• Home
• Services
• About Augsburg
• About Pastor
• Sermons
• Links

• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004

The question is, why are many called but few chosen? What does this mean? At the beginning everyone was in the Kingdom of Glory. Adam and Eve and all their future descendants were in Eden. All was perfect in that Kingdom of Heaven. There was unimpeded communion with the King and His full Triune nature.

Many are called because the King is a Liege of Love, a Monarch of Mercy: "for God so loved the world." The many are so many they become the all; the world. "Few are chosen" doesn't mean God's intent or desire but rather the end result. The King's table was prepared for all, but most refused His love. This is a troubling and puzzling problem. The problem is that man is a sinner now. The problem started in Eden around the banquet table, if you will. Eve and her delinquent "Head," opted against the festal feast of the Lord and chose the quick-fix snack of rebellion and death. That is the genesis of the problem.

Jesus answers this sinful situation in the appointed Gospel text. Only Jesus can answer this dining disaster. He speaks the Parable of "The Kingdom of Heaven." Only the Word Enfleshed can address the problem. He does so by speaking a "Salvation Simile."

The Kingdom of Heaven is the state of salvation, the eschatological (or "end-times") communion in heaven. It is what we also refer to as the Lord's Kingdom of Glory. It is pre-figured by the Church Militant but is not identical with the church. The church is properly called the Kingdom of Grace. One leads to the other to be sure. The Sacrament here, is a foretaste of the feast to come in the Kingdom of God. The "Now" carries you to the "Not Yet."

God's meal is not just any old feeding. It is a Wedding Feast. It is filled with the joy, festivities, exquisite wines and meats, warm embraces and deep conversations of the perfect and consummate wedding banquet.

It is not a fickle, emotion based, "romantic" union or shot-gun "hitchin." It is an arranged nuptial banquet. The Father has designated this union from before all eternity. He betroths His Only Beloved Son as the eternal Groom.

The King sends out His "calling servants." They are not angels they are flesh and blood men. They are the prophets of God who called His invitees to repent, to believe in the promise of Messiah, and to live in joyous and faithful anticipation. These servants spoke not their own words or opinions; they spoke the Words God put in their mouths. Noah, Abraham and Moses all mediated God's love and will to His beloved guests. The Judges (Samuel, Gideon and the rest) and the Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel) did likewise.

While all are invited, God wants all men to be saved, there is an order: first the Jews and then the Gentiles. The first set of "calling servants" was sent to the Israelites. It was God's ordering to first invite the Hebrews. They were His "covenant people" (His contractual people). He chose all to love and to father, but the People of Israel were first to receive the oral Good News. They were the first to receive His physical, His fleshly presence.

"They were not willing to come."

That is an important statement in Jesus' parable. Jesus answers the conundrum as to why not all will be at Table in the Heavenly Kingdom: "They were not willing to come." Put your logic, debating skills, and sinful curiosity aside and let the Word of the Lord be received in humility and reverence: "Thus saith the Lord," "amen."

Most of the Jews during Israel's Old Testament apostasy refused the Word, of God's servants. They did not believe the Scriptures. They did not believe in the Messiah that God had promised to send. They did not understand that the purpose of blood sacrifice was to illustrate the seriousness of their sinful condition, and of the need of an ultimate paschal lamb to come. They did not understand that God delighted in mercy and not in their own self-made works. They didn't want to come and be "guests" at that kind of a banquet.

Most of the Jews during Jesus' public ministry did the same thing. We know them as Pharisees. They were the hypocritical pride-filled self-righteous. They too did not understand that God wanted to give them Mercy and Forgiveness in the Person of His Son, the Groom; they rather wanted to do their own thing (farms and businesses, and rules and regulations to attend to).

Those who refused were not given up on. To the contrary; God sent His servants over and over and over again. The Lord was longsuffering and forbearing. He forgave His Exodus invitees everyday for forty years. He forgave all His chosen ones seven-times-seventy. He forgave even when they seized His servants, treated them spitefully and killed them. Finally, when their stiff-neck-ness hardened unto death, (even rejecting and refusing in death) the Lord's anger against sin was manifested. The armies of Babylon destroyed them, burned their city and deported the remnant. Again, at the beginning of the End of the Age, He sent the Armies of Rome. The Legions destroyed them, burned their city (and their Temple for the last time) and scattered a remnant. But this time the remnant was comprised of "special" friends of the Son, best-men of the Groom. This New Age saw the Grooms "calling servants" (whom you know better as the Apostles) going into all the world, not just the villages of the Jews. Now the time had come, even now today it still is, to invite all the Gentiles be they Asian, Greek, German, English, Indonesian, Korean or African. Now the anteroom, the narthex of the Kingdom (we call it the Church Catholic) is filled with all of you. And soon the wedding hall itself, the "Gates of Splendor" will likewise be filled.

You are in this Kingdom of Grace, this Church, soon to be ushered into the final Kingdom of Glory, because He has invited you, He has convinced you (that is converted you) He has clothed you with the proper admission garb. You wear the Son Himself. You are bedecked and arrayed in the finest Dining Robe imaginable, the Robe of the Groom Himself.

The Groom did it all; for you. He came even as His Old Testament "calling servants" said He would. This Groom, this Son of the King, Is King Himself; King and Lord and God of God. This Groom has flesh and blood so that He might be made one flesh with His holy, spotless and virgin Bride: the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. He is "in you" by Grace through faith. His work of filling the banquet hall was done both by His keeping of the Law; the Law which Adam and Eve and every one of you break daily. . . sometimes without even caring that you break it. His clothing of all you "best men" and "maids of honor" was accomplished by His suffering and death on Calvary. The Body He gave in both obedience and suffering now becomes the very staple of the Wedding Feast Main Course: the Very Body of God becomes your nourishment and your life. The actual Blood He shed on the Tree now becomes the true festal wine that refreshes guests and wedding members unto eternity.

And now, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Five, you have again a glimpse of the fullness of this Wedding Feast. Again today these two realities merge together into one. The Kingdom of Grace (the Church), unites its hands, hearts, souls, hymns of praise, and confessions of the Lamb, with the Great Kingdom of Glory wherein all the Saints who have gone before you wait with eagerness. The eternal circle of His invitees, past and present, closes together in unbroken unity at this communion rail now!

You have been called. You have been chosen. You are fed, loved and forgiven. Clothed in Christ.

Let this wedding banquet begin.

In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost