Second Sunday after Trinity, 2014. Luke 14:16-24. The Parable of the Great Supper

Cover design by Norma Boeckler.
 

The Second Sunday after Trinity 

Pastor Gregory L. Jackson

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bethany-lutheran-worship

Bethany Lutheran Church, 10 AM Central Time

The Hymn # 361 O Jesus King 4.1

The Confession of Sins

The Absolution

The Introit p. 16

The Gloria Patri

The Kyrie p. 17

The Gloria in Excelsis

The Salutation and Collect p. 19

The Epistle and Gradual

The Gospel

Glory be to Thee, O Lord!

Praise be to Thee, O Christ!

The Nicene Creed p. 22

The Sermon Hymn #471       Jesus Thy Blood                       4.6

The Word Falls on Deaf Ears

The Communion Hymn # 305   Soul Adorn Thyself

The Preface p. 24

The Sanctus p. 26

The Lord's Prayer p. 27

The Words of Institution

The Agnus Dei p. 28

The Nunc Dimittis p. 29

The Benediction p. 31

The Hymn #657                  Beautiful Savior           4.24

KJV 1 John 3:13 Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. 14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

KJV Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: 17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. 18 And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. 19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. 20 And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. 21 So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. 22 And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. 23 And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

Second Sunday After Trinity

Lord God, heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee, that through Thy holy word Thou hast called us to Thy great supper, and we beseech Thee: Quicken our hearts by Thy Holy Spirit, that we may not hear Thy word without fruit, but that we may prepare ourselves rightly for Thy kingdom, and not suffer ourselves to be hindered by any worldly care, through Thy beloved Son. Jesus Christ, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Martin Chemnitz has been quietly forgotten
by all the "conservative" Lutherans.

The Word Falls on Deaf Ears

KJV Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: 17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

A certain man means - this is a parable. There are many literary devices in the New Testament that give us clues about the content. They are like - Once upon a time. Every child knows what follows those words - at least we did long ago.

This parable has a double emphasis. One is upon the gracious invitation of God to enjoy the blessings of the Kingdom of God. The other emphasis is the human reaction to the Gospel.

The Gospel is the message of forgiveness and salvation that God sends out through the Holy Spirit. He calls people into the ministry and sends those people to others to bring the Gospel to them. 

The terms call and invite are synonymous. The disciples did not sign up to be among the Twelve. Jesus invited them.

I make my Greek students say "Jesus phoned the disciples" because phone comes from the Greek word for invite or call. That makes it more personal and easier to remember.

The invitation is sent with the assurance that everything has already been done for this banquet. All things are ready. When misguided and ignorant clergy make worship a task or obligation, they turn Gospel into law. One belittled worship as not really worship if "you are not using all your talents." That sounds more like qualifying for grace.

This always needs repeating. Christianity is the only religion where God gives to man, instead of man giving to God.

God determined forgiveness and salvation from the beginning of Creation, giving the Promise to Adam and Eve in the midst of the expulsion from the Garden. Abraham believed the Promises of God, and he was counted righteous, forgiven, saved - justified by faith. Genesis 15.  The prophets all preached the coming of the Messiah. People heard and believed, although the people treated prophets miserably.

18 And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. 19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. 20 And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.  

"With one consent" is used for positive actions in Luke, but here it expresses the amount of excuse giving among those who hear the Gospel. The excuses are humorous because they are irrelevant when we match them with the great invitation being given.

The excuses are especially ridiculous because they are not justified - to play on words - and they are a great contrast with what is offered.

This is good parable to remember, because some leaders manipulate people by making them feel guilty for the people who have no interest in the Gospel, in spite of being invited repeatedly. Countries have paid a horrible price for giving up the Gospel from times of persecution or from the invasion of false doctrine.

Northern Africa was Christian until the Muslim invasion. America looked up to the intellectuals of Europe, so Biblical training from Europe was considered a great career move for many generations. That made Biblical Protestant groups Unitarian or worse in outlook. They changed from the top down and no one resisted. 

In a blink of an eye, a congregation can become the latest Marxist cell or the newest addition to the Barnum and Bailey Ringling Brothers circus franchise. A few will say, "What happened?" and they are gently told, "We have to adjust to the times."

What has God done? Everything. If we look at the material world - all of Creation exists to provide for us in abundance. Someone with experience can say, "Here are the universal rules. Follow them for an abundant garden with relatively little work."

Watching the intricate coordination of the natural world is a daily lesson in the Word of God. All this was declared by the Son of God - All things came about through Him. Nothing that was made was made apart from Him.

One book I read over and over had this story - My Grandfather's Earthworm Farm. The book included the description of a grandfather who gathered all the crop trash and animal contributions into pits, where he composted them and spread them in his fields. He always had good crops that made it through droughts because the soil retained moisture so well. His crops were healthy and his farm prospered through many different types of crises caused by weather, panics, and crop disease.

Creation means God has arranged our lives thus, "I will do all this for your food, if you only use experience and some common sense. I can beauty your lives with flowers of all types and grow medicine for you form herbs."

This has already been done. And we have glimpses of it from the mineral world. The West was not well explored until the push came to settle new lands. States with relatively few people suddenly had droves of pioneers settling down. Indians found copper lying around on Mingus Mountain, the Jerome Arizona area. Miners found $5 billion worth of copper in that mountain. It had no great use until we began to use electricity.

Other miners found slabs of pure silver under the ground. In Pennysylvania, that annoying rock oil was fractioned at Yale and became a useful fuel - petroleum, kerosine, gasoline.

21 So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. 22 And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. 23 And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

This has been acted out through history. The Gospel rain moves on. Before it does, those who listen sincerely to the Word pay attention to the words of Jesus and study the Scriptures. They guard the Word, to use an expression of Jesus and do not listen to false shepherds, however popular they may be (up until the cops come with arrest warrants).

Those who are invited and excuse themselves away have blinded themselves and hardened their hearts against the Gospel. 

More Compost Research Bears Fruit - Or Perhaps Earthworms

You can never have too much compost, too much mulch,
or too many gardening books.

We stopped at our big mall today, so I went to the bookstore to drink coffee and check out new books. Instead, I found an old favorite - Let It Rot, by Stu Campbell.

I remembered the contents, almost word for word. I used Let It Rot - and many other books - to write The Wormhaven Gardening Book.

I lost my typewritten notes, rewrote the entire set, and found the originals when the notes were completed a second time. However, that proved to me that going over the same material one more time could create a synthesis that I missed before.

Today, I learned three new things about earthworms that made sense, based on my experience.

1. Newsprint Fanciers
One is that earthworms are especially good at attacking newsprint, which does not decompose easily, due to its lignin content. Lignin is the tough part of the cell, and earthworms love it.

Leave a stack of newspapers outside on the grass and they they will have a family reunion underneath.

I had a stump left on a concrete set of steps in Midland. When I finally moved the stump, about five plump earthworms were dwelling in peace and harmony beneath, with nothing more than wood to eat.

ELCA's failing seminary in Chicago bought compost tumblers
and sanctified them to the cause of Mother Earth.

2. Cows Grazing on Bacteria
The second new/old fact concerns a description of the earthworm as "a cow grazing on bacteria." That explains why they get along so well in manure and reduce it so well. Bacteria are mostly protein, and earthworms are mostly muscle. The common element is nitrogen, the building block of all life, plant and animal.

All the soil/compost creatures also work to eliminate pathogens and toxins.

3. Temperature Zones for Bacteria
Composters get obsessed with their pile of debris heating up. Buy a compost thermometer! Buy the Ace Compost Tumbler to heat up the compost faster!

Various bacteria work in three different zones. The cold weather ones can work all winter, but they impart heat on the pile by digesting food, just as we do. Each human gives off as much heat as a light bulb.

Even in the freezer, bacteria increase in ice cream over time - reason enough to eat it quickly.

If the cold weather bacteria work too well, they warm it up for the mid-range bacteria. So the cold ones go away and the mid-range guys take over. As you might have guessed, the mid-range bacteria can repeat this and turn the work over to the heat-loving bacteria.

Thus God created bacteria for each kind of composting. A leaf pile may not warm up that much, because it lacks a concentration of nitrogen. Still, it will rot away in time, as my two years of leaves have shown. I have put in enough for three piles but they have reduced to 1/2 bin full.

This gardener has layered soil, grass, and straw.
I only put leaves in mine, because I mulch the grass back into the lawn.

Some gardening books are just plain wrong about the simplest facts, with these errors repeated as people borrow their phony research.

Some are misled by modernism, spending time and trouble to defeat Creation while glorying in nature. Big machines must be better. If I buy one, I have to use it - and repair it.

My helper and I laid down newspaper and mulch and created an instant veggie garden, with only the alternate rows to be dug by hand. That took $20 in mulch and $0 in newspapers. All over the yard, sod is rotting under the mulch and feeding the plants

I read research tonight that tilling decimates the earthworm population, the very souls that decrease soil erosion with their constant tunneling. More farmers have moved to no-till and low-till for that reason and other considerations.

Farmers and gardeners value manure. An earthworm produces his own weight in castings every day. "That is so tiny, insignificant," say the scoffers. A ton of worms produces a ton of castings each day. As I recall, that is easily the weight of the worms in one acre of grassland. The numbers can be much higher. Anything that will produce that much improvement to the soil - for free - is going to be on Team Jackson, Garden Division.

Man's solo efforts with the soil are just like his work with the Word of God, when he imagines it belongs to him.

Some farm plots have turned to concrete from excess tilling and heavy use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. The soil dies and is no longer an ocean of life. In contrast, organic soil teems with creatures of all sizes and tasks, yet they work together in perfect harmony.

When man attacks the Word of God with human reason, he employs the same decimating skills. He makes up rules about the text and says, "Aha, that verse has to go." And he decides that the poor foolish disciples could not have been literate. Paul was literate, they allow, but he was a woman-hating obsessive kook. Worse, they tell everyone how they will improve their beloved church. They rip out the pipe organs to make room for coffee bars and ticky-tacky bands. Finding discord in doctrine, they avoid such trivia, in favor of the generics of love, joy, and fund-raising. Unable to write a sermon about what they do not believe, they steal the words of other apostates.