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20th Sunday after Pentecost
(cycle a)
Proper 23 (28)

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Texts & Discussion:

Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
or
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

 

Other Resources:

Commentary:

Matthew Henry,    Wesley

Word Study:
Robertson

This Week's Themes:

God's Faithfulness Amid Human Sin
The Joy of the LORD
Giving Our Best to God in Worship!

 


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 Texts in Context | Commentary:   First LessonEpistle Gospel | Prayer&Litanies |  
Hymns & Songs
| Children's Sermons | Sermon based on Texts 

 


Sermons:

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God's Party
A sermon based on Matthew 22:1-14
by Rev. Karen A. Goltz

            I think the worst job in the world, or at least in the Bible, is to be a slave in Jesus' parables.  Last week they were in the service of a vineyard owner who sent them to collect the harvest from his tenants.  They were beaten and killed.  This week they seem to have an easier job: invite people to a wedding.  Again, they're beaten and killed.  I guess being a slave in one of Jesus' parables is just plain hazardous to your health.

            But that's OK.  I don't think we're supposed to relate to the slaves in either one of these parables.  So who are we supposed to relate to?

            That's a tricky question, and not one to be answered lightly.  Because these parables weren't written for us.  That doesn't mean they don't apply to us, or they don't tell us something we need to know, but, in their original form, these parables were not written directly to us.

            Matthew's gospel was written for the Jewish community around Jerusalem not long after the city and the Temple were destroyed.  Up to this point there were a number of Jewish sects, lots of different ways to 'be Jewish,' kind of like all the different Protestant denominations we have today.  Each denomination is different in some ways, but at our core, each and every one of us is Christian.  Back a little before Matthew's time, Judaism had been sort of the same way, with Temple worship at the core, but the destruction of the Temple changed all that.  The Temple had been central to Jewish identity since the days of Solomon, about a thousand years earlier.  Now the Temple was no more, and Judaism itself was in peril.  There was a big push to get everyone to agree on what it meant to be Jewish, to create a single, unified Judaism, and the Pharisees and chief priests seemed to be dominating.  They weren't evil, they weren't malicious, and they weren't trying to amass their own personal power for their own personal gain.  They understood themselves to be keepers of God's Law, and they understood the key to Jewish identity to be in the keeping of that Law.  In order to ensure that people would keep that Law properly, they had to set themselves up as authorities on God and God's will.  And there was no room in their understanding of God's will for recognizing some guy named Jesus as the Messiah.

            At the time Matthew's gospel was written, Jesus had been executed some forty years earlier.  In those forty years, a segment of Judaism had recognized him as the Messiah, and saw him as the fulfillment of the prophets.  They too were trying to save Judaism; but unlike the Pharisees, their understanding was centered on Jesus as fulfillment of God's Law.  They still considered themselves to be Jewish; it's just that their understanding of what Judaism was differed greatly from the Pharisees' understanding. [continue]