SEXAGESIMA: Homily

“HIS GOOD AND HONEST HEART BLEEDING INTO THE CHALICE FOR YOU”

Saint Luke 8. 4-15

Sexagesima: 23 February Anno Domini 2014

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The Name + Jesus

   Why did our Lord speak in parables? Was it to confuse and befuddle the Pharisees and non-believing enemy Jews? Yes. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word. The work of our saving God is a gift—free and clear; it is the giving of the giver and not of works; not of intellect, reason, perception or great knowledge. As the Paraclete spake by Esaias: “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud…so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” [Is. 55. 9-11]  Those that Jesus wanted to receive His parabolic wisdom—Wisdom is the Holy Ghost—were able to grasp by faith what He was teaching. And, when old-Adam blinders obscured His verity, then He was willing and eager to explain Himself in greater detail. This He did to His “12” when they ask Him in verse 9 “what might this parable be?”

   Unless ye become like a little child you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Holy Baptism of infants (ideally at near nativity…8 days old is a beautiful bench-mark) is the template for adoption by Grace into the Kingdom of Christ’s eternal Church!

   Our hearts are searching and empty until they find their rest and peace in the Heart of the Blessed Trinity—the heart of the God/Man!

   For the flock to “know,” to believe what their Sower Savior is all about, what He’s given them and IS giving them, they simply receive His catechesis in vv. 11-15. The Shepherd feeds not only the Disciples with green living grass of Grace but all of you also eat His life-giving provender in His own explanation—the sermon of Jesus!

   Bare ground produces nothing. The earth unaided in its natural state is dead and lifeless. Only an outside “source” creates. Only an artist paints a portrait and only a composer composes a symphony.

As Johnny Appleseed purportedly simply traipsed about the Ohio valley (and other places) freely and liberally broadcasting apple seeds, our Lord and His churchly agents (through the means of the Word of Scripture and most especially the Evangel of Christ’s Person and Work) do the same thing. Trust in Him.

  You were filthy and septic little “dust-devils” when carried to the still waters of His Blood and Water at the 8-sided womb of atonement. The Holy Ghost, ever the guardian gardener of the seed from Nazareth, carried you with the four friends of the Gospel on the pallet of the Word already incensing you while 9 months in utero. Jesus planted Himself in your broken up soil during Baptism’s Holy rite. He made you “good ground” by Himself being buried in the ground for your transgressions. He insured His Seed, His SELF, would find “an honest and good heart” by letting His heart keep the Law in your stead, and then be pierced through with a pagan spear head of all the world’s sin, all your trespasses, at Calvary. The place of the skull was bathed in Seed, the Seed of His Body; watered by the Blood of God, so that Calvary, “then” would make Baptism “now” (in-time) a fecund and fertile regeneration of your righteousness IN HIM the Righteous One!

   The Gesima season is a short three-Sunday descent from the glory of Mt. Transfiguration to the Lenten desert which leads to the true glory of the Cross at Golgotha. Sexagesima (about 60 days before Holy Pascha) is about repenting…to get you ready for…more repentance. The Reformer was right in Thesis #1 of his 95: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” Repent of your own dalliances with the devil and his pigeons from hell which seek to take the word away from; which seek to pluck the seed from your ears with their shrieks of worldly entertainment and distraction. Repent of your rocky old-nature which daily calcifies with the crusty shell of selfishness, bitterness, and enmity. Repent of your fearful cares and worries, which at the heart, are all due to lack of trust in your Loving Father and Bleeding Redeemer. Repent of your controlling and domineering desires to “second guess” God on WHY not all seed bears the fruit you think it should, when and where you demand it to! Repent. Repent and believe that you not only bear fruit by His Spirit, but that you ARE the fruit of His red Seed. You are the “hundredfold” of His fruitful cross, His fruitful altar, and His fruitful Word and Body.

He is patient. He will do it. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear:” Go in peace your sins are forgiven!

In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD: Homily

“THE LIGHTNINGS LIGHTENED THE WORLD”

Saint Matthew 17.1-9

The Transfiguration of Our Lord: 9 February Anno Domini 2014

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The Name + of Jesus

“In the beginning was The Word…in Him was life; and the life was the light of men…” (Jn. 1.1 ff)

   The heathen religions and pagan cults all have powerful gods and deities. These sky fantasies are said to perform many incredible feats of power and grandeur…all of the time. The Lord, the only God, the real Creator, Justifier and Sanctifier, as Trinitarian Lord, is so awesome and transcendent that these pantheons and demi-heroes of false-believers dim into imbecility and total irrelevance. But His power did not so awe Adam that rebellion was stayed. And it was not with glory and omnipotence that salvation was wrought.

   The first man’s sin required blood and sacrifice. Your sins, what you’ve done this very past week—what you’ve said, thought and done this morning—required blood and redemption!

   Not the fire and roar of Mount Horeb…though He did “shine as the sun.” Not the cloud about to rain of Mount Carmel…though the Father did overshadow them with the “bright cloud” of His Presence. Not the fellowship and camp-banquet of the Mount of Beatitude where He fed the 5,000 in a miraculous multiplication of fishes and loaves…though He did feed Saint Moses, Law-Giver, and the greatest of the Prophets Saint Elias, with manna and bread from Ravens, and this day with reassuring words of His upcoming Exodus.

   The Transfiguration showed the Disciples—the “inner three” just Who they would be Apostling for; Who they would be Ambassadors for—in the stead and by the command: Light of Light very God of very God! His whiteness would be there whiteness and all those who they would wash clean in His Blood and Water.

   The Transfiguration changed The Nazarene’s outward demeanor and appearance but not His Person. He remained exactly what He was at His conception in the Virgin’s Womb and what He was at His Nativity in the lowly stable—the flesh and blood God/Man—The Second Person of The Trinity in the flesh! Incarnate Man, temporarily showing forth veiled Divinity stood with sandal-clad feet on a real hill-top at a real time, in front of real witnesses. Saint Simon Peter wrote for the Church of all ages: “…we have not followed cunningly devised fables…but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God The Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount.” [2 Pe. 2. 16-18]. The Galilean fisherman died horribly for this confession of the Christ which he would not retract or deny. The sons of Zebedee also were martyred for the Truth of the Revelation of the God/Man and His Incarnation. They, the “sons of Thunder” knew well the story of Elias and the prophets of Baal; they and Peter, knew well the story of Moses at the Top of Horeb, surrounded by fire, lightning, thunder, and deep smoke and clouds. But the Law and the Prophets, as important, real and typological as they were and are, pale in and bow to the fullness of the Glory of God in the face—the real, fleshly, human face of Mary’s Son and their earthly Rabbi—the Messias Emmanuel!

   The Lord, flanked by the two greatest witnesses of Him in all of Hebrew writ—the physical embodiments of the Law—love God and love your neighbor—is The One Who did love, from mountain to + mountain. For “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Mt. 22. 40]   Yes, because He would hang off the ground pierced, scourged and immersed in the pit of sin, death, and hell for them, for the Disciples, and for all His flock.

   Did St. Peter think the Eschaton (the end of time) had come and that Messias was ushering in the age of the Kingdom of God on earth? Did he only want to prolong a moment of awesome glory? Was he afraid being in the presence of God as he was at the miraculous draught of fish? Peter was a sinner just like all of you. He wanted heaven without the cost; he desired Easter without Good Friday. He wanted glory and not the cross. Jesus says to all of you “get behind me Satan.” Repent and believe!

   David wanted to build the Temple and Peter wanted to build Three Tents…But Jesus would build a Mansion for them and all of you by re-building His Temple on the Third Day. A tent is secured by pegs driven into the ground and a temple is secured by pillars and superstructure driven into the earth. But the Temple of God was erected “for you” by the Tree that bore the bloody Body of God on the Mount called Calvaria, Kraniou (i.e. cranium), the “Place of the Skull.” Real flesh was driven into real wood.

   Not the high-ground of Eden or of Sinai or of Carmel or even of Olivet at the Ascension. The mountain is Moriah where Abraham was to have sacrificed his dear Son. God provided the substitute, the salvation, with a ram caught in a thicket. At the same spot God provided The Paschal Lamb Jesus to be the atoning redemption for your sins and your sin, and the worlds trespasses. Caught in the thicket—the thorns, spikes and evils of all of you—He was Transfigured on the crucifix. And though the earth became dark and black, His love shone like the sun, whiter than any fuller’s soap—for you. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do;” It is finished—you are absolved!

   You are Baptized and now your raiment is “white as the light.”  Drink the whiteness, the Righteousness of His love and eat the pureness of His Body at Eucharist.

“…ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” [2 Pe. 19.b]

    ^“This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” [Jn. 1.5-7]

In The Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost

The PURIFICATION OF MARY and THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD: Homily

“PURE AND PRESENTED”

Saint Luke 2. 22-32

THE PURIFCIATION OF MARY AND THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD

2 February Anno Domini 2014

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The + Name of Jesus

“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law.” [Gal. 4.4]

    The Lord made our Mother Saint Eve pure and capable of not sinning. He placed her in the temple of Eden. He presented her as bride to Adam.

    After His children rebelled and chose death rather than life, He went on loving them; loving them in blood. Instead of immediately taking their lives and damning them, He chose to sacrifice animals and clothe the man and his wife in the skins of the dead innocent.

    The Lord always loved and protected his children. He guarded and watched over Abraham and promised him that the seed, the redeeming Messias, would come from Father Abram’s own seed, which would be as the “sand of the shore.” God went to the Law-Giver Saint Moses. The Lord appeared to this royal shepherd in the bush which burned without being consumed. He carried Moses and all the children of Israel for 40 years through the dessert. The Lord fed them with His bread from heaven, His water from The Rock, and kept their clothes from wearing out. He brought them to the temple of Canaan as His royal bride of priests and presented them safe across the Jordan in the blood of four decades of slaughtered animals. Redemption is always secured by a substitute sacrifice and a stand-in scapegoat. In His loving Torah (Law) He gave them 10 Commands. He also gave them sacred ordinances. He required that the first son of every family be dedicated to Him. He took the tribe of Levi, the Priests, to stand-in for these first born sons, but, He still required the people to remember the sacrifice and the blood. Each family had to buy-back [Ex. 13.12] their first-born son with the price of a lamb.

    Had Eve and Adam loved as they had been created, child birth would have been pure (physically and spiritually) and no blood, no pain, no replacement sacrifice would have been needed. Eve gave birth to Cain in blood and Cain, the sinner, would later take Abel’s life in blood. Man’s blood is sinful and unclean and leads to only more shedding of blood. Only God’s Blood is pure and holy and worthy to be presented to the Throne of Majesty—the altar of Mercy. Blood poured on the Ark of the Covenant points to God’s Blood poured out on the Ark of the Crucifix—and the Church’s altars!

    For God, blood is life; blood is special and holy. God’s will was His way from the beginning, from before the beginning The Son was ordained as the vicarious atonement: “but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” [1 Pe. 1.19-20].

   To teach you this truth of the Crucifix, to teach His Old Testament people as well, women were Levitically, ceremonially, “unclean” for 40 days after the birth of their son. This was a “type” of desert wandering and “Lenten” preparation for when the Lord would usher them back into His holy presence through the blood of a lamb presented. Or, if not a lamb, two doves as the Holy Ghost prescribed in Leviticus 19: “…and when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering…unto the priest…who shall offer it before the Lord, and make an atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood.” [vv. 6-7]

   The Blessed Virgin, seed herself of David, the Guardian of Our Lord, Saint Joseph Carpenter, seed himself of David, faithful children of Israel by the Spirit, obeyed Torah and were led by that Holy Ghost to the Temple of God’s presence in obedience to His Law. They were not made for the Law but the Law was given for them and their life. The Law kills but the Good News of the Christ fulfills and satisfies the Law. Blood was already shed by infant Jesus on the 8^th day, and now, He would be presented in the Place of God, for He was God.

   Our Lutheran Fathers, before the “Renaissance,” “Enlightenment,” and Modernity’s inflated scientism, held that the Blessed Virgin was in need of no purification because of her own shed blood. The Symbols confess in the Solid Declaration of the Formula [BOC Jacobs p. 617 para 100]: “This mode (Christ’s Divinity and ability to be illocal as well as local) He used when He rose from the closed and sealed sepulchre, and passed through the closed door [to His Disciples], and in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper, and, as it is believed, when He was born of His mother [the most Holy Virgin Mary].

   But Saint Mary of Nazareth, and all men did and do need to be purified of their sins and of their sinful “old Adam” condition. Mary was purified by the Christ. Mary was purified when the Angel announced God’s presence, when the Paraclete overshadowed her, and when she carried God inside her Virgin womb. Mary and Joseph were purified when they carried the 40 day old infant God-babe into the Temple—for they had the True Temple in their hands and ears; their hearts and souls.

    Too poor to present a lamb for slaughter, the Virgin offered up the alternate two-turtle doves. Jesus true God and true Man is the twin-natured replacement for all mankind’s sin. The dove has always been a symbol of God’s peace (from Noah’s Ark to the Descent of the Spirit at Christ’s Baptism). The angels were singing Christ’s Truth on Christmas Eve for Jesus is Peace—your Peace with the Father. But Mary did in fact present a lamb to the Temple Priests. She presented THE LAMB, Agnus Dei, who as John Baptizer would announce takes away the sin of the world.  No more creeping death needs to be feared by you as it was by the Egyptians on that dark and horrible night. The Angel of The Lord, the Slayer of Sin, killed the first born son of every pagan family in the land…but death for sin and unbelief did not bypass or spare THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON of God. The Virgin Born Son was cut down, nailed up, and bled out…and there was blood everywhere. There was enough blood to fill every Church Chalice, every Baptismal Font, and every sinfully anemic brother and sister of Christ. There is enough blood to daily drown your old man!

   This Mass day, once again, it is the Lord Christ Jesus Who presents you to His Father pure and immaculate in His Body, washed clean and Holy in His Blood of Calvary, and fed that self-same immaculate and Sacred Body and Blood at the High Altar of Peace!

   Join the Virgin, you who like her are the Spotless Bride of The Christ, join the Saints and Seraphs by being in + THE Temple and having THE Temple in you. Be blessed and purified and presented in Him and depart in Peace!

In The Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost