• "Trinity Season is a Time to Reflect"
• Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity
• June 5, 2005
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

We have begun the long season of Trinity. The color for Trinity is green, which symbolizes growth. The Trinity season is a time to reflect more deeply on what has been revealed in the seasons of Advent through Pentecost so as to grow in the faith.

The Parable of the Great Supper in today's gospel teaches us about the need to respond to the message of Jesus Christ. Its primary meaning is found in reference to Israel.

In the Old Testament, the promise of redemption for Israel and the coming of the kingdom of God is portrayed as a banquet. The prophet Isaiah says,

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined...He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces. (25:6-8, KJV).

The prophets of the Old Testament told Israel that this feast was coming. Jesus announced that the time for the feast had arrived. As Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).

Jesus received a lukewarm response to his invitation. There were initial enthusiastic responses to his miracles. However, few picked up their cross and followed him. They continued on with business as usual, making excuses as to why they could not come. The gospel was received, instead, by those in the streets and lanes of the city, symbolizing the marginal and non-observant Jews. Then it was received by those in the highways and hedges, symbolizing the Gentiles.

The invitation to the great feast that Jesus announced in Israel is now proclaimed around the globe by the church. It is our vocation to be witnesses to Christ to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). Now is the time to respond to the call to repent and believe before the return of Jesus in glory, the Day of Judgment and the consummation of the kingdom.

How do we respond to the invitation? There is not one thing or even one series of things we can do that will fully exhaust the implications of the call to come. We are called to be baptized, but baptism is not the end of the call. We are called to believe in Jesus Christ, but an experience of conversion at a moment in time is not the end of the call.

We can get the sense of how we are to respond from the words of Jesus in Luke's gospel. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (9:23). Each day, Jesus calls us to come to the great feast. Each day we are called to set aside selfish concerns and excuses and follow the voice of love.

We can understand the daily call in terms of the Lord's Prayer. Each day we come to the Father as children and hallow and praise his name. Each day we pray for the kingdom to come into our lives in the events and challenges of that day. Each day we pray for daily bread-for the grace we need to do the will of God that day. Each day we pray for forgiveness for the ways we have fallen short that day and each day we forgive those who have wronged us that day. Each day we pray to be delivered from temptation and from the Evil One.

Each day God calls us away from the world, the flesh and the devil into the life of prayer that brings the fruit of peace and joy. Each day God lays before us opportunities to love, as Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate. Each day God calls us to obey his commandments and not to make excuse. Each day there is a banquet prepared for us in communion with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. As Jesus says in Revelation, "If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (3:20 NKJV).

The most obvious way we respond to the invitation is to actually come to the altar of God and participate in the actual feast that God has prepared. Here, we are reconciled with God through the sacrifice of Jesus. Here we feed on the body and blood, which both cleanses us of sin and gives us a foretaste of that future heavenly banquet.

Of course, more is required of us than mere attendance. We must take to heart the requirements of the invitation. We must examine our actions and motives. We must confess and turn away from our actual habits of disobedience. We must take seriously the requirement that we be in love and charity with our neighbors. We must make it right with those we have wronged and we must be willing to forgive those who ask us for forgiveness. We must let the body and the blood transform us into new people who obey the commandments of God from the heart. We must be prepared to do the good works God has prepared for us, being always on the lookout for the Lazarus whom God has laid at our gate.

To give an affirmative response to the invitation is to perceive the inward reality of the Holy Mysteries and not just the outward form. It is to be inwardly transformed by the presence of Jesus, not merely outwardly religious.

As we continue to say yes to the invitation at this interim feast, we look forward to the future banquet on the day of resurrection, when death will be swallowed up in victory and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.

Thus does the Holy Spirit say to each of us, "Come: for all things are now ready!"