• "Our Liturgy :: Dress Rehearsal for the Great Supper"
• Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity
• June 20, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The Parable of the Great Supper is based on an ancient two-invitation format for feasts. A host would announce that preparations were being made for a feast. Then, when the preparations were finished, the host would call the previously invited guests to come.

The parable is a commentary on Israel's response to Jesus. God announced in the Old Testament the coming messianic feast. Isaiah writes, "The Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of choice pieces, a feast of wines on the lees" (25:6 NKJV). Then Jesus came to tell the people that the feast was ready. As Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15 NKJV).

However, despite the presence of the Son of God among them, it was business as usual for the religious leaders in Israel. They were occupied with their current manner of life and did not respond to Jesus. So Jesus extended the invitation to those in the streets and lanes of the city. This represents the non-observant Jews who were on the margins of Jewish society. Then the invitation was extended to those in the highways and hedges. This represents the Gentiles. The parable ends with the solemn proclamation that none who first refused will be allowed to taste of the Great Supper.

How, then, are we to apply this parable to our current situation? On the one hand, we rejoice that we of the streets and lanes, highways and hedges have been given a place at the feast. On the other hand, we must hear the warning that is implicit in the parable against misdirected religion.

The Jewish leaders practiced a religion that they believed pointed to the coming of the Messiah. All the feasts and fasts, all the dietary rules and all the disciplines of sacrifice and prayer were carried out, ostensibly, in anticipation of God sending the Messiah to save Israel. Then God sent the Messiah to save Israel and the religious leaders did not recognize him and did not accept him. That is, they were religious, but they missed the main point of their religion.

Christianity is also a religion of expectation. Jesus' invitation to the kingdom comes to us in two-fold form. We accept the invitation in this life by putting our trust in Jesus. But we are waiting for Jesus to come again and commence the feast.

We say in the creeds, "He shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead." Jesus instituted the sacrament as a provisional feast, "until his coming again." As Philippians says, "Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" (3:20).

Many Christians lose sight of this forward-looking aspect of faith. They reason that Jesus has not returned in 2,000 years and, therefore, the Second Coming is nowhere in sight. But this is the wrong way to look at it. We wait for the coming of Jesus because his coming will bring with it the fulfillment of our hope-judgment on evil, new, resurrected bodies and the elimination of sin, sickness and death. Even if we die before Jesus comes again, our continued existence with Christ in the intermediate state will be one of expectation. For both those who are living and those who have died in Christ hope for the resurrection of the body and the consummation of all things at the coming of Jesus.

If we lose the authentic Christian hope that Christ will come, we are likely to replace it with something else. The something else may bear the nominal title Christian, but it will be something other than what Jesus lived and died to give us. This danger of the Christian religion is that we will hold on to various trappings, traditions and vocabularies of faith but lose sight of the essential things: the coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

This is what happened to the religious leaders in Israel. They held to the traditions of their faith, but personal and political considerations came to replace and redirect the genuine messianic hope. Their religion no longer pointed to the Messiah God had promised.

This is a danger for all Christians of all stripes. Traditionalists are often accused of holding to forms and traditions while missing Jesus Christ. And, indeed, I do know people who have recited the creeds all their lives but do not really believe that Jesus is coming again with glory to judge the world. But missing the true end of faith is equally a danger for non-traditional Christians. For when they throw away the traditional liturgies, creeds and symbols, they must replace these with something else. And the something else is frequently at least a few degrees removed from the ancient faith and hope.

This is why we believe that the best kind of reformation is one that does not abandon the tradition, but, instead, strips away accretions and errors and returns to its essential meaning. We are sacramentalists. We have outward signs and forms that point to and communicate inward, invisible truths and graces. To have a genuine sacramental vision, it is necessary to see through the signs and forms to their end, which is Christ.

Some people become attached to the signs and forms as ends in and of themselves. This is an error. When Jesus comes again, he will substantially eliminate our current forms of religion and replace them with the clearer light of his own presence. It is a bit of a paradox, but our traditional Anglican hope will be fully realized when traditional Anglican forms are done away with and replaced with Christ himself.

It is rather silly to think that a person might see the coming of Jesus in glory on the clouds but choose to ignore it and continue going to the liturgy in church on Sunday. But this is, in essence, the error of the Jewish leadership in their response to Jesus. He came to fulfill their religion, but they continued with synagogue and temple as usual.

We gather around the altar on Sunday for the liturgy in anticipation of the Great Supper. We gather on Sunday because it is the first day of the week, symbolizing the beginning of the new creation. We are gathered to Jesus at the altar in the same manner that we will be gathered to him at the Second Coming (cf. 1 Thess. 2:1, 4:17). This is a dress rehearsal. We come now, with true and earnest repentance and genuine faith, so that we might be ready then, when the trumpet sounds, Christ appears, the dead are raised and the eternal feast begins.