Sermon: Michaelmas '21

The Kingly Wedding

Gospel Reading: Matthew 22: 1-14

Dear Community of Christians,
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The imagery of the Gospel is abundantly clear and unambiguous. The invitation to the wedding had to be repeated by the servants several times. It is certainly correct to regard Michael as one of the servants of the king. Yet the invitation was ignored. There was a point where the king lost patience. The consequences of fire and destruction nevertheless culminated in a renewed invitation.

If we translate these images into our time, we are invited to penetrate and to carry out our task in the physical world, with spiritual thinking. Michael’s task is to support the human being in freedom in this activity. And it takes Michaelic courage from us to try to work towards spiritualized thinking.

We can learn to understand that the work of Michael; and the work of the dark powers serve quite polar goals. Both are concerned with the unfolding forces of intelligence of the human being. Both spiritual powers make use of human intelligence that has become free, but with very different purposes.  Michael leaves us free to decide where to direct our will. The other forces push us in their direction because we are still not developed enough to recognize their activities, and they appeal to our egoistic wishes. The challenge we face every day is to find the balance between the real needs in life and our selfish desires.

And with Michaelic power to push back our cold intellectual thinking, we can instead train our thoughts as imaginative-pictorial thinking, as the Gospel teaches us with its many images. That is our everyday purpose.

Rev. Ute Koenig