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.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, have you ever accepted an invitation to an event and then secretly hoped that something would come up so that you would have an acceptable excuse not to go? But then when the time comes to go to the event, if you have no more important place to be, you either must come up with some excuse, or bite the bullet and go, even though you don't really want to.

That's what happens in our Gospel reading today. A great man was planning to throw a great banquet and invited many guests. This would be the party of the year, and so it would be silly not to want to go. It seems that the three men had initially accepted the invitation to the banquet—they must have felt a personal obligation to accept the invitation, or it would have been too socially awkward to decline—but they clearly didn't really want to go, as we can see from the lameness of their excuses for not going.

The greatest party of the year was about to happen, but the first man says, "I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused." Oh, come on! He bought a field sight unseen, and now he can't delay a day or two in going out to see it? Sounds pretty weak. Another man said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused." Are you kidding me? That can't wait a day or two? The third man said, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." This guy doesn't even make an excuse but simply says he cannot come because he's enjoying his honeymoon. Why couldn't he bring her, too?

Lame, lame, lame excuses! Bible scholars who have commented on this text say that such excuses in the middle eastern culture of Jesus' day would have been transparently insincere and highly offensive to the host of the banquet. And so it shouldn't surprise us that when the master's servant came and told him about these blatant snubs the master of the house was not just offended but he became angry or wrathful—in other words, the man would not forgive or forget this rejection, as He says at the end of the story: "I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet."

"But so what?" you might be thinking. "What's the big deal? What's so bad about getting blacklisted by someone whose party you don't want to go to anyway?" The thing is, this is no ordinary banquet, and the master of the house is no ordinary man. The banquet is eternal life in heaven, and the Master of the House is God. The clue to the meaning of the banquet is in the opening of the story, when the man at dinner with Jesus says, "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God." Jesus doesn't disagree with the man, so clearly it is true: the one who eats bread in God's Kingdom is blessed, so logically, the one who does not eat bread in God's Kingdom is cursed.

But what's so great about God's Kingdom? The Kingdom of God is where God is the gracious and merciful King, where He grants everlasting life in heaven and promises to always work for the good of His subjects. The Kingdom of God is where unending spiritual blessings are found, where everyone should want to be. And the Kingdom of God arrived in the Person of Jesus 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". In other words, the King had arrived on the scene—the Messiah, the Christ, the One who had been promised throughout the Old Testament to God's chosen people, Israel.

But how did so many Jews react to Jesus? They rejected Him and His gracious invitation to repent and believe the Gospel that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Redeemer from sin, death, and hell, the Savior of the world. Invitations cannot be earned, but they can be rejected, and so it was possible for Jews to exclude themselves from Christ's banquet of salvation by using their lame excuses, showing their unbelief.

Of all the Jews that Jesus dealt with, He repeatedly butted heads with the Pharisees most often, that group of Jews who thought they could become right with God on the basis of their good works and their status as Jews. But Jesus came preaching a Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, calling the Pharisees to turn away from their self-righteousness and believe in the graciousness of God in Christ. That was their invitation to the everlasting banquet in the Kingdom of God, to be received by faith in Jesus the Christ.

But so many of the Pharisees rejected Jesus for not being the sort of Messiah they were looking for, and so they asked themselves to be excused from the eternal banquet of heaven so that they could focus on the things of this world, on land or livestock or temporal affairs or politics or power, rather than on the salvation Jesus would bring through His suffering, death, and resurrection. So many of them chose for themselves to try to be saved by their good works and avoidance of sin, rather than salvation by faith in Jesus. And so God, the Master of the House, said: "I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet."

Another time Jesus said to the Pharisees and chief priests, "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits". And who would those people be? They would be the last ones you would expect. Jesus tells in today's Gospel that the master said to his servant, "Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame." In the Gospels, notice how Jesus seeks out those on the margins of society in Israel, those who were considered cursed sinners, surely outside God's Kingdom, and He invites them to the banquet of eternal life. Based on Jesus' invitation list, the party would look like a homeless shelter. And to the Pharisees, the presence of such "low-lifes" would ruin the banquet.

But the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor who believe in Him, as Jesus said in His Sermon on the Plain—it belongs to those who have no claims on God but acknowledge that they are poor, miserable, unworthy sinners. And such people are not even able to respond to an invitation in the same way the rich and powerful can. Just think about the logistics of trying to round up all these marginalized people—the poor would be smelly and have no banquet clothes to wear; the crippled would have to be picked up and carried to the party; the blind would have to be led by the hand; and the lame would need shoulders to lean on. Not only do these guests seem undesirable, they would be a lot of work to bring to the banquet, and once at the banquet, many of them would need help just feeding themselves.

And by this Jesus shows the nature of His Kingdom: for the ones who would rather be elsewhere, the ones who are not givable-to, the ones without faith in the Master of the House, they are allowed to go their own way. But the ones who are helpless, the ones who are desperate for any sort of care, the ones who acknowledge their wretchedness, the ones who are givable to, they trust the servants who invite them to the banquet and believe that this is a great privilege and gift, and they are glad to be humble guests. These are the true children of Abraham, those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah, like the believing beggar Lazarus who was taken by the angels into God's everlasting Kingdom, while the rich unbeliever excused himself into hell.

And those humble and faithful Israelites, not the Pharisees, are the ones who are models for us Gentiles who would come later. To the faithful poor, Jesus gave eternal riches and the garment of His perfect righteousness; to the believing crippled and lame, He delivered healing and moved them to leap for joy at His salvation; to the blind He showed them the light of everlasting life and placed the Bread of Life into their hungry mouths.

But even after the humble guests of Israel were brought in, Jesus says that there was still room in God's Kingdom. The servant said to the Master, 'Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.' And the master said to the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled." Jesus went to the cross to suffer and die not just for the sins of Israel, but for all people of all times and places. "He died for all," wrote St. Paul, and so just as Christ's death earned eternal life for all mankind, so also God wants the free and gracious invitation into His Kingdom be delivered to the ends of the earth. That is why Jesus sent out the apostles to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, to baptize and teach all nations. But the Master of the House says something peculiar about this mission. He tells His servants not just to go out and invite Gentiles into the Kingdom, but "compel people to come in, that my house may be filled."

Compel. That is an awfully strong word. It implies force, or coercion. What's so compelling? The force that they would use to compel people to come in is what St. Paul writes of in Romans 1:16—"The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." Just as the Gospel is the power that carried in all those humble guests of Israel to the banquet, so also is it the power that compels in humble guests like us. We Gentiles have been adopted by grace into Jesus Christ our Lord, not by our own will or efforts, but by the compelling Gospel promises of Jesus.

When you were yet dead in sin, when you were totally incapable of hearing God's invitation, when you were still under His wrath, God in His unfathomable mercy took His anger and aimed it at His Son rather than at you. He sent His only-begotten Son into human flesh to stand in your place: "For our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God". Your punishment for sin took place on Mt. Calvary, where the Son was forsaken to the torments of hell in your place, so that you need not face the threats of eternal death, but receive the promise of eternal life in Christ: "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord". And the promise of resurrected eternal life with Christ is a compelling promise, a promise that has compelled you to come to the banquet. The Holy Spirit has used that promise to bring you to faith in Jesus your Savior and to keep you safely in Him.

Isn't it amazing that God does not use the Law but the Gospel to compel us into His Kingdom? We law-minded humans rely on threats to compel changes in the behavior of others. Just think of our entire legal system; it is based on the power to punish injustice. Its threats compel people to obey, and rightly so. But when God wants to compel us to trust in Him as our Savior, He doesn't use force; He uses His promises. He sends His Son to die for us, and then draws us to Holy Baptism to incorporate us into His Son's death and resurrection, and promises everlasting life not because of anything we have done, but because of His mercy.

Dr. Luther highlights this promise in the Catechism hymn he wrote about Holy Baptism, which unfortunately is not included in the hymnal we have in the pew. He says that in Baptism the Triune God assures us "with promises compelling" that He will comfort and sustain our faith and dwell with us because of our Baptism and the promises it contains. "Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved," Jesus promises. In your Baptism, the water and Spirit that brought you into God's Kingdom, the Lord promises that He will dwell with you to comfort you with the forgiveness of sins and sustain your faith by His Word, and that is a compelling promise.

Of course, God's compelling promises can be rejected. We can ask to be excused from the banquet if we'd rather be elsewhere than in His Kingdom, if we don't want to live by repentance and faith, if we want to blaze our own path to hell like the Pharisees did. But remember the warning from the Master, "None of the men who were invited shall taste of my banquet," and once the door to the banquet is locked, there is no entry. While the Gospel is resistible, God's almighty power is irresistible and cannot be overcome, like the angel guarding the gate to Paradise. So if you want to deal with the Master on that basis, if you want to be excused from living under His grace and would rather dwell under His wrath, He will let you, just as He did not compel the three men to come in but instead barred them from future entry.

For active members of the Church, the real temptation is to become like the Pharisees—complacent, self-righteous, and bored with the Gospel. Our sinful flesh thinks, "I'm a fifth generation Lutheran—surely I'm in good with God! Oh Great, I have to go to church again today. Maybe I can come up with a good excuse not to go. Besides, I can just believe in Jesus in my heart, and don't really need the Lord's Supper to feed and nourish my faith. And daily devotions and prayer are so humdrum; I have a thousand excuses not to do them." Satan would like to blind us to the wonder and glory of Christ's Word and Sacraments by making them seem common, ordinary, and easily despised. Satan makes the great Gospel banquet which Christ prepares for us here at church seem like something we have to do, rather than something that we are graciously invited to come to and enjoy.

So how do we keep from falling into the Pharisee trap? A French proverb says, "Appetite comes from eating." The more you taste of the Gospel, the better it tastes and the more you will hunger and thirst for Christ's righteousness. The way to avoid becoming a Pharisee is to come to the banquet and feast on Christ's compelling promises. So feast on these delicious Gospel promises, and be compelled to hunger for more:

In the book of Revelation the Lord invites you to the grace of Baptism: "The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." The promise of Holy Baptism is a compelling one, for it is a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.

In Isaiah 1 the Lord invites you to confess your sins and receive absolution when He says, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool." The promise of Holy Absolution is a compelling one, for all of your sins are forgiven there.

The Lord invites you to the free feast of salvation when He says in Isaiah 55, "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live." The promise of the Means of Grace, Christ's Word and Sacraments, is a compelling one, because He offers there eternal life in body and soul.

And -Jesus Himself invites, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). And Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out". "Blessed is everyone who eats bread in the Kingdom of God." Indeed. "Come, for all things are now ready," says Jesus. The promise of the Lord's Banquet is a compelling one.

Believe and cherish these compelling promises, because all of these promises anticipate that final invitation on the Last Day, when the King will say to those on His right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world". 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.