QUINQUAGESIMA: Homily

“THE SON OF GOD MAKES SONS OF GOD”
Saint Luke 18. 31-43

QUINQUAGESIMA: 2 March Anno Domini 2014

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The Name + of Jesus

   Peter’s name was Simon; Simon Bar-Jonah which means son of Jonah (i.e. son of John). My own surname has its antecedents in someone who was once the son of Wat; hence also Anderson, Johnson, Peterson, etc. The blind man that Christ encounters is named only by his family name, not his first name, and not yet…by his “Christian” name.

   Blind Bartimaeus…the son of Timaeus, is really to be the son of a man, and, is to be blind. To be Cain, or even Abel, is to be a son of old Adam and to be blind, deaf, dumb, impotent and an enemy of The Lord.

   There was a theory that the last image a person saw before they died was exactly what they saw before they breathed their last breath—a potential boon to crime/murder detection—or so it was thought.

   All men born of man are born dead in their trespasses. Dead men see nothing. Dead men hear nothing. Dead men cannot do anything. Hence the false-teaching of Protestants—Arminianism and even Romanist and Eastern Orthodox synergism—is refuted by nature as well as by Holy Scripture!

   How surprised the blind man must have been. He did nothing and Jesus did everything. Jesus came to him. Jesus came to him even before the Lord’s corporeal Body and Blood walked down the alley way near to where Bartimaeus was begging. The Word of God had been planted in him, somehow, from and by someone, even before that fateful day. The Word works. Only the Word works. Bartimaeus was as surprised and amazed at this gracious gift (GRACE: undeserved mercy) as were the workers hired at the 11^th hour, and as the ground that had fertile seed sown and strewn into it!

   Repent. Only the blind who know they’re blind desire to see. Only the man who laments the fact that he’s always angry and bitter craves to be at rest and peace. Only the gossiper who constantly tastes the bile and acid of a mean tongue and poison heart yearns for a loving voice and a charitable heart. The Law of Christ shows in a mirror of truth and clarity just how fall from the mark you really are. Only those who refuse to forgive are bound in their chains. Hardness of heart only leads to hardness of body in time and in eternity. A stiff neck and an unforgiving soul will be stiff as wood as it’s forever burned over and over again into coal in hell-fire. Repent. Repent not just in cheap words but in earnest Holy-Spirit wrought desire. And when you don’t “feel” that compulsion, pray for more mercy from Jesus the healer of the blind, and come to Confession to speak with the lips which He has opened for you in your own Baptismal healing.

   The Grace that forgives you and Bartimaeus from your sins and sin, is the Grace that restores your spiritual sight to behold the face of God in the face of Christ Jesus. His face, while no longer visible is nonetheless present. His face speaks through His Word of Holy Scripture. His face continues to wet you down + from the heat of the day and soothes your parched trials. His face is the face of your real and true Communion Server who gives you the Blood and Body from the Face of His Cross, the Face of His Resurrection, and the Face of His current enthronement on the Right Hand of Majesty!

^“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”  Come and join the man once known as Bar-Timaeus but now known as a “Son of God”—Abba Father, and abide in the presence of Peace! “Receive thy sight!”

^“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

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

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

Third Sunday after The EPIPHANY: Homily

“HEALED THIS SAME HOUR”

Saint Matthew 8. 1-13

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany: 26 January 2014

(edited & revised from an earlier preached version)

Fr. Jay Watson SSP

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

   When Moses came down the mountain, great multitudes were caught with their pants down. The stiff-necked and willful Israelites had given up waiting for their fallible pastor. This is what sinners do. Today’s congregations are true brethren of those Hebrew hedonists. It’s what sin does. The “old Adam” can’t wait in patience or pray in watchfulness.  Fallen nature does not abide things unseen and un-proven.

   The Jews wanted a God Who was grand the way they desired Him to be grand. The miracles worked on Pharaoh and in the desert were good, but too far and few between to keep their spiritual immaturity stimulated after only 40 days of silence.

   The multitude didn’t follow Moses they fled from Him.  They fled from the consequences of the real Law of God: obey or die.  Many of them were slain that day. The ground ran red with the blood of unbelief.

   The Law of one’s own choosing is more acceptable.  People, just like children, love to follow easy rules that provide rewards.  It’s more “do-able” to worship a Golden Calf than an unseen Being of unwavering expectations. It’s far more affirming to perform activities of one’s own choosing than to be brought in to a Liturgy of the great “I AM” Who not only does all the doing, but still demands perfect Love.

   All sinners, all humans are diseased and lazy. Sin brings the wages that terminate the symptoms of hurt, unhappiness, depression, old age, sickness, estrangement.  That pay-off is death.  Congenital and in-born spiritual sloth results in sinners refusing, indeed being incapable of, fixing things themselves. The best that the pagan, or the sinful “old man” can do is to dance around the Golden Calf.

   When the Lord came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. “For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”  [St. Jn. 1.17]

   You don’t need Moses making you drink the ground up tablets and ordering your death by sword if you already know you’re dying and have given up hope in your own abilities to save the situation. Even as the Law need not be preached the same way at a funeral as it is on Sunday (it still needs to be preached but in a subtle way), so too the Law was thundered into the rotting puss-filled face of a Leper whose own tears and pleas showed that the Law had already done its work.  It had. “And behold, a leper came and worshipped Him, saying “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”

   The Leper believed Jesus was the only person Who could heal him.  He believed Jesus was the long-promised Messiah.  It wasn’t the man’s faith that loosed him from his physical ravages; rather it was the Grace of Christ.  Jesus is the Way and the Truth, yes, but He is also the Life.  Only in Christ is there life now, through forgiveness of sins, and life hereafter through salvation worked by Grace through Faith.

   The Leper knew he couldn’t cure himself but he had faith that the Rabbi from Nazareth could. The Leper experienced first-hand, in his own body, a miracle of almost unprecedented wonder. The healing was almost singular but for the fact that even in the distant past times of Moses, God had healed Miriam of her temporary leprosy. God had healed her as only God can. And in today’s Gospel, for this newly washed and clean man (baptized into + Christ most holy), the light went on, if it hadn’t already prior to his plaintive request, Jesus is God!

   Yes, you too flee from Mt. Sinai, either pretending that it doesn’t exist or doesn’t really pertain to you--after all, you’re pretty good, you love your kids and spouse and are a patriotic citizen. And while the mountain doesn’t chase after you, the two Stone Tablets are always there sitting on your chest with all the weight of the universe: Love God perfectly or die; love that rotten neighbor—the one that defamed your family or spouse, that hurt your feelings, that let you down when you trusted in them—love them perfectly or die. Repent.

   Breathe deeply through your ears beloved leprous brethren, for the crushing weight has been lifted off of your windpipe; the cancerous tentacles have been cut off your spiritual spine, the leprosy has been washed away by the Second Mountain, Mt. Calvary.

    And yes, that mountain doesn’t come for you itself, but the God-Man Who suffered and died there does. The same Lord Jesus who healed the leper and Who healed the Centurion’s servant comes right up into your face this morning in the third and most intimate mountain; Mount Zion—the Church itself. It is in this mountain; here today, that Christ applies Himself into your ears and upon your tongues. It is here that he puts out His hand and touches your forehead, your chest, your heart, soul, spirit and mind, and says “I Am willing be cleansed.”

“Go your way, the way of Him Who is The Way, and as you have believed, so let it be done for you”

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

2nd Sunday after The EPIPHANY: Homily

“CANA CONTINUES IN CHRIST”

Saint John 2. 1-11

2^nd Sunday after Epiphany: 19 January Anno Domini 2014

Sermon Text taken from a Family Devotion written by Bishop Nils Laache c. 1884

Modified, added to, and amended by Fr. Jay Watson SSP

In The Name + of Jesus

   Our Lord may have performed miracles before the revelation of Holy Writ, but we don’t know them because God did not preserve them for our learning, marking, and digesting. While some consider Jesus’ encounter with the Apostle St. Nathanael (Bartholomew) in John’s Evangel [Jn. 1. 44-50] to be the Christ’s first miracle, it is our lection this morning that IS considered Jesus’ First Public Miracle!

   This supernatural wonder was done before the “12”—producing eye-witnesses and, thus, a contemporary account. This sign was done at a wedding. There is a reason, many reasons, that the Lord chose such a celebration for His revelation.

   The creator who made the earth, the vines, the grapes, and everything else—including the bride and groom—turns (transubstantiates) water into wine and thus changes this Cana ceremony from emptiness to fullness, from potential ennui into full joy!

   Matrimony is God’s core and crux of His highest creation—man; “in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.”  [Gen. 1.27]  “And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmate for him.”  Jesus said: “a man [shall] leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” [Mt. 19. 5-6] The first two, your “parents,” become one flesh. God created this holy comm[union] and sanctified it in the sanctified garden—the original “marriage hall.”  And when fellowship with God was shattered at the tree, so too was true fellowship with one’s help-mate and head.  Since sin corrupted not just the ground and the individual’s own body, but also the beloved as well, sin has raged through the ages against all husbands and wives.  Satan understands, with a twisted animal cunning, that he rots marriages and thus perverts the true and perfect picture of Christ and His own Bride the Church.  The devil by severing man from God severs man from woman…the carnage is horrendous: adultery, divorce, spousal abuse, abandonments, abortions, rampant promiscuity, loneliness, unnatural affections, and an endless list of tears and heartbreaks.

    You the brethren of the Nazarene, like the “12” are also His Holy spotless Bride as the elect ekklesia—the Church!  And thus, you loathe and despise the falsehoods of Satan.  By the power of the Holy Ghost your new creation confesses and fights for the sacred and unbreakable “let not man put asunder” nature of Holy Marriage.

    Why did Christ let His Divine Nature peek forth for a moment at Cana? Why was this miracle shared with an unnamed couple?

   Jesus is the God/Man and all that He does, all that He is, is to forgive and save—not just to rescue and redeem, but to give Life in its abundance; to give peace and family!  Messias was in that house at that feast to drive the devil out of the banquet hall and back to hell.  The Lord was there, as He is here in this nuptial hall, to create and sustain for Himself not independent people without burdens and restraints, but a Holy People, a peculiar people strong in faith which produces good works and good hearts.  To drink the heart of God is to drink the Blood which flowed, and flows, from that heart. Water that become wine pointed forward to wine that becomes The Blood of The Lamb!

   He takes infants in His arms by the Sacrament of Holy + Washing, catechizes the young to fear God by feeding them the Word, and is with them in their own marriages “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” [Eccl. 4.12]  Jesus enters the marriage, their marriage and YOUR marriage as the Third strand Who is the FIRST and ETERNAL strand. He then twists the two strands in, with, and under Him so that unity in community would be sanctified. Christ sees that the children, the fruit of the womb, might also be Holy, fed by the Paraclete and also brought to the Font that the birthing cycle would continue in His Water and Blood.

    Jesus draws to Himself a bride on earth: “for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.  For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.  For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” [Eph. 5. 23-32]

   Jesus fights for His spouse collectively and individually in each of your lives—when you are single (and the gift of purity, chaste and celibate virginity is a high, high gift indeed) or when you have a spouse.  But remember; the water of tears becomes the wine of gladness and merriment.  Water brings life and wine brings table joy!  Baptism ushers and initiates and the Sacrament of the Altar brings spiritual joy and peace.  The Lord’s time came that day in Cana, at least for a moment; His time has now come in fullness and abundance—the fast is over.

   The filthiness of your good works is cleansed and that mediocrity of cheap wine is trumped. The Law’s five stone jars is now fulfilled and FILLED with the sweet fine wine of Jesus’ obedience and atonement.

   His “Highly favoured” Mother, the Blessed Virgin, submits to His word and will, even as her “fiat” acquiesced through the Spirit’s Grace to Gabriel’s Gospel.  Mary on behalf of the Church says well: “whatever He says…”

    This is your wedding, this morning’s meal and every day’s nourishment as well; Jesus is with you!

Drink deeply spotless and pure blessed Bride. The Kingdom of Heaven is with you. The King is with you and in you!

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

COUGH, COUGH *

* (but not like Ozzy before Sweat Leaf)

The Rev'd Dr. David P. Scaer used to say: "Gentlemen, get used to the incense NOW, because they'll be plenty of it in heaven!"
Ha-rumph!