“A GREAT SUPPER”
Saint Luke 14. 16-24
Second Sunday after Trinity: 13 June Anno Domini 2010
Fr Watson SSP
Come for all things are now ready.
The "Man" giving the Supper is the Lord God. Those invited are all other men. All men made, originally, in the image of His own Son, the Christ. The first man, the first 'a-dam,' was at the first and original feast of Eden! This proto-guest and his date (Mother Eve) didn't like the menu and the way things were being administered and so "chose" to go to Burger King (i.e. Satan Usurper-King) to have things "their way."
The good and loving Lord wants only one thing…he wants all of his creatures, men & women, children, back at his table. He is the Father waiting for the Prodigal.
Come for all things are now ready. His eternally existing design to fix all that you have broken has worked. The broken one (that usurper-king; no king-cobra but rather a gutter snake) has himself been broken!
The utter, draining, paralyzing, loneliness has an antidote. Being by yourself is not the final destiny of any invited guest.
The entreaties to come and be fed were first brought to the Jews. Sadly, many, many, many (and more) of them rejected, refused, and raged against the messengers of the meal; and thus demonstrated they did not in fact believe in the Graciousness of the Lord Himself.
The excuses made for not allowing the "gospel-ers" to usher them into the nuptial hall to be washed, clothed, fed, and restored are nothing more than "old Adam" treason that carries on in the members of all men.
You are not members of the Sanhedrin, but you too have conspired late at night with evil. You are not Pharisees, but you too have thought that if you did more, were "better" that you could make things right and yourself appear even more RIGHT! You are not Sadducees, but your love for pomp and ritualism of synods has made you miss the most important reason for "walking together"-pure doctrine-unadulterated Jesus!
Your own sinful nature is "LEGION" for you have a legion of excuses for not loving your Lord with all your heart, and of not loving your neighbor… oh what you say, and think about your neighbor.
Those who refuse the Table of the Crucified One receive their "choice" of the trough of sewage. There will be real, tangible, concrete, and utterly solitary LONELINESS in the outer realms of damnation.
Those who turn their noses up (like wild asses) at the fruit of Eden, Christ Crucified for SIN, will wallow in their own fruits and labors and wages. The wages of your cooking and preparation are illusionary and quicksand-like. The harder you pump your little trespassing feet and legs the deeper into the pit you sink.
Those who are too busy for the Banquet in heaven, which is fore-tasted at the Altar and Rail in His Catholic-Community, will be force fed the stale bread covered with their own sweat and the thorns of a hardened earth.
But not so any of you!!!
Come for all things are now ready.
When you were too young to feed, clean, and warm yourself, your Lord gave you earthly parents to attend to those crucial physical (and mental) needs. BUT HE ALSO had you brought to his Table even then, that you might be washed, christened in proper Blood Red apparel, and made part of the Wedding Family. You have had morsels of delectable deity placed on the palates of your ears your entire lives as you've HEARD what Jesus says to you: "Be of good cheer, though you have hardships in the world, I have overcome the world." You have heard Him call you by name "My good and faithful servant" as He touches your sweaty tear stained face and reassuringly spoken "I forgive you, neither do I condemn you, go your way, I have made all things right!"
He has paid the awful price of your grumbling in the desert that you miss the leaks, grains, and pottages of your past Egyptian bondage. He has suffered for your ingratitude that the Manna is not to liking of your wandering dilettantish dietary explorations.
He has never taken your back-sliding "no" as your final answer but comes to you with more of His Words: "Peace to you" and "I will wipe away every tear."
The five yoke of oxen need no longer be tested. Those five books of Moses have done their deadly dead. Your appetite for destruction has been quenched when Your Substitute thirsted for both water and Righteousness. The oxen have been slain in the blood of the Lamb, and you eat the LAMB Himself.
The ground, the land, need not be prepared or examined, for it has been hallowed by Christ's own pierced feet. The earth has been redeemed with the blood that He drenched it with. It no longer cries out in vengeance over the murder of the first typological shepherd Abel. The new earth is here RIGHT NOW this morning at the communion rail, big enough for all the new people, the forever people gathered by His servants.
The newly married wife need not be held up as an excuse or alternative for the Lord has given all men and women, single, married, widowed, deserted, divorced, and shattered in myriad ways, a NEW NUPTIAL reality. You are wedded to the Groom of Grace. You are the Bride at this meal, and you sit at the Head Table with your loving Lord.
As every college kid away from home for a semester knows; as every life-long bachelor skilled in the art of Swanson pot-pies and carry-out knows; as every long-suffering Mom & Wife who cooks 364 days out of the year knows; that when they are all, when you are all, placed around the table of your Lord Who has done all the cooking, all the preparation, all the WORK, all the SUFFERING, all the loving…. The food tastes oh so much better.
Come for all things are now ready.
In the Name of the Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost