or reasoning or entrepreneurship into service for Him.

    And this is true. He will hold us accountable for that.  But in this parable the word "talents" is referring to something different from our abilities.  Look at verse 15.  It says there that the master gave talents of money to each of his servants, "each according to his ability."  The servants' abilities or natural gifts were something different from the property their master entrusted to them. What profit they would make from it would go along with the abilities-- or, as we would say, the talents-- they already had.

    The talents in this parable do not naturally belong to the servants themselves.  They are, as it says in verse 14, the master's property.  Very valuable property, too.  The weight of a talent varied across the ancient world, but in 1st century occupied Israel it came to 2,080 ounces.  To get an idea of its value, let's reckon it up as gold.  At yesterday's price, one of those talents would have been worth $3,718,728.00.  Just one.  This property is the master's, and it is very, very precious.

    As we heard last week, in these parables our Lord is answering the disciples' question in Matthew 24:3, " . . . what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"  In the parable of the talents, a master goes away, and after a long time, the master returns.  The Master is Christ, and He warns us to be prepared for His coming at the end of the age. 

    Jesus begins the parable by saying, "Again, it will be like . . . " What will what be like?  Look back at verse 1 of chapter 25: "At that time"-- the time of His coming and the end of the age-- "the kingdom of heaven will be like . . . "  He is speaking of the time of His return.  So when Christ returns as Judge, it will be like a master who has entrusted his great and precious property to his servants and gone away, expecting to find they've turned a profit with it when he returns to settle his accounts. 

    Brothers and sisters, the kingdom of God will not begin with the moment of Christ's return.  We who believe in Him live under Jesus' rulership right now, and it affects how we His servants work with His property in the long weeks and months and years until He comes.

    So what is this property He puts into the hands of His servants?  If it isn't our natural abilities, if it isn't even the spiritual gifts He gives us for ministry, what could it be?

    We can find a clue in Matthew 13, in the parable of the sower.  There, various kinds of soil receive the same seed and yield different amounts of increase, depending on the nature of the soil.  In the parable of the talents, different kinds of servants receive the same kind of money in different amounts and yield different amounts of increase, depending on the nature of their abilities and attitudes.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 13:19 that the seed sown is the message about the kingdom of heaven.  The Master's property in Matthew 25 are the same thing: It is the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God, come to earth to establish the kingdom of God as its divine Lord and King.  As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15,

    [This is] the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. . . .  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures [and appeared to many faithful witnesses].

Christ's servants the apostles were good and faithful.  By their labors we have received the trust of this good news, too.  His glorious gospel is the currency of the kingdom, and in this parable Jesus our Master charges us to put it to work for Him until He comes.

    So again, if we're talking gold, one servant receives five talents, worth around $18,600,000 at today's prices; one is entrusted with two, about $7,400,000; and the last servant is handed one talent at about $3,700,000.  Verse 16 says the first man immediately put his five talents to work. This man exerted himself to do business with his master's property so it might be increased, and the second servant did the same.

    So how do we exert ourselves in the business of the Gospel?  What is the Gospel's business, anyway?  The Word of Christ on earth has three primary purposes: For grace-- that is, to bring salvation and redemption to the sinner; for growth-- to build up the Church and each individual member in it so we achieve the full likeness of Jesus our Saviour; and for glory-- for the greater glory of God, and for the ultimate glorification of all His saints in Him.

    Each of us is given the Good News of Christ crucified and risen for us and for the sins of the world.  Our depth of understanding may be greater or lesser, but each of us in the Church have heard-- or should be hearing-- what Jesus has done for us.  According to the abilities we have from God, we minister this Word to one another and to the pagan at our door, so that grace, growth, and glory may increase and abound.

    Five-talent people might be those like St. Paul, or, more recently, someone like C. S. Lewis.  When the Holy Spirit brought him out of the darkness of modern paganism, Lewis took the wonderful riches of Christ's gift of salvation and multiplied it in his speaking and writing, and his profit to his Master increases to this day all around the world.

    We can't all be five-talent servants of our Lord.  But we can be good and faithful in our sphere and according to our abilities.  We can be like that wise Sunday School teacher who influenced the children in the church for grace, growth, and God's glory up to the time of her death.  We can be godly parents who lead our children in the way of the Lord, and never take it for granted that they know that Jesus died for them.  We can exert ourselves to increase in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ as we study His word and participate in His sacraments.  We can be good capitalists of the Word-- if I dare use the term in these protesting times-- and follow Paul's charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, being prepared in season and out of season to communicate the Word of Christ.  For all Scripture-- all of which speaks of Christ, as He Himself reminds us-- is God-breathed and is useful-- profitable-- for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.  So, put it to work, beginning in your own life and the life of your household.  Paul's charge applies especially to us pastors and elders, but all of us who have been entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ should be prepared at all times to give anyone who asks a reason for the kingdom hope that is within us, so our Master's property might increase.

    What about the third servant?  The other two each increase their master's property 100% and the master commends them, entrusts them even more responsibility, and invites them to share in his great happiness.  But this man buries his $3,700,000 in the ground and very disrespectfully hands it back to his master on his return.  In our understanding of the parable, did he ever truly belong to Jesus Christ at all?

    As any human being belongs to God, yes.  Physically, he was a resident worker in the master's household.  But in his heart and mind, he was not the master's man.  He's like those who sit in church for decades letting the preaching wash over them, but they're never actually converted.  They think they know all about God and what He's really like, and they think they're smarter than He is.  And kinder and more loving, too.  The Jews in Jesus' day knew that God for centuries had made a practice of only saving a remnant of His chosen people. But then He'd go and have mercy on Gentiles.  How was that fair?  "Hey, God, don't You have enough to do taking care of us Jews?  Why meddle with people who pledge allegiance to other gods?  They don't belong to You!"  And so in the parable, "Master, I knew you were a hard man, harvesting where you had not sown and gathering where you had not scattered seed."  A man like that today might reason, "God's going to save whoever He's going to save, whether I say anything to anybody about Jesus or not.  And He'll send to hell anybody He feels like, even if they're really good people.  So why should I get myself in trouble in this world by going around talking about Jesus?  Let God get back what He gave, and keep me out of it."

    This is a terrible distortion of the truth.  But many church members use it so they don't have to exert themselves to increase their Master's property in the kingdom of heaven.  The master in verse 26 in effect says, "So that was your opinion of me?  In that case, you should truly have been afraid to return my money to me profitless.  You should've at least put the money to the bankers so I'd get some interest out of it."

    Now, I humbly admit that I am not certain how our Lord wants us to understand and apply this.  Most Bible commentators I've read skip right over it!  Jews weren't allowed to charge interest, so perhaps the master is saying, "All right, you've called me a cruel man and a thief; why didn't you put my money out at interest so you could call me a usurer, too?"  In that case, it would be a warning against speaking ill of our Lord and God.  But Jesus often used the unrighteous practices and people of this world to illustrate truths about the good of the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus could be saying to so-called followers like that, "You were afraid to speak the Gospel yourself?  Very well, you should at least have opened your home to My apostles who were speaking it.  You should have supported My missionaries and evangelists, even if you never said a word about Me yourself.  Then you would have received for Me some of what they earned."  (This is just a possibility, and if the Holy Spirit commends it to you, good; if not, let it alone.)

    But Jesus' conclusion is clear: As Paul says, when Christ, the righteous Judge, returns on the last day, He will reward His good and faithful servants with a crown of righteousness-- a crown that will signify their responsibility over much more than He entrusted to them on this earth.  But those who take the Gospel for granted, those who think the message of Christ crucified is a word of intolerance and exclusion, those who play it safe in church and bury their Master's property, they will be cast away from His presence into outer darkness forever.  They will find that what they thought they had of Christianity and Jesus will be taken away, but those who truly have laid hold on the truth of the gospel and increased grace, growth, and God's glory in this world, they'll find their share in Jesus Christ and His work wonderfully increased in the world to come.

    Which kind of servant will you and I be?  Our Master Jesus has entrusted His property to us, the infinitely valuable good news of sins forgiven in His blood.  He has also given us abilities, natural and spiritual, so we can put the Gospel to work.  May we be those receive His trust and immediately set to work for the increase of His kingdom.  And when Christ comes again in glory, may He gladly say to us,

    "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

    Amen.

Emergency Preparedness

Text :    Matthew 24:36-44; 25:1-13

   ANYTHING WORTH DOING IN life needs to be prepared for.  You all had to prepare to come to church this morning.  I made preparations so I could be with you to share God's Word.  You prepared when you got married and when you had your children.  People prepare to do their jobs, to go on vacation, to retire.  At least, they do if they're wise.  

        Then there are the kind of things that are bound to come into every life, but we can't know for sure when or how.  Sudden illness or the loss of a job.  And what about those life emergencies we hope won't happen to us, but might?  Nobody plans to undergo natural disasters like floods or wildfires or devastating Fall snowstorms, but it's still wise to be prepared.

    Emergency preparedness is preached to us from all quarters.  Have enough food stored up!  Formulate a meet-up plan for your family!  Buy gold and silver for when the market collapses!  But for the ultimate emergency this world will ever see, how can we be ready?  What do we need to do, what do we need to lay up for ourselves to be prepared?     

    In chapters 24 and 25 of the gospel according to St. Matthew, our Lord Jesus tells what it will be like when the Kingdom of heaven finally emerges in all its stupendous grandeur, on that day when Jesus Christ Himself will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

    In the portion we read from chapter 24, we see that His coming will indeed be an emergency.  For the most part, people will be living life as normal when the Son of Man returns.  "As it was in the days of Noah," Jesus says in verse 37, people will be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.  That's not to say there will be no signs of His coming; no, it's just that we humans have an amazing capacity to be blind to anything that threatens our everyday routine.  When Jesus comes again, believers and unbelievers alike will be going about their ordinary work, making a living, doing what people do.  Two men in a field: one taken, one left.  Two women grinding grain together: one taken, one left.  Incidentally, the Greek word rendered "taken" in our modern translation has a positive meaning in Matthew's gospel; the idea is of taking someone to be with you, not taking them off to destruction. 

    Whichever category we fall into, the coming of Christ will be an unexpected emergency, and Jesus says we believers need to be prepared.  "Therefore keep watch," says Jesus in verse 42, "because you don't know on what day your Lord will come."  In fact, for those who are not prepared, Jesus' second coming will be like having your house broken into in the middle of the night.  "So you must also be ready, because the Son of Man will come when you do not expect him."

    So what does it mean for us to be prepared for His coming?  Jesus tells four parables to help us understand.  The first is the parable of the faithful and wise servant, which Matthew relates in verses 45 to 51 of chapter 24.  We didn't read that section this morning, but it shows us that a big part of being ready consists in doing those acts of service towards one another that Jesus Himself commands for us day after day.  This parable is especially addressed to pastors and elders, whose responsibility it is to give the Master's other servants their food at the proper time-- the food of the Word of God.

    But what happens when we've done all we can to be ready,  and all we can do is wait?  The second part of today's reading helps us with that question.

    If we want to understand the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, it will help to know a little about first century Jewish marriage customs.  The practice was that when a young man took a fancy to a particular young women, he, or his father on his behalf, would approach the girl's father and make an offer for her hand.  The men would settle on the financial arrangements, then the young woman would be brought in to see if she agreed to have the young man.  If so, the marriage covenant was sealed with a glass of wine and the engagement was made.  As we know from the story of Mary and Joseph, this engagement had the effect of marriage, and a formal divorce was necessary to break it.  The only difference was that the couple would not come together for a year or more after this.  The girl continued to live in her father's house, and the young man would return to his father's property, to build a dwelling where he and his new bride would live.  Then, when all was ready, he would come by night with his groomsmen to the bride's house, in a torchlight procession to take her away to be with him.  When they approached her house, the best man would shout out, "Look! The bridegroom has come!  Come out to meet him!"  The groom would lay claim to his bride, and her bridesmaids would join the torchlight procession back to his home and the home of his father, where the marriage would be completed with the formal ceremony, the consummation of relations between the bridal pair, and a week of feasting by the family and their guests.

    Now, it is said that some grooms liked to take their brides totally by surprise.  But in this parable, Jesus says that at the time of His coming, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who have gotten word that the groom is coming  sometime very soon.  Five are wise, and five are foolish.

    Let me say that with Jesus' parables, we must be careful not to turn them into allegories.  An allegory is a story where every last detail symbolizes something specific, whereas the point of a parable is, well, to make a point.  It is proper to say that the bridegroom who is coming is Jesus the Son of Man Himself.  But the point of this parable is preparedness, especially, preparedness for an event that we know definitely is coming, but we don't know exactly when.

    At first, it looks like all ten of the bridesmaids are ready.  They've all heard the bridegroom is coming tonight, and they've  all taken up their positions in the street near the bride's house.  All of them have lamps-- torches, actually, it would have been-- for the procession back to the house of the groom.  They did all they could do, and now, all they could do was wait.

    So it is with us.  We know Jesus will definitely return someday.  We look around ourselves these days, and we think that perhaps, just maybe, the signs are right that He may well come back in our day.  In contrast to the faithful servant of the previous parable, this teaching is not so much about taking action or doing, but about our attitude of heart and mind.

    For Christ our Bridegroom, for His good purpose, does delay.  And we are weak and human, and like those ten girls we simply cannot be looking out for His coming all the time.  Sometimes we have to sleep.  We have to take care of the ordinary business of life.  Neither the foolish nor the wise virgins are condemned for sleeping; it's just a fact of the situation.  True preparedness is revealed when the emergency occurs, when they're all awakened by the midnight cry, "Here's the bridegroom!  Come out to meet him!"

    It's too late now to take thought about what they will do or what they need.  It's time for them to put their torches in order to light the bridal couple back to the father's house.

    But the foolish girls have brought little or no oil.  Their torches are going out as soon as they are lit.  "Give us some of your oil!" they demand of the others.  But the answer is no.

    Are the wise virgins selfish and cruel not to share?   This detail tells us that when Jesus speaks of "oil" He is referring to something belonging to each person, that can't be shared.  In Scripture, oil tends to signify the Holy Spirit and His anointing.  It'd be foolish of us, though, to think that the Holy Spirit were some sort of commodity, something we can have more or less of.  Rather, think of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life.  He's the One who brought you to salvation.  He's the one who confirms the grace of Christ to you in baptism and Holy Communion.  The Spirit illuminates the Word of God to you are you read it and as you hear it preached.  The Spirit causes you to have a wise attitude of heart, full of faith in your Lord Jesus, a heart that can persevere in any kind of trial, no matter how long He may delay. 

    But there are many in the church who simply are going along for the ride.  They think they can enter the kingdom of heaven on someone else's faith.  They believe, foolishly, that they don't need to know anything about Christ and what He has given to them in His death and resurrection.  Their Jesus is only a creature of their own imagining, a mascot to help them get along in this life, but no good for the life of the world to come. Those who are foolish are not really expecting Christ to return as Lord and Judge; even less, they do not eagerly desire to see Him appear as the beloved Bridegroom of the Church.  If that's your attitude, what do you need a heart and mind prepared by the Holy Spirit for? 

    But those who are wise do walk according to the Spirit. They take advantage of the means of grace that He provides them, so they will have light when the crisis comes.

    When Jesus returns, it will be too late to get ready.  The wise virgins literally are sending the foolish girls off on a fool's errand when they tell them to go find someplace to buy oil at midnight.  Interpreted, their words mean, "You should have prepared when there was time.  We cannot share with you; it simply isn't possible, and now you must take the consequences of your foolishness."  But those who are like the foolish virgins will actually think they will be able to purchase the ministry of the Holy Spirit in their lives at the time when Christ returns.  But it will be too late.  The very fact that they will attempt such a thing shows that they do not belong to Christ at all, however much they have appeared to be part of the visible Church, and the door to the marriage feast of the Lamb will be closed against them. 

    "I do not know you" they will hear.  This is not a statement of simple fact on the part of the Bridegroom, but a formal rejection of those who did not care for Him enough to be ready at His coming.

    What of us?  Are we ready for Christ's return, no matter how long He may delay?  Are we improving our baptism by heeding and following the Holy Spirit as He ministers to us in Word and Sacrament?  When the ultimate crisis comes in your life, be it death or the coming of our Lord to judge the living and the dead, will you be firm in your faith that He died for your sins and rose to give you life eternal?  This isn't something you can do in your own strength or your own effort.  This grounding of heart and mind can't be acquired at the last minute when the shout of the archangel announces that the Lord is near.  It is yours only by the gracious gift of Jesus Christ in His Holy Spirit.  Be wise and follow His leading as He strengths you by the Word of Scripture.  Let Him serve you with Christ and all His benefits at the Table of the Lord and as you remember your baptism.  May He confirm to you more and more each day that your Lord Jesus Christ is coming, He is coming soon, and that will be the most glorious, joyful day of your life.

    For although Jesus wants us to see ourselves in the bridesmaids in this parable, we must never forget that ultimately, we who are called and confirmed by His Spirit are also the Bride.  Your Beloved is coming!  Live the life on earth He has given you, but be ready, always ready to run to meet Him when He comes.

    Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!  Amen.

Kingdom Manners, Kingdom Rules

Text:    Matthew 22:1-14

     I MISSED A WEDDING YESTERDAY.  THE groom is the only son of some friends of mine from way back, and I wish I could have gone.

    But they live all the way over on the far side of Illinois, and the drive was too far. So I followed custom and returned the RSVP card with my regrets.

     It's good to exercise good manners and follow the rules, especially on important occasions like weddings.  On this Worldwide Communion Sunday and every day of our Christian lives, Jesus wants us to know that when it comes to the marriage supper of the Son of God, we're both bound and set free by Kingdom manners and Kingdom rules.

    "The kingdom of heaven," Jesus begins in Matthew 22, "is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son."  Jesus told this parable in the Temple courts the day after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  A delegation of chief priests and elders of the people had marched up to Him to challenge His right to teach and act the way He did.  In response, He taxes them with their failure to carry out the responsibility God gave them as leaders over His people Israel.  Even now, when they should be the ones getting the people ready to receive God's Messiah and take their places at the great feast that will usher in the kingdom of heaven, these very leaders are deliberately ignoring the gracious call of God their King.   Will this parable wake them up, or will it make them more hardhearted still?

    This is no ordinary wedding Jesus is speaking of, it's the marriage for the son and heir of a mighty king.  Some of the customs will seem strange to us, and we may think that Jesus made them up for the purposes of His parable.  In fact, the manners and rules Jesus describes were expected behavior in ancient royal and aristocratic society.  The ancient Jewish Bible commentary called the Babylonian Talmud tells one parable of
    . . .  a king . . . who distributed royal garments to his servants.  The attentive among them folded them and deposited them in a chest.  The foolish among them went and did their work in them.  Days later the king asked for his garments.  The attentive among them returned them to him all sparkling; the foolish among them returned them to him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.1

And the king gives orders that the foolish should be locked in the prison house.  Another parable tells of

    . . . a king who summoned his servants to a banquet but he did not set a time for them.  The attentive got themselves dressed and sat at the door of the king's house.  They said:  "Is anything missing at the king's house?"  The foolish went on with their work.  They said:  "Is there any banquet without toil?"  Suddenly the king summoned his servants.  The attentive gathered before him all dressed up while the foolish gathered before him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.2

    Both these rabbinical stories and Jesus' parable of the wedding banquet reflected the customs of ancient Jewish society.  The priests and elders could never say, "That's impossible, Jesus!  You're just making that up to be mean!"  What the king did and what he expected from his guests exactly matched what everyone knew about good manners and obeying the rules.

    The two-part invitation, to begin with.  It took a long time to prepare a royal feast, and the king would give notice of it well in advance.  He'd invite his princes, his noblemen, and the head men and chief elders of all the towns under his rule.  As we saw from the Jewish writings, the king would send a beautiful festal garment, often made of shining white linen, to each guest.  They were expected to keep it safe and clean until the day they were summoned.  When you accepted the garment, you were committed to go.

    Then, when everything was ready, the king would send his servants around to his invited guests, saying, "Come to the feast!  Put on the wedding clothes I sent you and celebrate the marriage of my son!"

    The king in the parable is Almighty God.  The invited guests were the nation of Israel, especially their kings, priests, and rabbis.  These leaders claimed to love the Lord their God and to be waiting for His Christ.  And now, God the king has sent His servants the prophets to say, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand!"  And what do you think?  These guests refuse to come!

    Still, God didn't give up on His people Israel.  He sent more prophets to plead with them to get ready.  In that very time He sent John the Baptist and Jesus' disciples to announce the good news that the wedding feast was prepared.  You can hear the pleading in the king's voice in verse 4, as he says, "My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready.  Come to the wedding banquet."  Come, please, come!

    But, Jesus says, the invited guests pay no attention and go on about their business.  This was not something these men had a right to do.  These noblemen owed their positions to the king, and to disregard the wedding of the royal son for the sake of their everyday activities was an insult to their lord.

    But this is what the leaders of the Jewish people were doing.  Do you realize that if they had obeyed and welcomed Jesus, God could have brought in His kingdom in all its fullness, then and there?  But the priests and elders of His chosen nation thought their business, their speculations, their rules and manners, were more important than Almighty God's.

    And see how some of the other invited guests respond!  Jesus says in verse 6, "The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them."  Just so, the Jewish authorities from time immemorial had arrested, abused, and murdered the prophets God had sent; John the Baptist was only the latest to meet that fate.

    How ought a king of that time deal with this injury?  Could he just brush it off?  Absolutely not..  You harm a messenger of the king, you've harmed the king himself.  It's an act of open rebellion. No sovereign could let such a crime pass unpunished and expect to remain on his throne for any time at all.  So Jesus says, "The king was enraged.  He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city." 

    You may be thinking, "That's no fair!  Why not just arrest the murderers?"  But think of an ancient walled town, with the people inside of it loyal to the nobleman who is in rebellion against the king.  All become guilty together, all must be put down.

    In the same way, at the end of the age, God will send His angels to punish and destroy all those who remain in rebellion against Him, all those who killed His prophets or approve of those who did, those who hate His name and despise His word.  By God's grace, let us examine ourselves, that that crowd may that never include you and me. 

    Meanwhile, in the parable, the marriage banquet is ready.  In ancient Jewish tradition, the feasting together of the bride and groom and their guests, was the wedding ceremony.  The royal son cannot be wed until the guests have sat down.  Says the king, in verse 8, "‘[T]hose I invited did not deserve to come.'" What will he do for guests?

    The king does the unthinkable.  He commands his servants to "‘Go to the street corners and invite anyone you can find.'" Common, ordinary people.  Non-chosen people.  Whosoever will must come.  "So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests."

    By saying this Jesus departs from every rule and custom of His day.  How could a great king dishonor his son by filling his wedding hall with the dirty, stinking rabble?  It was bad enough that the servants bring in the respectable common people, "the good," but they also gather the low-down, disgusting, "bad" people, like tax collectors and prostitutes and even-- heaven help us!-- Gentiles!

    But this is exactly what our amazing, loving Lord did.  God willed that when His people Israel rejected and crucified His Son, that His death should open up a wonderful avenue of mercy to you and me.  Few if any of us here have Jewish blood.  We were not His princes and noblemen, originally invited to the wedding feast of His royal Son.  No, we were foreigners to his promise, disobedient to God and lacking His law.  But now through Jesus Christ the crucified and risen Son of God, we, too, are invited to sit down at His feast with His faithful people in all times and places.  As St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus."

    This promise is for you!  You and I had no right to the kingdom of God, yet the mercy of Christ extends to us and bids us come in to the feast.

    In the parable, then, the king comes in to view the guests.  And he notices a man sitting there in his ordinary street clothes, not wearing a wedding garment.  That tells us that all the other guests had shining wedding garments on.  Where did they get them?  The king hadn't sent wedding clothes to their homes; there hadn't been time.  Clearly, they got them at the door to the banqueting hall.  They put them on in accordance with the rules of the kingdom and made themselves ready to celebrate the feast.

    Isn't it the same way with us?  Here in this holy sacrament we participate in the wedding supper of the Lamb.  The church is the King's banqueting hall, and we enter through the door of baptism.  At our baptism the filthiness of our sin is washed away by the blood of Christ, and we put on the new robes of His righteousness, shining with His purity and brilliant with His truth.  As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, "all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Solely because of the finished work of Christ both the so-called good and the truly bad are made clean and fit to celebrate the marriage feast of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

    But here is a man who somehow has slipped in without a wedding garment.  There he sat in his own clothes, violating the rules, not fit, not ready-- as so many people try to come into the presence of God today.  They say they don't have to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ for God to accept them.  They think they can sit down and enjoy the good things of heaven in their own human righteousness.  The king challenges the man on his lack of wedding clothes, and the man is speechless.  And speechless everyone shall be who refuses to be covered by the righteousness of Christ that He won for us on Calvary.

    The king orders that the man be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, where, Jesus says, "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

    What kind of rule is this?  Aww, Jesus, he only showed up in the wrong clothes!  Can't you cut him some slack?

    No.  Brothers and sisters, the marriage feast of the Son of God is not a casual dress affair.  We're worthy to sit down at His table only if Christ has dressed us up in His righteousness alone.  He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.  To insist there is any other way is to insult God our King and call Him a liar.

    By His Spirit and His grace, may we know better.  Jesus concludes the parable by saying, "For many are invited, but few are chosen."  Don't be afraid of this teaching, brothers and sisters.  Those who were invited but not ultimately chosen-- who were they?  The ones who despised their invitations.  The ones who hated and rebelled against the King who gave it.  The one who wouldn't mind his kingdom manners and refused to submit to the king's rules, who tried to get in by his own way instead.

    But you who acknowledge your unworthiness and have been cleansed by the blood of Christ your Saviour, come.  You who despise your own good deeds as filthy rags and have clothed yourself with the obedience of Christ, come.  You who realize that it's all the overwhelming love and grace of God your Father and King that brings you to this Table, come.  The feast is spread, the wine is poured, it is time to sit down.  With Christians around the world today; with the faithful in all times and places, let us celebrate the wedding feast of the Son of God.  In His name, come.
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1.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 152b
2.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 153aB

Value Judgment

 Texts:  Philippians 3:2-11; Matthew 13:44-52

  AROUND TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO, A father, two grown sons, and a couple of their friends out in Kansas City shared an interest in treasure hunting.  They heard tell of a riverboat called the Arabia that'd gone down in the Missouri River near there in 1856, that she'd carried a cargo of gold and barrel upon barrel of excellent whiskey.  She was said to lie under a certain cornfield-- the Missouri has shifted considerably since the mid-1800s-- and they got permission from the farmer to find her and dig her up if they could.  So the men pooled thousands of dollars of their own money for the necessary equipment and set to work.  For weeks they dug and dug until at last, the wreck of the Arabia emerged from the silt 45 feet down.  And all the time the men were thinking of that valuable whiskey and gold, how they were going to sell it and make their fortunes.

    But a funny thing happened when the steamboat started yielding up its treasures . . . and I'll tell you what it was as I conclude this sermon.  But it's human nature to want to strike it rich.  There's something in us that feels that finding hidden treasure would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to us, and it'd be worth giving up a lot to get at it.  And our Lord Jesus, does He wag His finger at us pathetic human beings and say, "Naughty, naughty!  Stop being so greedy!"?  Not at all.  He totally agrees that nothing would be more joy-inspiring than finding something of infinite value where and when we least expect it.  In fact, our reading from St. Matthew this morning has to do with that very subject.  But what Jesus wants us to understand is that there is a more valuable treasure to be found than gold or silver or jewels.  And when we find it, it's worth giving up everything to gain.

    Matthew 13:44 begins, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field."  No use looking for mysterious meanings, there it is: the kingdom of heaven is like a hidden treasure.  But one day a man comes along and finds it.  Unlike the Arabia's salvagers, he isn't looking for it.  Good chance he's a hired man, digging the field for the landowner.  Now, it's not part of Jesus' meaning for us to get tangled up in who buried the treasure and the legal ramifications of the ancient Jewish finders-keepers laws, if they had any.  The point is, that there's a marvellous treasure, the man finds it, and he is struck by its value.  So he hides it again, sells everything he has, and buys that field.  He judged that it was worth the price, so valuable was the treasure he found.

    Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like that.  Suddenly in the midst of the ordinary pressures and desires and attractions of this earthly life we see our Lord and His kingdom presented to us in all its wonder, and we accept that it's worth giving up everything we have, if only it-- if only He-- might be ours.

    Jesus' disciples would identify with the man in this parable.  From verse 11 of this chapter of Matthew, Jesus has made a distinction between the crowds, who follow Him for what they can get out of Him in the way of healings and food and excitement, and true disciples, who truly want to know Jesus and submit to Him as their Master and Lord.  The disciples were the ones to whom it was given, as Jesus said in that same verse 11, to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.  So Jesus did not entrust this parable of the treasure hidden in the field to the crowds, but He spoke it in "the house" (probably Simon Peter's home in Capernaum), in private, to the disciples only.  They would hear it and think, "Yes, I was living my everyday life, doing my ordinary work, and all of a sudden this very ordinary-looking Man from Nazareth came along preaching the kingdom of heaven, and somehow in His presence it was like an amazing treasure was revealed to me.   Suddenly I saw that the kingdom of heaven was somehow wrapped up in Him.  And I knew I had to leave everything and follow Him, no matter what it would cost."

    Are you a true disciple of Jesus Christ?  When you look at Him in the pages of Scripture, do you recognize and confess that He, Himself, is the very embodiment of the kingdom of God?  And that He's worth following no matter what? 

    Be sure it is the real Jesus you're following after.  Beware that you don't squander everything you have on treasure that is false.  Some will tell you that the kingdom of heaven is a state of personal fulfilment where believers are continually satisfied with themselves and their lives.  Others say it will be a social utopia where everyone is equal and there are no more wars or thefts or social injustice.  Either way, they'll say it's up to us to bring the kingdom in.  Yes, the kingdom of heaven will include all those good things, but if we wear ourselves out trying to achieve good ends by us making the kingdom come, we've wasted our substance on fool's gold.  The kingdom is something only God can bring in.  It truly comes only when men and women, boys and girls, joyfully submit to Jesus Christ as their Saviour and King.  That's what the kingdom of heaven is: that state of affairs where God is King, beginning in your heart and mine.  And as our King, He's the Source and due Recipient of everything we've got and everything we are.

    And, Jesus begins in verse 45, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.  Now, this is different. You'd think that He would say, "The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great value."  But now the merchant himself and his quest for perfect pearls are an image of God's rulership in the world. 

    A pearl is an interesting gem.  It isn't like other jewel.  Every gemstone has been there since the beginning of the world and you dig them out of the earth.  But pearls represent something new.  They have to be made, by an oyster, and they start with a little piece of dirt that irritates the oyster, and the mollusc coats and coats and coats that piece of grit with mother-of-pearl until it produces the beautiful lustrous orb we see in the jewelry store.  In the ancient world, fine pearls were valued more than diamonds, and the merchant Jesus speaks of is willing to sell everything he has to acquire it.

    And the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant, who comes deliberately seeking this pearl.  Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ came into this world seeking us, His Church, and it cost Him everything He had, His very life's blood, to win us.  But wait a minute, you might say.  Before we were saved we were anything but pure and lustrous.  True. But the Lord not only sees from the beginning how things will turn out in the end, He also makes sure that things end up the way He's planned them.  In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we're told that Christ gave Himself up for the Church, and that one day He will present her-- that is, us as a body-- to Himself as a radiant Church, without spot or wrinkle or any sort of blemish.  And in the book of the prophet Malachi the Lord indicates that a day will come when He will "make up His treasured possession," and we will be His, we who fear the Lord and honor His name.  We are His pearl of great price, and when it came time for Him to gain us, He held nothing back.  He paid the price for our sin and won us to Himself to be His holy people, precious in His sight.  It's significant, I think, that a pearl is essentially a bit of dirt covered over by radiant purity.  For in just that way Jesus Christ in His sacrificial love has covered our sins, so they are forgotten and never seen or thought of anymore; all that is seen is the loveliness we have become in Him.

    But there's a problem here.  Have you spotted it?  I'm preaching as if I assumed that all of us in this room have true faith in Jesus Christ.  That all of us have joyfully bowed the knee to Him as our King and our God.  I'm talking as if all of us have had our sins washed away in His blood and are willing, like Paul, to consider everything a loss for the sake of knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection.  I hope and pray that is so.  But it may not be.  Some of you may be like the crowds, only interested in Jesus for what He can do for you in this world.  You may think your kind of sinfulness is no big deal, that if God is offended at it that's His problem.  You may have no interest in the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven, and no desire that Christ should seek long and hard to find and purchase you for His own.

    If this is in your heart, beware.  For Jesus taught His disciples another parable about the kingdom of heaven.  He says that the it's like a great dragnet that is let down into the lake and catches all kinds of fish, both good and bad.  Do the fishermen keep all of them?  No, the bad fish are thrown away. They perish.  This, Jesus says, is how it will be at the end of the age, when He returns to judge the living and the dead.  There are many people who in this world seem to be children of the kingdom; they're all in the net.  But the time will come when mankind will be separated out and judged, the wicked from the righteous, and the wicked will be thrown into the fiery furnace.  There, Jesus says,  there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  There, people who refused to worship Him as King, who thought they could use Him as a source of good advice, will spend eternity in burning despair and frustration, weeping with rage because they know God is righteous and their sentence was just.

    Please, don't let this happen to you.  Hear the Holy Spirit today as He speaks of Christ's love for you.  There is a remedy for your sin.  He has paid the price already, that you might be His own.  All you have to do is say, "Yes, Lord, You did for me what I could never do for myself.  Please bring me into your heavenly kingdom, for I trust you as my Saviour and Lord."

    After Jesus had finished teaching these parables, Matthew tells us, He asked His disciples, "Have you understood all these things?"  He puts the same question to you. Have you understood the unsurpassable value of the kingdom of heaven, that to gain it, it's worth everything you have and are?  Do you understand that Jesus Himself gave up everything to purchase us for His kingdom?  Do you understand that there will be a time of final judgement, when God will set the true value of every human creature, according to the value they set on the blood of Christ, shed on Calvary's cross?

    The disciples said yes, they understood. Jesus accepted their answer and told another short parable, which applies both to them and to us.  They, and we, are those who have been instructed about the kingdom of heaven.  Under the training of His word, we become teachers of the New Covenant law.  And so we are like householders who possess the old treasures of what God did for His people Israel and the new treasure of His grace to us in Jesus Christ.  And we don't keep these valuable things hidden; we bring them out and put them on display in our behavior and in our words, so that an impoverished and cursed world might be enriched and blessed.

    Which brings us back to the men who spent all that money and did all that work to salvage the steamboat Arabia.  They didn't find any gold or whiskey.  What they discovered was barrel upon barrel, crate upon crate, box upon box of every kind of household good and luxury that a frontier family could desire.  To quote the Arabia website, there was "castor oil and cognac, needles and nutmegs, windowpanes and wedding bands, eyeglasses and earrings"; think of anything you might want in your home, it was there in abundance. For a moment-- just a moment-- the men considered how much money they could get for all this.  But right away, they realized they couldn't sell the Arabia's cargo.  Immediately they began to conserve it, and the work goes on, twenty-two years later.  They raised the money to build a museum.  They put their discoveries on display, so people from all over America and around the world can see and appreciate the amazing treasure they found.

    That is what our Lord wants you and me to do with the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven.  He died and rose again to purchase your eternal membership in His kingdom, that in Him you will find everlasting joy that can never diminish or fade.  Let us not keep the treasure hidden.  Let us bring out the wonders of His grace from our storeroom and put them on display.  In the short time He has given us, let us reveal His glory daily, and shine like the most precious pearl He has purchased us to be.

    In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Let It Grow

Text:  Matthew 13:24-43

HOW IS THE LITTLE CONCERT WE had from the Bible School children this morning like the parables of Jesus?

    Think about it.  The children came up front and sang a couple of the songs they learned in Bible School this past week.  They looked cute, the songs were fun, and when they finished everyone smiled and clapped and the kids went back and sat down.  But is that all there was to it?  Did you have ears to hear the message as the children sang?  What did they tell us about the wonderful works of God and His mercy to His people? Were you moved to praise God's holy name?  Or did you see and hear only how cute the children were?

    Jesus' parables are like the children in their presentation this morning, and as we examine our passage from Matthew we can be like the crowds that flocked to Him from all around Galilee or like the disciples who truly longed to understand His teaching.      When the crowds heard Jesus say, "The kingdom of heaven is like" planting a field or making bread or whatever, they'd smile and nod and say, "Oh, the kingdom of heaven is like our everyday lives, but better."  They only received what was on the surface.  But as Jesus says back in verse 11 of this chapter, to the disciples it was given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.  True disciples wouldn't stop with listening to the homespun story, they'd go on really to hear the parables' message.  If a disciple didn't fully understand, he'd go to Jesus and ask Him to explain.  Disciples would hear what God was doing to bring in His heavenly kingdom and be moved to praise His holy name.  They'd recognize more and more that Jesus is the King of the kingdom and yield to His claim and authority over their own lives.  They'd have ears to hear.

    So as we examine these parables of Jesus this morning, let us pray that we will be true disciples and not mere members of the crowd.  Let's see beyond the surface attraction of the stories and dig into the deeper meaning that Jesus wants us to hear.

    The parables of the wheat and the weeds, of the mustard seed, and of the leaven all have to do with things growing.  Now I don't know about you, but I get impatient waiting for things to grow.  I keep checking my tomato plants and wondering, "Why does it take so long?  I'm tired of these little green blobs!  I want big juicy red tomatoes now!"  But ripe tomatoes take time.

    It's the same way with the kingdom of heaven.  We have to wait to see its ultimate fruit.  It's not big and obvious and overwhelming all at once.  The kingdom has to grow.  And it grows along with trouble and opposition and counterfeits.

    We'll take the two shorter parables first.  Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed."  The seed in question isn't the round yellow mustard seed we're familiar with, but a tiny, practically weightless variety that can grow fifteen feet tall given half a chance.  It gets so big, the birds can take shelter in its branches.

    And, Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like yeast-- or actually, leaven, that a woman mixed in with a batch of dough.  It worked all through, and you know what happens when the dough gets baked-- it keeps rising and grows into the large finished loaf.

    So what do these parables tell us about the kingdom of heaven? 

    Maybe first we should look at what they do not tell us.  I hesitate about bringing up other preachers' bad Biblical interpretation in my sermons. Better just to preach sound doctrine and let the bad ideas die away by themselves.  But I want you to be convinced on this one thing: The things of everyday life that Jesus uses in His parables are just that: Everyday things.  They're neutral.  They can be used to stand for people and ideas and forces that are good and those that are evil.  I mention this because I once heard a preacher say that these two parables taught us that the kingdom of heaven was really a wicked thing.  He argued that in the Bible "the birds of the air" always stood for the Devil and his demons, and if the kingdom of heaven was like a tree giving shelter to the birds, then it was as evil as they were.  And, he said, leaven or yeast was always a symbol of sin in the Scripture.  So if the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, it must be an evil influence in world.

    I don't remember what that preacher's final point was.  I think it was that all churches are corrupt and we should get out of them.  But we can rely on Scripture itself to show us that he was wrong about the kingdom of heaven, and wrong about the way Jesus used the figure of the birds and the yeast in these little parables.

    For what is the kingdom of heaven (or the kingdom of God, as Mark, Luke, and John put it)?  From the very beginning of His ministry, when Jesus comes preaching the kingdom, it's clear that the kingdom of heaven is that state of affairs where God Almighty is Lord and King, where people obey Him and do His will and are blessed because of it.  And it starts in each of our hearts as we are called to repent and follow Him. 

    So the kingdom of heaven starts small, like a mustard seed, and it grows.  The Jews of Jesus' day were expecting the kingdom of God to be the ultimate cosmic force that'd erupt into this world and basically wipe it out and replace it with heaven in a instant.  Jesus' parables teach us that the kingdom is indeed cosmic; more than that, it's divine.  But God begins it in this world, not outside of it, and He brings it in slowly, bit by bit, causing it to grow bigger and stronger and more influential from impossibly small beginnings, until we look up and behold! Everything has changed!

    The parable of the mustard seed shows that one thing that would change was the benefits and scope of the kingdom.  The Jews were used to thinking of it as something that just included them, and maybe those Gentiles who agreed to be circumcised and become Jews.  But all of Jesus' audience would recognize the image of the tree with the birds of the air taking shelter in its branches.  It's a repeated Old Testament metaphor for the great king or emperor who provides nurture and protection for all the peoples and nations under his authority.  The kingdom of God is like that, Jesus says.  It begins in great insignificance, but when it is full-grown the peoples of this world, not just the Jews, will come and find refuge under God's gracious rule.

    It's the same with the parable of the leaven.  The substance referred to would be sourdough starter, not the active dry yeast we use today.  Yes, the Bible does often use leaven as a figure of sin, because the influence of both leaven and sin are pervasive.  But the effect of the kingdom of heaven in the world is also pervasive, in a good way.  The Greek text tells us exactly how much flour the woman was handling, three satas, around a half-bushel.  Depending on which commentator you read, that would make thirty-six to forty full-sized loaves of bread.  And she only uses a little leaven, and she hides it-- a better translation of the Greek than merely  "mixed"-- in all that flour. Then she left it to rise.  I've never made sourdough bread, but I understand you have to let it work for several hours, even overnight.  So, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like something of very small quantity, concealed in something very large, that works over time, without anyone doing anything about it, until that larger thing is totally lightened, uplifted, and changed. 

    This is how it turned out to be as the kingdom of heaven became apparent in this world.  Think how few people still believed in Jesus after He died.  Think how few in number they were who were gathered in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost-- only 120.  Think how obscure and insignificant those people were-- fishermen and petty officials and peasants.  But they were children of the kingdom of heaven.  Peter and John and Matthew and the rest were planted and hidden in the unbelieving world by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in time, by God's working, the whole world was changed.  Before long, Gentiles were coming and finding refuge in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Even today, even those who don't believe in Christ, even those who would never admit to there being any good in what they dismiss as religion, even they benefit from the influence of Christianity in the world.  That's what happens when God's rulership has its natural effect.  It must and will grow.

    But the kingdom of God does not grow without trouble and opposition and counterfeits.  Jesus also tells the parable of a man who sowed good seed in his field, but during the night some enemies sowed weed seeds in among it.  Verse 26 tells us that the weeds didn't become apparent until the wheat had formed heads.  When Jesus told this parable, the farmers in the crowd would recognize the weeds as a species of grass called darnel.  Darnel is a nasty little plant with poisonous seeds.  It looks identical to wheat till the heads form, and it twines its roots in around the roots of the wheat so you can't pull it out without uprooting the wheat as well. 

    So in the parable, the master of the field tells his servants to leave it be until the harvest.  Fortunately, ripe darnel stands tall while the wheat stalks droop, so it's easy to collect it first, as the master orders, and bundled it up to be burnt.  Then the good wheat can be harvested and threshed and stored safely in the barn.

    This is how the kingdom of heaven is, says Jesus.  The sower is the Son of Man; that is, Jesus Christ Himself.  The field is not the Church, but the whole world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

    Do you have ears to hear this?  The good seed are all those whom Jesus Christ has called to accept Him as King, those who have responded to Him in faith and accepted His death on the cross to atone for their sins.

    But along with the good seed, weed seed is also sown.  These are the sons of the evil one.  Both grow up together.  Both look a lot alike.  But a time will come when God will make a final distinction.  At Last Judgement, Jesus will send His angels and give them the command to uproot out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.   For in that day the kingdom of this world will fully become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ.  The wicked will be cast into the fiery furnace-- into Hell, but the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God their Father.

    Yes, we should rejoice in that hope.  But right now I hope this parable causes you some alarm, for your sake and the sake of others.  How do we know who is a son of the kingdom?  By their fruit.  By hearts truly yielded to Christ as King, trusting in Him alone for salvation and exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. 

    Now, here's the alarming thing: in this world, the exterior behavior of the children of the evil one can look a lot like that of the children of the kingdom, just like darnel mimics wheat. They reject Jesus Christ, but are kind and funny and nice, and maybe they're people we care about and love.  And we can convince ourselves that that's enough, that their niceness is enough to earn them the benefits of God's kingdom, and we don't have to invite them to church or tell them about Christ, because they're good enough the way they are.

    Brothers and sisters, being a son or daughter of God's kingdom is not about being nice and kind and loving according to the standards of this world!  It's about being submitted to Jesus Christ as your only Saviour and Lord.  And that not because of any volition of your own, but because of the will and calling of Almighty God!  If you and I are wheat in God's field, it's because He planted us there.  And it is His will that through our witness He will plant many others as well, even people we'd never imagine as sons of His righteousness, and like us He can make them grow and bear fruit to His glory.

    The kingdom of heaven is not an event, it is a process.  It is something that grows little by little, until there it is and everything has changed.  The day will come when Christ will give the command and the kingdom of heaven will come in all its fullness.  But until then, however small it may seem, however it may seem to struggle, God's kingdom will grow.  It will grow, people yet unborn will find shelter in its branches, multitudes will be fed on its bounty, and the Son of Man will have His glorious harvest home.  Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

    In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.