What is Truth?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus proclaims, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Great. This is good news for any human ears. Freedom through truth appeals to just about everybody. We like to believe in truth. After all, truth is what keeps our world in order.

You and I are hard-wired to believe in truth. It is much more difficult to understand the idea of a lie than the truth. From the time of birth, children are automatically programmed to believe what they hear. This is why advertising on children's television is so successful. Tell a child that he needs this robot, and he will believe it. How many parents have been manipulated into buying ridiculous things for Christmas and birthdays, because the people on TV convinced their children that whatever it was was vitally necessary to their continued health and well-being?

How Shall We Live?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Again, the Pharisees come to Jesus in an attempt to trick Him with some cleverly devised question. Again, He refuses to play into their hands. This time, however, rather than simply remaining irritatingly out of their grasp, Jesus pokes back at the so-called religious experts. They ask a question, and He answers. He asks a question, and they fail to answer it.

With His question, “Whose son is the Christ?”, Jesus expounds upon His answer to the Pharisees' question, “What is the greatest commandment?” As Luther sees it, this text poses, and answers the same question within two different spheres. How shall we live, both “here in time, and there in eternity”?

What Shall I Render?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

After Jesus has told a series of parables lambasting the Jewish leadership for leading the people astray, they seek to entrap Him and get Him out of their way. Therefore, strange bedfellows come together for a common cause. Ordinarily, the Pharisees and the Herodians would never associate. After all, the Pharisees desperately wanted to maintain Jewish independence so that they could retain their prerogatives over the people and the Temple. They wished nothing more than the retreat and demise of their Roman overlords. On the other hand, the Herodians were extreme political partisans of the house of Herod Antipas. They were staunch supporters of Rome, mostly in the hopes of furthering Herod's goal of ruling Israel as king.

However, necessity creates odd bedfellows, and this occasion is no different. Both of these parties wanted Jesus silenced, so they came together to this end. They would ask Him about paying taxes to Caesar. If Jesus said yes, then the people would see their great hopes of political overthrow dashed and the Pharisees could point to Jesus as unpatriotic. If He said no, then the Herodians could denounce Him to Pilate as an enemy of the Emperor and a seditionist.

Why Are You Here?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for His Son. The kingdom is not the feast; the kingdom is the king. For where the king is, there also the kingdom. And so, this king gives a wedding feast, and he sends out servants to invite the guests. The invited guests say no. The king still has a feast to give, so he sends out another round of personally delivered invitations, and this time the invited guests go off to their fields and their businesses, and some shame and kill the messengers. Enraged at their insolence, the king sent his troops and they destroyed the wicked invitees and their city.

Those invited were thus deemed not worthy, so the king instructed his messengers to go out into the roads and gather anyone they found, the good and the bad. In this way, the hall of the wedding banquet was filled with guests.

But then the king came into the hall and saw a man there not in suitable attire. How did you get in here dressed like that? But the man was speechless before the king. So the king commanded his servants, and they threw the man out, into hell. “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Things Are Not As They Seem

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sometimes things are not as they seem. Every so often, you probably run into a situation where something seems off, seems different than what you see. Maybe it is the look in a person's eye that tells you there is more to the story. Perhaps it is the vague wording of a press release. Something just is not what it seems.

Oftentimes that happens in our spiritual lives as well, both for good and for bad. Today's readings give two examples of this.

The prophet Isaiah records the “Song of the Vinedresser”, where the Lord describes the great care He expended in establishing His vineyard, and the hope He had that it would produce abundant, rich fruit. The Vinedresser took great cares to select the perfect piece of land so that conditions would be just right. He picked rock and tilled the soil. He cleared the weeds and built walls and fences. He even built a watchtower and a winepress. When the land was ready, He planted choice vines and tended them lovingly. He gave them all the care and nutrients they needed. What more could He have done that He failed to do? All that was left was to wait to enjoy the fruits of His labor.