Trinity 20, 2024

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Last Sunday we heard about nakedness and clothing. There is the nakedness of man’s sin and shame, and the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, given in Holy Baptism. What we have at the end of today’s parable is a man who rejects that clothing. He refuses the wedding garment, he refuses Christ’s righteousness. He wants life, he wants the kingdom on his own terms.

The same thing is going on at the beginning of the parable. What is a parable? It’s a story with you in it. And in the Bible, it’s a story with Christ in it. If you get those wrong—if you mistake yourself for Christ—you’ll end up with a different kind of religion altogether….

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The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

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You’ve been searching all your life for what will make you happy, but it has only led to dissipation, degradation, disappointment, dissatisfaction. Here is the Lord offering you the forgiveness of your sins without cost. Here is your Father inviting you to the true happiness, the happiness for which God made us: to be with Him, to enjoy Him, and to receive His creation as a gift.

It seems of course too good to be true. But this passage from Isaiah, chapter 55, is of course part of a larger context. In chapter 53 we have the Suffering Servant, the death of the Messiah where He pays for our ransom not with gold or silver but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.

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