QUINQUAGESIMA: Homily

“ACCOMPLISHED”

Saint Luke 18. 31-43

Quinquagesima: 10 February Anno Domini 2013

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The Name + of Jesus

   Pre-lent ends this Ash Wednesday. The Lord has led you with Peter, James, and John off Mt. Tabor and down into the plain. But your 40 day trek through the penitential Lenten-Lands is ongoing until the Eschaton.

   The Reformer wrote in the first of his 95 Theses: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said ‘Repent ye,’ willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”  So then, repent. Repent and believe. Daily drown your “old Adams” by both confessing your sins—and by fighting against repeating them.  Run the race through the desert course upon THE WAY and not in the ditches.

   Today, and every day, “…behold, [you] go up to Jerusalem.”  You are the “twelve,” not Apostles, but brethren of The Christ.  When he tells the twelve that they must pick up their cross and follow Him, His words also apply to you! Repent and believe.

“All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.”  His written last will & testament, the Scriptures, show all Jesus has accomplished in His person and work. The God/Man incarnate obeying the Law and dying on the Cross for your breaking the Law. Everything in the Bible points to Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins—which presupposes your heinous sins—for that which would require the bloody death of God is abominable indeed!

   You’re not alone on your Lenten Exodus. While walking through the shadow of death towards death, He is with you! Your journey is one covered with ashes for you do lament your trespasses. Your exterior ashes keep you mindful of your interior decay. But you are not alone. The Tabernacle of the Most High is in your midst. The Tent of the Trinity—Christ enfleshed and IN YOU, leads you, rear-guards you, and flanks you in His arms of strength.  But, all things must be accomplished in your lives as well. Yes, you are saved for you are + washed. But yes, too, you are and remain His sheepfold and His followers.  What happened to Him will happen to you; He has told you so that you neither fear nor resent the trials when they come.  You are to be LIKE your master which means you are to be cruciform if not literally crucified. You are to bear in your flesh the shape of His atonement for you.  You carry your cross in Faith, but also in daily repentance and Spirit-endured sanctified struggles. 

   You worry to excess about gun-rights, sodomite rights, socialist redistribution rights, when you should be focused on being: delivered unto the Gentiles, mocked, spitefully entreated and spitted on for bearing the Name of Jesus and for loving your enemies and forgiving your persecutors.  Those who turn from Christ’s command to fight the war within their own sinful breast, to fight a self-chosen war of vengeance, payback, hurt-feelings, and pride, will be damned casualties. They will be carrion treated by the demons the same way King Saul was treated by the Philistines. Repent.

   You have been cursed by the world, Satan’s whore, to remember good and better days, secularly-speaking. But by romanticizing the late 40’s and 50’s, or enshrining some particular so-called conservative president or era, you have been blinded to the 2,000 years of bloody, painful, and NECESSARY Christian exodus to the gates of splendor.  You will be scourged and put to death.

   But remember Saints, your victorious Army is filled with Prophets, Patriarchs, Confessors, Apostles, Evangelists, the Host of Sabaoth, the Blessed Virgin and all the Church Catholic.  Your company is the Holy Company of the Body and Blood, of the He Who rose again!  The Shekinah and Kavod of the Tabernacle, the glory of the Lord of Hosts, is in your ears and on your tongue in Christ Jesus’ True Presence!

    The story of Jericho’s blind beggar is the story of how the Word allows the sinful and blind to understand the things of the Lord.  Like Bartimaeus you beg for the things that you think you need, the “wants,” which are usually selfish.  Only God the Spirit changes your ego-wants to His Christ formed, cruciform petitions: “Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.”  Kyrie Elieson. 

   Your sins are forgiven in Jesus’ bloody Body. Your sins are washed away in His Blood and water which + gave you life. You have sight and faith which receives all that Jesus has accomplished. 

   Jesus has saved you, saves you, and will bring you across the Jordan of His Blood by His Blood into the Promised Land of His Body by His Body.

   Come now to His Altar, His Ark of the New Testament to receive the New Testament. Come and receive mercy IN HIM.

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