Worthy is the Lamb: A Meditation on Revelation 5, for the 3rd Sunday in Easter

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne

a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice,

Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth,

was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

And I wept much, because no man was found worthy

to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

 

And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not:

behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,

hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts,

and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain,

having seven horns and seven eyes, which are

the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

And he came and took the book out of the right hand

of him that sat upon the throne.

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders

 fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps,

 and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.

And they sung a new song, saying,

Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof:

for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood

out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

And hast made us unto our God kings and priests:

and we shall reign on the earth.

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels

 round about the throne and the beasts and the elders:

and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand,

and thousands of thousands;  Saying with a loud voice,

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power,

and riches, and wisdom, and strength,

and honour, and glory, and blessing.

And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth,

and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them,

heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power,

be unto him that sitteth upon the throne,

and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders

 fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.

 

The vision given to St. John during his exile on the isle of Patmos is both fascinating and mysterious, and for this reason it has confounded theologians ever since it was written.  Like the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament, particularly the Prophets Daniel and Ezekiel, there’s a rhythm to the language and imagery which helps navigate its complexities, but there’s also a sense in which parts of the prophecy are cloaked intentionally by God.  Often with Biblical prophecy, God gives what is necessary to be known in the moment it is given and to whom it is given, with an arc across history toward its ultimate fulfilment.  For example, as Moses was about to die, he told the people of Israel that God will raise up another leader and prophet like himself; in the immediate sense, the people needed to hear this and were blessed with the leadership of Joshua; over the next 400 years or so, the people would see this prophecy partially fulfilled in King David’s righteous kingdom; and a thousand years after David, we would see the prophecy completely fulfilled in Jesus.  Likewise, we learn from Prophets like Daniel that numbers and images can have symbolic meanings, like 7 being a number of completion, or horns being an image of power and eyes of awareness and knowledge.  There are a lot of these kinds of images and numbers in the Revelation given to St. John, and anyone who tells you they have it all figured out is probably trying to fool both you and himself.  All biblical prophecy has a sense of both now and not yet, of present and future—and the now is always easier to see than the not yet.

 

However, there are some basic interpretive tools that help a reader understand what they need to understand about John’s vision, just as there is for the apocalyptic sections of the Old Testament, and all of Scripture as a whole.  Jesus gives us the fundamental premise, conveniently enough recorded by St. John in the 5^th chapter of his Gospel, where He tells the Pharisees that the Scriptures are a testimony of Him; i.e., the whole of Scripture, the written Word of God given by the Spirit of God, testifies to the One who is the Incarnate Word of God.  Jesus is the center, beginning, and end, of the Scriptures, just as He is for all biblical prophecy.  Furthermore, we know that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life for all people, so that we can trust His Word in all things—or as St. Paul would write in his second letter to St. Timothy, all Scripture is breathed out by God, useful for teaching and correction and training up in righteousness.  We also know that all of Scripture is presented as either what God commands of His people, or what God gives to His people freely:  His Law and His Promises, or Law and Gospel.  There are certainly more linguistic and hermeneutical tools to help the reader understand original languages, literary forms, and historical context, and these are all good to study, but the fundamental navigational lights available to every reader or hearer of Scripture will ensure anyone can hear what God intends to always make clear:  the Word of God is trustworthy, it is centered in Jesus, and it gives us both command and promise.  If we approach the Revelation to St. John in faith, trusting the Word of God to be true, looking for how it testifies to Jesus, repenting before the Law which it commands and trusting the Gospel of salvation that it gives, we will find that Revelation is much clearer than we might have thought.

 

With that perspective, we can gather the key points of Revelation 5 very quickly.  First, we can see the truth that no one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, is worthy to approach God and fulfill the culmination of history—except Jesus Christ alone.  That scroll with its seven seals is an image of history being wrapped up, of all things being perfectly fulfilled that the Word of God has spoken across millennia to the Prophets and the Apostles.  It is Jesus who has accomplished the reconciliation of man with God through His life, death, and resurrection, and He alone is worthy to judge and to save, to bring to a close the present age of sin and depravity, and usher in the age of grace and eternal life.  John’s vision throughout the Revelation bounces back and forth between the earth and heaven, but in chapter five we are given a glimpse of the heavenly throne room of the Lord God Almighty, surrounded by His people in eternal joy and adoration, singing songs of praise and thanksgiving for the salvation accomplished for them by Jesus.  While the scroll represents the final coming of Jesus in judgment of the whole world, with its consequent pouring out of calamity upon those who have embraced the path of evil, rebellion, and death, it is also the fulfillment of His salvation for His people who have embraced the path of life and love and grace.  Jesus’ return to judge the living and the dead should only be terrifying to those who prefer the devil’s lies, abuse, and destruction—for those who live in faith, hope, and love, it is the final removal of all our torments and persecutions at the hands of wicked people and demons.  Jesus comes to save, and only those who have made themselves His enemies, have anything to fear from the Lord who came to rescue us all.

 

The Law in this text clearly points out that we are not righteous, nor are we worthy.  We are called to repent of our sin, of our lack of trust, of our lack of love, of our abuse and persecution of our neighbors.  We are called to turn from the paths of evil and destruction that come so easily to our fallen nature, and trust in the One who overcame the devil upon His Cross, who alone is worthy to return at the end of time and eliminate all darkness and evil from the world.  It is the Law which reveals our unworthiness, our need to repent, and the justice of judgment we deserve for all the evil we have wrought by our thoughts, words, and deeds, things done and left undone.  Yet it is also the Law that reveals to us our need for a Savior, for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah to come to our rescue.  And thus the Gospel shines brightly in John’s Revelation, as our eyes are drawn to the One who is, was, and is to come, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord Jesus Christ.  For it is Jesus alone who is worthy to receive glory and honor and power and blessing, and Jesus alone who gives these gifts freely to fallen men by His grace.  Only Jesus could earn our forgiveness and salvation, and only Jesus could give it to us, that all who trust in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.  The Jesus who John testified of in His Gospel is the same Jesus who appeared to him on the isle of Patmos, and is the same yesterday, today, and for all time.  He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  He is the One who abandons none who put their faith in Him, continuing to call all people to faith and repentance that they might have eternal life in His name, even until the last seal is broken, the last trumpet has sounded, or the last breath has been drawn.  He is the hope of the whole world, and He is coming back at the end of the age to fulfill for every faithful soul the work of salvation He finished for them upon His cross.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord as it comes to you this day, and if you have had trepidation in reading Scriptures like the Revelation of St. John, let your fear be melted away as you rest in the love of Jesus.  While judgment is surely coming, it is coming to save you, that evil might not torment the people of God forever, nor forever plague the earth with violence and corruption.  The Lord Jesus Christ is victorious over every dark and evil plot, over all sin and death, so that your salvation is secure in Him unto ages of ages without end.  Heed His call to turn from the pathways of death and judgment, and walk in His ways of eternal life by grace through faith in Him, where His Word shall always be a lamp unto your feet, and a joyous light unto your path.  Amen.

 

Peace and Forgiveness: A Meditation on John 20 for the 2nd Sunday in Easter

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week,

when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews,

came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side.

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you:

as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them,

Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them;

and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

 

The pursuit of peace has been a perennial and ancient search of mankind.  One finds this search in the writings of the old philosophers and kings, poets and storytellers, and in many of the world’s historic and present religions.  There are those who tried to find peace by cutting off their emotional attachment to the world (such as the ancient Stoics, or variations of the Rationalist philosophers,) and those who tried to find peace by giving their lives over to their passions (the ancient and modern Hedonists of every shape and kind, including variations of Naturalists, Post-modernists, and Relativists.)  There are plenty of religious systems that have followed these paths in one way or another, leaning more toward the absolute rule of Mind over Emotion or of Emotion over Mind, or trying to build a middle way that balances each.  Yet none of these pursuits over the history of the world has been able to nail down the elusive nature of peace, because they ultimately cannot overcome the fallen nature of mankind, and thus fail to reconcile the individual with their Maker.  Without reconciliation with God, no person can ever really find peace.

 

I think somewhere deep down in every heart, all people know this to be true.  Our minds are finite at best, and fallen at worst, so that they tend to create the most oppressive and disastrous systems of politics, economics, philosophy, and religion.  Our passions and instincts are also limited and fallen, twisted into selfish pursuits of pleasure that wound not only ourselves but the people around us, raging from time to time into violent crimes and brutal wars.  While our good gifts of Reason and Emotion were created good when God endowed them in mankind, we have turned them to evil, such that our reliance upon them brings about monstrous effects inside ourselves, and between one another.  This is why the pursuit of peace is so elusive to both the Rationalist and the Hedonist, as well as those who try to craft middle paths between Reason and Emotion:  with our fallen powers, we are not able to make peace within ourselves nor with our neighbors, because we have lost our peace with the One who is our Maker, the One to whom we all know we must give account someday.

 

If this alone were the fate of man, all we would see across human history is the recurring plaintive attempts of sages and strongmen to build kingdoms of “peace” on their own terms through manipulation and war—kingdoms that once established, betray the evil of their ideas and the corruption of their passions.  And while the world is indeed marked by such atrocities across all cultures and epochs, there is something else we find that enlightens and enlivens all people who harken to it—a Light that has shined from the dawn of creation, and continues bright into our own day, as well.  Amidst the flailing cacophony of man’s many failures to build peace for himself, the Word of the Living God continues to speak that peace into existence for everyone who would hear and trust in Him.  That Word which created mankind and the cosmos within which we live, is also the Word that spoke hope into the heart of man after his fall into evil, and guided mankind down through the ages by His Law and Promise.  This Word called all men away from the depravity of their passions and the deceptions of their minds, to see and experience a higher reality that brought mind and heart into fellowship with their Maker.  This Word which is our beginning and our summit, the Word which fashioned and judges the whole world, also spoke into existence our redemption from every evil, starting with the evil inside ourselves.  This Word alone was able to do what we could not, bearing the burden of our sin and failure as He became one of us, and rising victorious over our condemnation in death.  This Word alone, this Jesus, has brought us peace, precisely because He has brought us forgiveness.

 

When Jesus appeared to His disciples and spoke peace to them, He also gave them His Holy Spirit and the power to forgive the sins of others in His Name.  While there is a sense in which this power is carried out formally by the pastors of the church, it is also given to every Christian by virtue of their baptism in Jesus, and prayed by every Christian as they recite the Lord’s Prayer.  This forgiveness of sins is what reconciles us to God, liberates us from our fallen nature and from the endless attacks of the evil one.  This forgiveness of sins heals body and mind in this world, and is as real in heaven above as it is on the earth below.  This forgiveness is the gift we could not earn and could not deserve, because no fallen man could do what Jesus has done through His Vicarious Atonement, through His life, death, and resurrection.  This forgiveness is the Key to the Kingdom of Heaven, unlocking the burden of guilt which torments every fallen soul, and opening wide the portal which leads to everlasting life.  When Jesus spoke peace to His disciples, He created what He gave them through the gift of His grace, so that all who would believe in Him might live in the peace of God forever.

 

Yet His work of peace didn’t stop there.  Jesus’ work of redemption was for all people of every time and place, and so His Word to His disciples turned them into Apostles:  as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.  With a peace that passes all understanding, that rises above every philosophy and passion, the Lord Jesus Christ has given you forgiveness that you might give His forgiveness to others.  The freedom you have been given by grace through faith has cost Jesus everything so that it might cost you nothing—that as freely as you have received, you might also freely give to everyone around you.  That peace which no one can achieve on their own has been given to you by Jesus, who has forgiven you and enlivened you by His Word of Gospel grace.  Hear that Word come to you again today, healing your mind and body as you are reconciled with your Maker and your Redeemer, so that you might go forth from here bearing that same reconciliation, that Medicine of Immortality to every suffering soul you meet.  For Christ has risen, and in Him shall we all rise, that our peace in Him might endure unto endless ages of ages, in the Kingdom of His victorious grace.  Amen.

 

Jesus Arrives for Us: A Meditation on John 12 for Palm Sunday

On the next day much people that were come to the feast,

when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem,

Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried,

Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

 And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written,

Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt.

 These things understood not his disciples at the first:

but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things

were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.

The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave,

and raised him from the dead, bare record.

For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle.

The Pharisees therefore said among themselves,

Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.

And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast:

 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee,

and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.

Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.

 

And Jesus answered them, saying,

The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall

 into the ground and die, it abideth alone:

but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life

in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

If any man serve me, let him follow me;

and where I am, there shall also my servant be:

if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour:

but for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name.

Then came there a voice from heaven, saying,

I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered:

others said, An angel spake to him.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

This he said, signifying what death he should die.

The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever:

and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?

Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you:

for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.

 

But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him:

That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake,

Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again,

He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

 These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him.

Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him;

but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him,

lest they should be put out of the synagogue:

For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

 

With Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Church once again enters into her remembrance of the most momentous week in the history of the world since God first spoke the universe into existence.  From the dawn of time and the Fall of man, God had been promising to send a Messiah who would deliver the people from their sins and an eternal fate condemned with the devil’s murderous horde.  On this Palm Sunday we read of that Messiah entering the city He guided David to establish as the center of worship in ancient Israel a thousand years before.  It was a city that knew victory and defeat, glory and infamy, faithful and unfaithful rulers, building and rebuilding.  Yet on this particular Palm Sunday, the King of Kings has come to visit His people and to complete a work He began in the Garden of Eden millennia before even David set foot in Jerusalem.  Now the stage is set for the most climatic battle that was ever waged, where the eternal fate of every soul of every people, tribe, and tongue rested on the shoulders of the Word of God made Flesh.  Now would be marshalled every dark power of human and demonic hearts in every height of society, politics, and religion, that the Lord of Glory would show His victory over all.   Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

 

There is much worthy to ponder in Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, including the analogies of yesterday’s fickle mobs to our own, the fecklessness of leaders in every corner of society, the darkness of our own nature that is so quick to persecute the coming of the holy because of the sin which blinds the eyes and dulls the ears and hardens the heart.  Yet veiled behind all the human marks and signs of this event, we see something that has never been done since the universe came into existence, nor has ever been done since:  Immanuel, God-with-Us, has entered our fallen world to save us, and to cast out the devil who has enslaved us since our first parents yielded to his temptation.  In this moment of Palm Sunday, the infinite God who surpasses and upholds all created things across a cosmos more vast than any modern telescope can see, has entered time and space for the purpose of saving His people.  After His Incarnation and birth from the Blessed Virgin Mary, He has walked among His people for 33 years, full of grace and truth and wisdom.  He has taught them the Way of everlasting life, and shown them the Father through the person of the Son.  And now, at the fullness of time in the climax of the ages, He has entered His City to work the redemption of every soul in every city on the face of the globe:  those present, those gone before, and those yet to come.

 

The Church walks in faith and repentance with our Lord through Lent each year, that we might walk with Him once again into this most holy of weeks.  In the space of a week, our Lord will be celebrated, plotted against, betrayed, convicted, tortured, murdered, and rise again from the dead.  In this week ahead, our Lord will make a capstone of His teaching to His Apostles which will carry them through the rest of their lives, and inspire their authorship of the New Testament.  He will take the ancient Passover meal He gave to Moses as a remembrance of their deliverance from Egypt, and fulfill it by making it His Holy Supper in which all people will remember our deliverance from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  He will stand before religious leaders bent on destroying His witness from the world, and before political rulers who behold him with either ambivalence or malevolence.  He will have his life traded to the mob for a murderous robber, bear the scourging of a vicious Roman legion, then be compelled to drag the means of His own execution up the hill of Calvary.  He will be nailed to the tree and lifted up, that all might behold the Author of Life trampled by suffering and death.  From His Cross and before His breath is given up, He would save the repentant soul of a condemned thief hanging alongside Him, commend the care of His mother to His disciple John at the foot of the Cross, and pray to the Father to forgive His betrayers, slanderers, abusers, and murderers who did not know what they were doing.

 

In one week, our Lord would finish the work He had foreknown before the foundation of the world, and set in motion by His promise to Eve that of her lineage would come a Son who would destroy the demonic serpent who enslaved them.  In this Holy Week would be restored what had been brought into being in that ancient and primordial week of Creation.  In this week above all weeks, we will see the love and grace of God conquer every machination of evil, sealing the fate of all enemies of our Savior and Lord.  In this week we will see the Author of Life suffer and die for the sins of the world, and we will see that death is not able to contain the Lord of Life.  In this week we will know the power and presence of God’s love for the world, and the fullness of the saying that no greater love has anyone than to lay down their life for their friends.  In this week we will be restored to fellowship and friendship with the God of all Creation, both as individuals of faith and as a whole human race.  In this week, we will hear the Word of the Risen Christ speak peace and blessing and forgiveness upon us, with the power of His Holy Spirit giving us a new life from above that can never wane.  In this week the Word and Spirit of God will abide with men, and the powers of darkness will be forever broken.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord as He calls to you this day from the streets of ancient Jerusalem, inviting you to walk with Him as he accomplishes for you, your salvation.  Walk with Him, abide with Him, and hear Him, that His Word and Spirit may open your eyes to see, your ears to hear, and your heart to believe, all that the Lord your God has done to seek and to save you.  Trust in the One who has defeated your demonic enemies, silenced your infernal accusers, and freed you from slavery to sin and death.  Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world has come to rescue His people, and His people cry out in exuberant reply, Hosanna!:  Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord!  Amen.

 

 

From Whence Comes Authority: A Meditation on Luke 20 for the 5th Sunday in Lent

Then began he to speak to the people this parable;

A certain man planted a vineyard, and let it forth to husbandmen,

and went into a far country for a long time.

And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen,

 that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard:

but the husbandmen beat him, and sent him away empty.

And again he sent another servant: and they beat him also,

and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty.

And again he sent a third:

and they wounded him also, and cast him out.

Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do?

I will send my beloved son: it may be

they will reverence him when they see him.

 But when the husbandmen saw him,

they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir:

 come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.

So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?

 He shall come and destroy these husbandmen,

and shall give the vineyard to others.

And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.

And he beheld them, and said,

What is this then that is written,

The stone which the builders rejected,

the same is become the head of the corner?

Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken;

but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour

sought to lay hands on him; and they feared the people:

for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them.

 

Luke 20 opens with a challenge from the chief priests, scribes, and elders (those in charge of public worship for the Jewish people) regarding what authority Jesus had to be publicly teaching and performing miracles.  Because Jesus was not certified, trained, or otherwise credentialed by the Jewish authorities, the leaders who were, wanted to put Jesus to public shame.  Of course, the formal Jewish leaders were also afraid of popular uprisings that might challenge their control, or bring the wrath of the occupying Romans upon them, so Jesus was certainly not the first person they confronted for publicly teaching.  They had also confronted John the Baptist before his imprisonment and martyrdom at the hands of Herod, and Jesus used that against them, because He knew that the Jewish leaders wanted the people’s good will, and the people knew John was a Prophet sent from God.  Jesus also used this opportunity to teach the religious leaders that true authority comes from God alone, and that they would all be held accountable for how they received the Word of God from the Prophets He had sent to them.

 

The story of the vineyard Jesus used in this parable has both familiar and unfamiliar overtones to modern ears.  The Lord of the Vineyard was the land owner, who had legitimate authority over that land and that vineyard, because he was the one who invested in it.  He hired the laborers to manage it, and was entitled to receive the fruit in due season as payment against his investment.  If the land owner was to die, the property would fall by inheritance to his son, but the employees had no entitlement to the property by inheritance law.  What transpired in the story seems almost garish—the tenant farmers and vinedressers refused to give the fruit of the land to the land owner, going so far as to abuse and kill the emissaries sent to them.  Eventually, the tenets concoct an irrational plan that if they can kill the land owner’s heir, they can seize the property away from the owner someday.  Their greed, deceit, theft, and murder was met with just condemnation, and the vineyard was given to others who would heed the word of the land owner and be faithful in their labors.  Justice was served upon the unjust who scorned the mercy and grace of their employer, and grace was given to others who would keep it by faithful service.

 

The Jewish authorities rightly perceived that Jesus had spoken this against them, but we can hear this parable spoken to every self-entitled religious leader (or any leader, for that matter) ever since.  It is God alone who creates, sustains, and redeems the world by His Word, and there is no legitimate authority apart from Him.  Those who think they can go to war with God and refuse Him the fruits of faith which are the just and natural outgrowth of the grace He has given them, reflected in the world of neighbors He has set them within to work, are even more irrational than the greedy vinedressers.  No one is entitled to the grace of God, or to be His workmen, or even to the life they could not give themselves.  The grace of God which creates us, sustains us, and redeems us, is a gift beyond measure or price:  we could not earn it, we do not deserve it, and there’s no way we could take it by our own power or manipulation.  Like breath itself, our lives and our duties before God come to us by His Word, and it is by His Word that we live, and move, and have our being.  God’s Word alone is the ultimate authority in all creation, and the basis upon which all other authority in the world is rightly derived.  What we do with, or how we receive those who bear the Word of God to us, reflects far more about us than it does God, and in light of that Word we can only have two conclusions:  we either live by grace through faith in the Word of God forever, or we are condemned to eternal perdition as unbelieving and unfaithful stewards.

 

To those who reject the Word of God, this is a rightfully terrifying teaching of Jesus.  To live in open rebellion against the source and summit of all life, is to embrace the path of death, and so evil minds wrapped in delusional irrationality use what little life and power they have to wage war against the King of the Universe.  There will be no escape for these souls when the He returns, either at the End of Days or the end of their personal days, and all the schemes of evil demons and men will fall before the King of Glory.  But for those who will hear Him and trust Him, His Word brings a sure and certain hope—for just as no evil scheme can be victorious over God Almighty, so neither will any such scheme be victorious over the people of God.  If the Word of God’s Law is truly inescapable for those who reject Him, so the Word of God’s Grace is unassailable for all those who put their trust in Him.  When Jesus comes to us and speaks His Word of forgiveness, life, and salvation for the sake of His Vicarious Atonement and His victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil, we know that His Word of Love and Grace cannot be taken from us by any power of any creature in heaven, or earth, or hell.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, because the only true authority in the cosmos has spoken it to us by His Word, and there is none who can overthrow Him.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord come to you again this day, as it came in the faithful testimonies of the Prophets and the Apostles who bore witness to the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ.  If you have deluded yourself into thinking you can win a war of rebellion against the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth, hear the Law strip you of your pretensions and clear your befuddled mind before it is too late.  Then hear the Word of Gospel grace that comes to you as love and compassion, forgiveness and mercy, all for Jesus’ sake.  Let the glories of that grace fill your heart and mind with the heart and mind of Jesus, that you might rise up in His image, and bear the fruits of faith in your service of God and neighbor, wherever the Lord has placed you in His vineyard.  For the Word of the Lord endures forever, as do all those who put their faith in Him.  Amen.