Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Excuses, excuses. You know what they say about excuses, and there's even a book on the subject, if you're running short on them; it's called, "Creative Excuses for Every Occasion: old standards, innovative evasions, and blaming the dog." Of course, it's harder to claim that the dog ate your homework in our digital age, but we need excuses for lots of other things. So next time you're late for work, try this one out: "I was on my way in, right on time, and then I saw John Smith, one of our biggest clients, stranded with a flat tire." Or another option: "I'm not late for work. I decided to change my hours to make them more convenient."

Excuses, excuses. We make them every day, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they're legit, caused by illness or emergency. But often we sinners make up excuses to rationalize or cover up our ingratitude or laziness or mistakes. We want to get out of some event, so we make up an excuse not to go; we want to excuse our bad behavior because can't stand to look bad or appear to be in the wrong. We make excuses because none of us is truly free and independent; God has placed all of us under someone's authority, whether the government, supervisors, parents, pastors, and so on. So we make excuses to explain our behavior to those whom we owe an account for our actions.

In today's Gospel reading, the three men initially accepted the invitation of the man who threw a great banquet, so they had made themselves accountable to him for their presence or absence, and they also clearly didn't want to get on the man's bad side. So they offered three lame excuses to the man's servants when it came time for the party, and the message sent back to the man throwing the banquet came through clearly: they would prefer to be elsewhere rather than at the banquet; the man's invitation was a lesser priority than other things.

I can understand the desire to get out of a party you don't really want to go to, but only a fool wouldn't want to go to the banquet Jesus is talking about. Jesus tells this parable in response to a guy saying to Him, "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!" In other words, blessed is everyone who is saved and spends eternity in God's Kingdom in heaven. Jesus doesn't disagree with the man; in fact, Jesus had said that many would spend eternity at God's table in the resurrection of the righteous. As the hymn I sang before the service (TLH #415) puts it, "Lo! Many shall come from the east and the west to sit at the feast of salvation, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the blest, obeying the Lord's invitation."

Jesus tells the story about the excuse-making men because he wants us to understand that God has issued the invitation to be saved through the Gospel, as Jesus says, "Come to Me…and you will find rest for your souls" and "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." "Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved." Jesus and His salvation are more than just one priority among others; they are the most important thing in the entire world. Eternal life and eternal death are at stake. And those who make Jesus and the Gospel a lesser priority-those who place money or work or sex or pleasure above the Lord God-Jesus directs these terrifying words at them: "I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet." Once they rejected the invitation by asking to be excused, there was no way back into His good graces; all that was left for them was hell, eternal darkness, fire, and damnation.

Yet let's not just focus on the negative, but remember the joys of being part of God's eternal banquet, eating bread in the Kingdom of God. What's so great about God's Kingdom? It's where God is the gracious and generous and merciful King, where He grants everlasting life in heaven and promises to always work for the good of His subjects; God's Kingdom is where He gives believers His Holy Spirit to keep them in faith and lead them to good works. The Kingdom of God is where unending spiritual blessings are found, where everyone should want to be.

But where is God's Kingdom? It arrived in the Person of Jesus, it can only be found in Christ, as He Himself announced at the beginning of His ministry: "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15). And the Gospel is this: that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, lived a perfect life in our place and then laid down His life for the sin of the world and rose on the third day so that He could send out the apostles with His gracious invitation to believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, our only Redeemer from sin, death, and hell, the Savior of the world.

Jesus came preaching a Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, calling all of us to turn away from idolatry and self-righteousness and believe in the graciousness of God in Christ. Then on Pentecost Peter proclaimed the proper response to Christ's calling: "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." That is the invitation into Christ's Church, into the everlasting banquet in the Kingdom of God, to be received by Baptism into and faith in Jesus the Christ.

And the invitation to God's Kingdom banquet begins already today as the Kingdom comes to us here in the Church: we feast on Christ's Word and even on His very body and blood here in the Christian Church, where we live the life of repentance and faith in King Jesus. And this invitation from Christ itself is a gift, since invitations cannot be earned. On the other hand, invitations can be rejected, and as we have seen it is possible for people to willfully exclude themselves from Christ's banquet of salvation by using their lame excuses, showing their unbelief in His grace and mercy.

But notice how excuses don't play a role in our salvation one bit. We can't excuse our way into God's Kingdom, or keep ourselves there by excusing our thoughts, words, and deeds; rather, admission to the eternal banquet is God's free gift in the forgiveness of sins. But so often we try to live by excuses rather than by faith in the Gospel. We're always trying to justify ourselves before God, since we are all under His absolute authority and we know that we owe Him an account for the way we live. God is our Creator, and it is our duty to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things, and explain to Him when we fail to do these things.

In Romans 2 St. Paul tells us that God has written His Law, His expectations for us, on our hearts, so that our consciences accuse or excuse our thoughts and actions. Our conscience accuses us when we think we are doing wrong, and it excuses us when we think we are doing right. If your conscience works properly, you know the feeling of happiness when you have done something right, and the nagging sense of guilt or shame when you have done something wrong.

Your conscience is a gift from God, and it would be horrible not to have one. But it's also important to know that your conscience excusing you isn't what keeps you right with God. Hebrews 4 says that God's Word comes to cut through all the excuses and justifications we make for our sins and expose us for what we really are: poor, miserable sinners who owe God an explanation for our unbelief and disobedience. It says that God sees and knows not just our actions but also the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, our true motivations. It says that "no creature is hidden from God's sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account."

So, my friends, it's time cut through the baloney, to cast away all your excuses and face up to God's judgment: the excuses you make for your laziness, or addictions, or your lusts, or your lack of desire to come to church and pay careful attention to God's Word, or your stinginess, or selfishness, or hatred, or your failure to pray regularly and frequently-whatever sins you try to excuse and explain away-God sees right through them. And if this causes your hearts to fear, good. As our Old Testament reading says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). As Dr. Luther says in the Small Catechism, we should fear God's wrath and not do anything against His commandments. Besides that, we should want to lead godly lives to please our Father in heaven, and not bring any shame and dishonor to His name.

But even if you think you have a pure heart and your conscience doesn't accuse you, you also need to repent. St. Paul once said, "I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Corinthians 4:4). Paul knew that even if he wasn't aware of any particular sins that he needed to excuse himself for, he couldn't be acquitted, because our sinful hearts are so deeply corrupted by original sin that there's only one answer to our problem: the sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from every sin.

So today Christ invites you again to His banquet, to be absolved of your guilt, to receive His body given and blood shed for the forgiveness of all your sins, and He promises you a seat of honor in His Kingdom forever. But through the Holy Spirit, God also promises to help and aid you in your fight against sin and in your struggle to do good works. He promises that through His Word and Sacraments He renews in you the gift of His Holy Spirit to lead and guide you in the paths of righteousness all the days of your life.

Jesus concludes the parable by having the man round up the poor and lame and blind to come to His banquet. God's Kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit, poor, miserable sinners, who trust in Christ for salvation; it belongs to those who make no claims on God, nor do they make any excuses before His judgment, but they throw themselves at His mercy and beg for forgiveness and the strength to live a new life, to put to death the old sinful flesh and rise up to newness of life, and finally, when our last hour comes, to be received into His eternal Kingdom in heaven. This is all wrapped up in Christ's gracious invitation to you: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel." And there's no excuse for rejecting that wonderful invitation. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.