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

• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004

The problem is you confuse who the King is. You are not the King. You are not meant to be the King, the assistant King, the regent or co-King. That was the sin of Eve and Adam. That was the prideful fall of Satan and the rebel angels. To balk at the Lord’s sole Kingship is to be a rebel. Likewise, your daily sins in spoken slanders, silent dagger thoughts and physical affronts, are all rebellious acts of treason. Even in earthly governments, what are referred to as the “Kingdom of the Left hand” rebellion is always punishable by death.

It’s not just popes and protestant televangelists who think they’re “kings.” It’s not just rabid mob-crazed voter assemblies who sin against God. All of you individually attempt to usurp His throne. One symptom is that horrid word “individual.” The word is a beautiful and correct theological image when used to refer to you as the lost sheep; the lone one of the flock who has been found by the Good Shepherd. The word is a tool of the devil when used to foster your ego and sense of willful “power-craving” in the assembly of fellow sheep.

Moses understood. While He was God’s spokesman, God remained the only King. Without the Lord one winds up with Pharaoh as a King; a false God; or, one winds up being a “little pharaoh” in one’s own mind. This is why even today among Christians, Moses’ declaration of the “Royal Priesthood,” echoed by Saint Peter himself in his Epistle, is sinfully changed into an individually super-enhanced “Priesthood of All Believers.” This term, not found in the Lutheran Confessions, means that each sinner takes it upon himself or herself to be an autonomous authority bending the knee to nothing save ones own understanding of what something truly means. You must not overly criticize the Hebrew people for wanting an earthly King. You are just like they were.

God was King; Samuel was His then current “Moses,” that is, His spokesman, His pastor to His sheep. Sinners don’t like spokesmen, pastors, or anybody else showing them where the real green pasture is, where the genuine pure water is located.

The Israelites had their King, the Lord almighty. They were His Royal Priests; i.e. a “special people,” a family belonging to the Majesty. The grammar of both the Hebrew and the Greek is clear. To be a Royal Priest means that one is incorporated into a communal plurality. There are no solo priests. There are no independent groups or gangs of believers, notwithstanding what some sectarian American church body’s Constitution or by-laws might say. There is no self-sufficient parish either. The Creed from Nicea and Constantinople confesses the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, not the voter’s assembly right here in “Everytown, U.S.A.”

The Old Testament Priests slaughtered animals and sloshed around buckets of blood. They stood in an intermediary role between the congregation of believers “at large” and the perfect God Who demanded obedience and consequences for sin; Who demanded that Blood atone for rebellion past and present.

The New Testament Priests are all those who have been brought into the Church by the solitary work of the only Individual Who matters: The Christ.

His parable, He says, is about the Kingdom. He says “For the Kingdom of heaven is like landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”

In our English translations it is easy for us to say this is a “simile,” a figure of speech. Yes His Kingdom is Heaven. Yes, no one gets to heaven on ones own. One doesn’t work ones way into heaven rather one is adopted into the family entirely by the work of the parent: “He went out early in the morning to hire laborers.” This is Grace; to be brought into the vineyard by the choice, decision and love of the Landowner.

But in an even more direct way, this parable is not about the Heavenly abode of Angels, Saints, and the unbridled Trinity at the end of the age, but really more about the Church of Our Lord here and now. In heaven, there is no “pay off” at the end of the day. In heaven no one will be grumbling because someone else has a greater degree of glory. In heaven no one will be told “Take what is yours and go your way…is your eye evil?”

Jesus rather, is talking about His Kingdom of Heaven which already exists here and now for all of you, and for all yet to be “hired” by the Landowner. He doesn’t mean the day-to-day existence in the desert of the world; He means the joy and peace one finds in His New Testament Vineyard; the place where the fruit of the vine is not just a fine Riesling, but His own Blood.

Some have been made part of this Kingdom of Saints since the moment they were baptized as infants; hired early in the morning. Some have been converted when they were turned by His word, hired in whatever marketplace they were in, when they were children, teens, young men and women, or mature adults. Some are even brought into His Church Militant as elderly workers with not much time left to live; hired at the eleventh hour.

You have all been “hired” by this beneficent Landowner. He may have first started with some, but He’s brought you in also to His vineyard.

This is what it means to be New Testament Priests; the Royal Priesthood. To be a collective royal priesthood means to be Baptized and In His Church; In Him; In His Means of Grace. Royalty is due to bloodlines. You’re royalty only if you’re related to the King, not because of anything you “do” or any special way you achieve or work or produce. You are royalty because He’s bathed you all in the Blood He shed for you on Calvary. He’s washed you clean of your former lives, past sins, and old-Adam orphanages. You’re an organic “priesthood of the whole” because you do what His New Testament priesthood has been called to do; you work in His vineyard. Oh, you haven’t been called and ordained into the Office of the Holy Ministry; you’re not Pastors. But even better than pastors, you’re those Who recline at Table while the Lord Serves you Himself. You don’t kill animals and pour their blood on holy things; you have the old-Adam in yourself killed by His Word, and He pours that word, that Blood of the Lamb, on you in Scripture, Absolution and Eucharist. You live out the Priesthood by loving Him and loving your neighbor; especially your neighbor here with you in the vineyard.

It is here that the Landowner gives abundantly to all his “workers,” i.e. all those who believe in Him and His mercy. But, are there “tares” among the “wheat?” Are there men and women in the Church who simply “go through the motions” awaiting some greater reward, some personal payoff that will publicly reimburse them for their purer piety, special selflessness, harder and longer and better work than some others? Yes.

In the parable we have the ingrates, who resent the Landowners’ Grace; who are jealous over His overflowing generosity; who are spoiled and indignant that they didn’t get more.

Repent when you are that way. Ask the Lord to forgive you when you resent others and claim a greater share of Churchly gain for ourselves. Lord have mercy.

Mercy is all that He has when it comes to you. It’s all that He gives you that really matters here and now. He forgives and forgives and forgives. He pays all of you, and all others here with you, whether they been in the Church 80 years longer than you, or whether they’re brand new converts. He pays you all the same, the denarius of His love and forgiveness. He gives to all the Body and Blood He sacrificed on the Cross. He bestows upon all in His Church ALL His Word, ALL His Washing of Remission +, ALL HIS Sacramental Presence in The Holy Communion.

While you repent of your greed and selfish covetousness; you nonetheless rejoice and take sweet succor in being here. This is what it’s all about. There’s nothing better here on planet earth. There’s no uncertainty about whether you’re a “good enough” Believer. There’s no such thing. You will never work hard enough, long enough, and competent enough. You don’t have to. Jesus worked for you in His life and in His sacrificial death.

There’s no “purpose driven life” to achieve, no “promises” to keep, no world that you’ve got to set “ablaze.” Jesus is your life for He’s kept the promises you break. Jesus sets you ablaze here in this Vineyard with the Blazing love of His Body and Blood.

Long-time Christians and brand new Christians; you’re all His brothers and sisters. He is the eternally fruit-bearing tree in this vineyard that never runs out. Eat and drink here on this day, when the hot son of the world out there can no longer scorch you and make you labor, here is all you need to receive.

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