“GRACE PASSIVELY RECEIVED”
Saint Luke 8: 4-15
Sexagesima: 31 January Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
There is no “we” in salvation. There is no group activity with a partner in becoming a Christian. The wages for keeping all the Law of God’s work goes to but one Name; a Name above all names. And The Crucifix is a single seat ride to suffering and death.
The overflowing table and the filled banquet hall come after The Lord carries all the street people in to the family festivities. The united and safe sheepfold resting safely behind The Shepherd’s fences, and grazing on the good sweet grass of green pastures, comes after The Lord rescues each lamb by His own sacrifice to the wolves; and to the dragon.
No matter how small you may look, or how insignificant and alone you may feel, it is an overflowing wedding feast and a vast fold of sheep because The Lord is gracious and generous, not wishing any to be lost, and because He said so: “much people gathered.” Those in His arms are not there because they’re related to you or of your ethnic tribe; there will be Jews and Gentiles. God so loved the world: “gathered to Him out of every city.”
Christ spoke in parables not because He wished to push people away but because His gathering, His saving, His work, did not, and does not, depend upon or require in any way (not even 1/10 of 1%) the work, assistance, or cooperation of those being saved. “Seeing,” i.e. being a rational and reasoning moral agent capable of utilizing deductive and inductive reasoning, logic, mathematics, and scientific inquiry of flawless empirical nature is not how one is rescued—not how a good crop is grown.
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Faith comes by hearing The Christ—The Word of God. His Word, i.e. His Person saves. A scandal of exclusivity and particularity it is.
“A” Sower went out to sow His Seed. God is that Sower and no one else. Jesus The Christ, God the Second Person, is that Sower and no one else. The Father and The Spirit with The Messiah is that Sower, period. The Seed is the word of God. And it was always that way—way before Moses had anything written down, before Paul wrote his first letter, and before Saint Luke and the other three Evangelists put their first word on paper. Faith, the fruit of the growing crop, comes only from, by, and through The Word of God. Jesus is that Word.
The Word of God, Jesus, i.e. Jesus through His preached Words—The Holy Scriptures—is sown to the entire world—to all people. That is what He does. That is how He gives you the benefit of Calvary.
Most try not to hear—they are natural born man, enemies of God. They are to be sown nonetheless by Christ’s church—by His sent ones. Many, most, who knows the number, will have it slough off and be trodden down by their pagan resistance, by “old Adam” refusal, and then the fowls of the air, the devil’s demonic bats, “fowls of sulfur” will scatter the seed and devour the prideful.
The self-possessed, heard-hearted and stiff-necked, be they Pharisee Jew or Pharisee German, or Hypocritical American, will tighten the fist of a blackened heart to resist the seeds penetration. Without the Water of + Rebirth the seed remains “unheard,” and so those enemies wither away to be tossed into the furnace. Jesus wants His Apostles to baptize all nations, and teach them, through the sowing of His Word. The moisture of Christ’s continuing Word, through Absolution, Preaching and Supper must water continually for life to endure.
The thorns of the world and the sinful flesh; of mammon and greed, and ego, choke God’s Word out of the life of many, most, who knows the number?
Jesus went to all the way sides. He took flesh and blood, a human nature, from His mother the Blessed Virgin. He went to all the lost sheep of Israel. He went to the desert, not of Sinai, but all sin, that He might rescue the hungry and thirsty by being hungry and thirsty for all of them, for Moses, for you. He suffered the devil’s assault. He drove away the fowls of the air and the very “prince of the air” with the Word of God—The Seed!
Christ breaks up the rocky and barren soil by His Preaching of the Law to be sure, “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand,” but more so by His fulfilling of all the Law. He is the rock of ages, and He was cleft for you on the tree. He is the scandal to unbelievers crushing them like a boulder, but He is to you, your Mighty Fortress and Foundation, the capstone and cornerstone of His mighty Temple—the Church, AND, your bodies! The water from the rock, struck not only by Moses’ staff but by the Roman’s spear, waters you—drenches you with + The Word. He is your Root, for He is the Root and Stem of Jesse, the very Vine of Victory and Eternity to which you have been + grafted into for abundant life! In Him, as His Body, His Church, His Mother, His sisters, His brothers, you are the fecund, fertile, life-generating good soil that hold His Word sacred and gladly hears and does it. You bear fruit by eating and drinking The Fruit of The Tree of Life and you bear “an hundredfold” by being the elect and perfect hundredfold of His fold!
He, and she, who has ears—you hear!
Unto you it is given to know the mysteries, the Sacraments, The Word made flesh—His Words and His Sacramental Word, of the Kingdom of God. You understand, because, by Grace through Faith in Christ you have received.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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