St. Boniface House

In today’s sermon text Jesus explained to Peter that his followers were exempt from the temple tax by asking him this question: “From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax?  From their sons or from strangers?”  The implication is that because Jesus is God’s Son, He and his disciples are exempt from this tax.  How would Yahweh be taxed for the building of his own temple?As we come to the Lord’s Table, let me flip this question around a little bit and pose it to you:  “Who does the King of the Universe invite to his table?  His sons, or strangers?”  We all remember the parable of the wedding feast in which a king holds a feast for the wedding of his son, and when those people who are invited (in the parable, Israel) do not come, he invites strangers from the highways and byways (meaning the Gentiles).  So there is a sense in which we may say answer the question with “strangers”, and that’s something we should remember since most of us are not descendants of Abraham by natural generation.  But even Gentile strangers are invited to the Lord’s Table because they are adopted as sons in Christ Jesus.  This is what I want you to see:  You are invited to come and feast with the Lord Jesus because you are part of his family.  The Lord’s Supper is a family meal.  Everything we’ve done this morning has been to remind you of this.  Everything that happens here on the Lord’s Day is to help you remember who you really are, and who your Master really is.  Six days a week we are bombarded with the world’s lies—that stuff you believe is not true, it’s not normal, it’s not sane, surely you don’t really think that singing Psalms and eating bread and drinking wine and hearing stories from a book that is thousands of years old is worth anything do you?  Yet what we do here is profoundly significant, not just for our sake but for the sake of the world, and it is here, at the Lord’s Table that we remember who we are.  Strangers do not eat at his table, but sons and daughters, and those strangers who are invited to this feast he adopts as sons that they may eat with his family.  You are sons and daughters of God Most High.  He does not regard you as strangers, but as family.  Eat and drink with joy.

This is the Lord’s Table…