Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 22:1-14, October 15, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman 

This is my first occasion to address you publicly and in person since the emergence of our congregation’s financial crisis – a perfect storm of not knowing of our financial capacities as a congregation coming out of the pandemic, but also stepping forward in faith, aspiring to do ambitious things for the sake of our calling to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in a world that desperately needs good news. 

When I learned of the extent and immediacy of the crisis in the week before my travels, I admit to some nights of less-than-ideal sleep. 

And our circumstances at Faith-La Fe are a microcosm of the economic and other challenges facing many congregations and other charitable organizations across the board as so much is changing in our society right under our feet. 

There’s uncertainty and instability all around us. We’re coming off the hottest summer in recorded history, where in Phoenix we endured over 30 days of temps above 110. And such extremes of climate change were common across the globe giving us a palpable and unnerving sense of more climate extremes to come. 

Now there’s the war in Israel and Gaza unleashed just in the past several days, and all of the unimaginable suffering and global uncertainty that come with that war. 

We are glad to host Solveig Muus today who will introduce us to Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Arizona. During today’s adult forum, Solveig will describe great opportunities that we might be drawn to share in to advocate for social justice in a number of arenas. But we know that the struggle for justice is long, and it’s easy to get discouraged and exhausted when there seems to be so little progress, at least progress that’s evident in popular media. If the arc of history bends toward justice, it’s often a barely noticeable arc and bending. 

There’s just so much bad news that burdens us and may provoke us to stay away from reading or seeing or hearing the daily news. Every news cycle reveals many intersecting and inter-related crises, locally and nationally and internationally. 

Amidst all this bad news, God give us a good word, a message of good news!

Of course, we hear good news in today’s readings. The prophet Isaiah addressed the beleaguered people, giving comfort to the afflicted – and these are words commonly offered at funerals to reassure grieving people. Listen with the ears of your heart: 

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And the Lord will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; the Lord will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of the chosen people God will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:6-8) Thank God for such words of comfort and promise. 

And then, the apostle Paul, writing from prison, offered these challenging words, exhorting us to lose ourselves in appreciation and peace of mind even when things get rough – remember, he’s writing from prison: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7) Again, sacred words that soothe our troubled souls.

And then we have good news in the parable from Matthew, today’s gospel story. It’s not such good news for those who made light of the king’s invitation to his son’s wedding banquet, but for everyone else, it was great: “‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” (Matthew 22:8-10) Everyone invited, all included – that’s such a reassurance, especially for those for whom words of welcome are in short supply!

This parable, of course, points to the messianic banquet initiated by Jesus’ death and resurrection, to which everyone is invited, both good and bad. And the only thing that makes us worthy to enter into the banquet hall is our accepting the invitation willingly. It’s grace alone, along with our trust in and yes to that grace, that makes for radical inclusion to sit around the heavenly banquet table.

All of this is good news, great news, wonderful to hear amidst so much bad news. And these are not mere words, mere pablum to superficially soothe our troubled souls. No. We actually get to experience here what the words promise. When we are baptized, we are given the wedding robe that gains us entrance into the banquet hall. That’s what the white gowns and clothes that children wear at baptism signify.  

And the wedding feast of the Son happens every Sunday here at this table where we receive in bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood, a foretaste of the feast to come. 

I say this stuff every time I preach, because every Sunday we bring to this place new troubles and anxious minds which may cause us to forget on a weekly basis the great and real gifts we receive here in this place with each other as God’s people, the body of Christ, the church. 

The good news that we hear Sunday after Sunday is the antidote to all the bad news we see and hear on the news when we’re prone to doom scrolling. 

And the abundance in Christ’s presence that we eat and drink at this table contrasts with the fear of scarcity that so often robs us of our peace of mind at home and now even here in our church family because of our financial challenges. 

Still, the stories we hear each Sunday, and what we eat and drink in this place, keep us going, renewing our faith, our confidence that God will indeed provide when push comes to shove. 

And with renewed faith and reinvigorated thanks for God’s grace, we are emboldened to give ever more generously of ourselves, not just in terms of financial gifts, but also our time and talents in offering ourselves in word and deed to our church and to the world – for example, via the work of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Arizona and certainly through the initiatives and ministries of our congregation. 

And, like the slaves in the parable, God, our sovereign, sends us out to invite everyone to this messianic, sacred wedding banquet – those who present themselves as good and those perceived to be bad. Y’all come, we say to the people on the main streets of our lives. Come to the banquet, eat and drink your fill of God’s abundance, for all is now ready. 

These are hard times to be sure, both here at Faith-La Fe locally, and everywhere else in the world. But we’re also surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, whose witness encourages us even today. We relish the testimony of the prophet Isaiah who proclaimed the promise of God’s abundance to exiled people. We still bask in Paul’s exhortation to rejoice always even when the prison walls of one sort or another – in our minds and in our society – close in around us.  

And we celebrate our forebears here at Faith-La Fe whose vision established this congregation in a part of Phoenix in the 1940’s that was then largely undeveloped. It was their sacrifices which gave us the gift of our beautiful campus. They stepped forth in faith, trusting in God’s providence, and living up to the name they chose for this congregation – Faith-La Fe.

And having come back from my family reunion in South Dakota, I learned again of the hardships of my Norwegian forebears whose poverty drove them from Norway in the 1860’s to seek a better life in the United States. They traveled by ship to Quebec and ventured inland, presumably first by rail, and then by wagon through the prairies of the upper Midwest until they got as far as southwestern Minnesota where the mud was so bad, they simply had to stop. So, they settled there. I cannot imagine what they had to endure.

And each of you can tell such stories from your families, stories of the saints who have persevered through the hard and tragic times. 

Now we are the ones called to endure and not just to endure, but to thrive and rejoice in the Lord as we engage in the work God has entrusted to us.

So, come to the wedding banquet to feast on God’s abundance in Christ. Have your fill so that we may go onward, saved by grace through faith and sent by the Holy Spirit to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God for the good of all creation. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.