Let us be thankful for the blessings we didn’t even know we had, and let us pray to be the blessings to our fellow beggars we didn’t think we could be. Let us pray to the Lord that He might use us in ways we may never understand, but that will give the comfort of the Gospel to our neighbor in need. You never know how the smallest, simplest of gestures may be used by the Holy Spirit.

      Luke tells us that as Jesus begins His final journey toward Jerusalem before His Passion, he encounters ten lepers by the side of the road.4 Lepers are unclean, and anyone who comes into contact with them becomes unclean as well until they go through a purification ritual. The lepers must shout “Unclean! Unclean!” to all passers-by so that folks know to avoid them. These ten, however, shouted out not “Unclean!” but “Jesus! Master! Have mercy on us!” They recognize Him as the source of not only healing but their salvation.

     There were once two brothers who lived on adjoining farms. After nearly four decades of farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch, their long-time collaboration fell apart. It all began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference. Finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

     One morning there was a knock on the older brother’s door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. "I'm looking for a few days work" he said. "Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there. Could I help you?" "Yes," said the older brother. "I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor, in fact, it's my younger brother. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll do him one better. See that pile of lumber stacked out by the barn? I want you to build me a fence - an eight-foot high fence - so I won't need to see his place anymore. It’ll take the starch out of him anyways." The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that you will like."

     Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Do you remember the commercials for it when we were kids? What was their slogan? Right! No more tears! Psalm eighty-four verses five and six say: “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.” We have to go back to the Middle English of the Wycliffe Bible of 1395 to see the Hebrew “Valley of Baca” rendered as “Vale of tears.”1 It is from this one and only passage of Scripture that we have the phrase “Vale of tears” passed down to us, and ingrained in our language.

     This world truly is a vale of tears. We all encounter far too many opportunities to shed our tears. Tears are good! They relieve tension. They clean our eyes and clear our heads. It’s the reason for the tears we’d like to fix.

  Today as we celebrate the five-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, let us consider what it was all about – and what it is still all about. It was and is about the truth. It was and is about our salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ alone, which we know through scripture alone. And to God alone belongs the glory.

    In today’s Gospel reading, as we have the past several Sundays, we find Jesus preoccupied with the kingdom of heaven in His parables. Are you a decliner, or a recliner? Are you an ascender or a pretender? Jesus is asking you these questions this morning in His parable of the wedding feast.