“CHRIST BECAME
ABOMINABLE TO MAKE YOU HOLY”
Saint Matthew
24. 15-28
Third Last
Sunday in Church Year (Trinity 25 Propers)
10 November Anno
Domini 2013
Father Watson
SSP
In The Name + of
Jesus
Jesus quotes Daniel because, as the Lord
said elsewhere, “…the Scriptures…they
testify…of Me” [Jn. 5.39] The Lord
tells the “12” and all His disciples “you shall see the abomination of
desolation.” An abomination is not good. It is abominable—horrible, not
meant to be. Desolation is wasteland—scarred earth salted with sulfur. To be
desolate is the opposite of The Garden
and fecundity. Abomination produces desolation. True desolation is the
isolation of self-chosen exile from God’s love and grace--unbelief.
It’s easy to say that the Papacy and the
Council of Trent fits this description. It’s convenient to say that the
heretical sects are being referenced. Yes; insofar as they “stand in the Holy Place” and desecrate that which is Holy. What
does this mean?
Christ is predicting the fall and
destruction of Jerusalem which was to occur in the year 70—yes. Christ was
predicting the final end of all time and earthly strife when He returns in
glory at the final Advent—yes. Christ was commenting on all abominations which
had occurred in past Jewish history; from the fall of Adam to the fall of the
Hebrews in the 40-year desert, to the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar in the year 585 B.C.—yes.
But Jesus’ Words are more than an accurate
and truthful history lesson. Jesus is not just some wise and profound teacher
and temporal miracle worker. Jesus is
God in the flesh. Jesus is the Restorer of all creation. He is the Redeemer who
buys back and purifies all that is abominable. He makes alive the dead; makes
green the blackened; makes joyful the mournful; and makes brothers and sisters
out of dead corpses. He THE Holy One makes holy ones!
The real Abomination is that which denies
Jesus and which spurns His gifts—His Person and His Work…period.
Adam was abominable when he chose himself, the
creature over and against the loving Lord—His Creator. The result of his
attempted murder of God—really of Jesus—was banishment to the desolation of the
wilderness of self; littered with dust, decay, thistles, death, and damnation.
But The Savior saves—Jesus saves! The Lord would not let His children be
plucked from His pierced palms.
Homosexual activity abominable—yes it is.
But your
fornication, adultery, divorce and pornography sins are equally abominable.
Repent!
The fanatical Muslim and the secular Jew are
abominable worshipping their false gods—yes they are. But your fanaticism for
sports, entertainment, state-worship, politics, creature comforts and money—your
breaking of the First Table is equally
abominable. Repent!
The Abomination
of Desolation; was it Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“god manifest”) in 167 B.C. (as Rabbinic tradition maintains) or
was it Caesar Vespasian’s imperial Roman standards and flags (eagle emblazoned ensigns)
placed in the Temple in 70 A.D. that was “the” Abomination of Desolation? The blessed
Saint John Chrysostom thought the armies of Rome themselves encircling
Jerusalem was the Abomination—certainly
when they were finished—there was naught but desolation.
Yes, yes, and yes. These scripturally
referenced idols were true desolating
sacrileges. The very holy place where the Holy Trinity had marked Its +
Presence (The Name of God making Holy), received blood sacrifices in a
typological way in anticipation of The Paschal Lamb, the Throne of King David
and the Holy of Holies tabernacling
the Ark of the Covenant, was Holy, Sacred, set-apart and Gods. To have it
vandalized by unclean (unbelieving) hands and blasphemed by pagans was horrible
almost beyond description. But for the Jews, what was done away
with? The rejectors of God’s Christ (Caiaphas’s
descendents—the Pharisees and Sadducees) lost their temple sacrifices; their
political identity and hegemony. But God’s New
Israel lost nothing but an ancestral home—for their New Temple, their Blood
Sacrifice, their Food and Forgiveness continued(s) in the Presence of the
God/Man Christ crucified; wherever they are gathered by the Spirit around
Jesus’ actual presence in Word and Eucharist. “For wheresoever the carcass [the body] is there will the eagles be gathered together.”
Dear Saints, the desolating sacrilege is not
that which destroys buildings,
treasures, homes, and lives (“…take they
our life, goods, fame, child, and wife”).
The Abomination of Desolation
is even more than sin—as abominable
and desolate as sin is. Repent! The Abomination is to deny, refuse, malign, water-down (synergize) Jesus Christ and Him
crucified for the forgiveness of sins. The Abomination attacks and tries to
destroy the Gospel itself! Justification
by Grace through Faith in Christ—the free gift of forgiveness of your sins by
Jesus’ life, sacrificial death, resurrection, and Bodily Presence in Word,
Water, and Supper—and not of works, lest no one can boast…when THIS
is attacked, not by the Roman Legions or the bully boys of Herod, but by
works-righteous synergists be they Papists, Sectarian Zwinglians and their ilk,
or your own in-bred crypto Pharisee and pompous Sadducee) there is the Abomination that spits on Jesus,
dresses Him with Thorns, and mocks His Person and Work. Repent!
Fight and repudiate (i.e. believe, teach and confess) against the Pope and the Protestant
when that fight comes to you. But
seek not quixotic quests when the real and immediate battle is in
and with
you. When Luther says “Repent” it’s
because The Baptizer and the Christ say Repent! Drown the old-Adam daily, and
while wringing its scaly neck in the flood from the Font + and the Tree, drown
your own old Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Caesar and Pope Leo while you’re at it.
Do not come down from the housetop for
mammon. Affix your eyes to the Holy Crucifix where the Lamb was lifted up to
bleed, suffer and die for you the abominable. He was made abominable for you
that you might never be desolate but rather be surrounded in this Family, this
Garden, and this Wedding Feast. You wear and are marked by Living Crucifix,
Baptized + in that which you hear and will soon taste. Your sins are forgiven
in Jesus’ Name!
In The Name of
The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost
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