“Showing Yourselves to THE PRIEST, You are Cleansed”
Saint Luke 17: 11-19
14th Sunday After Trinity: 28 August Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
“And He turned Him unto His disciples.” The God/Man has been turning unto His own since before the foundation of the world. In eternity, when He was only The Word, only God, not yet the God/Man…before The Annunciation from Saint Gabriel, the overshadowing by The Holy Ghost, and the Nativity in Bethlehem, He was loving and sacrificing for all those who would become His, because He loved them—He elected and predestined them.
The fact that The Lord would speak privately to Peter, the “12,” does not mean that God does not love the world, only that many are called and few are chosen. It means that the Good News of Christ’s work of perfect obedience, perfectly keeping God’s Ten Commandments will not be believed and grasped by many, by most. It means that the sweetest Evangel of Jesus’ work of suffering and dying on the cross to pay, to substitute, to replace your just and righteous punishment will not be believed and grasped by many, by most. So yes, Jesus talks privately to His lambs because He is their Shepherd; it’s like a Father talking to His own children; a husband talking privately to His own wife.
And what does the Savior of His flock say to the “12” and to all His New Testament disciples even to this day? “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see.” Christ is not talking literally about observing stuff that He has been doing in His traveling ministry. To be sure, the healings were all “signs” that The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, indeed, in their very midst. But the Gadarenes saw the “sign” of the healed demoniacs and asked The Nazarene to depart from their country. The Pharisees saw the miracles and said: “He casts out demons by Beelzebub the prince of demons.” Caiaphas heard what his spies reported about Lazarus’ resurrection from the dead and he and the Sanhedrin decided Jesus had to be killed and killed quickly. No, seeing is not believing. The devil can appear as an angel of light. So what does The Lord mean?
“Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” You may think you see a tiny parish meeting in a house. What really exists here is a corner section of a large heavenly—sized table of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. You may think you only see 14 or so people. What really exists is The Mass being celebrated with legions of seraphs and cherubs, Patriarchs, Prophets, Priests, Kings, Apostles, Evangelists, and all the host of heaven. You may think you see an aging congregation filled with greying heads, diminishing eyes, balding pates, increasing waste lines and corresponding bad backs, stiffening joints, hands, knees, and hearts that don’t work as well as they once did…maybe even chronic and life-threatening diseases. What really exists here is tight-knit family that is cleaner and whiter than pure snow; that is greener and more filled with new growth and life than a forest of scotch-pine saplings; that is friskier and more joyful than a litter of young lambs or fawns leaping and cavorting on a hillside. What God sees from this side of the pulpit when He looks upon you His children are royal priests, true sons and daughters of Adam and Eve before the fall…brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus forgiven, pardoned, and restored to full family heirship. While to your physical eyes your bodies may be dying, to the eyes of Jesus, and to your eyes of faith—YOUR EARS which hang on His every word of peace—your New Man, or New Woman is getting stronger every day in the faith that His Grace. With the eyes of faith you too see your siblings as young eagles gathered around the Body.
The Lord’s Words cause your ears (the eyes of the spirit) to hear and believe His Sacred Law. You are condemned and laid in the tomb of trespasses dead and damned. You are the priest and Levite that refuse to help the “certain man” stripped and left for dead on the road to Jericho. The Disciples also saw that the wages of sin is death. What did they see during their three years of Seminary with Christ? They beheld horrible leprosy and excommunication; dropsy and demon possession; cripples, and deaf mutes; blind, beggars, prostitutes, cheats, bent and flowing blood women, and sadness unto death. They saw what you see and what you experience. They also “saw” what their Rabbi did when he confronted the kingdom of Satan—how He bound the “strong man” and plundered his goods by loosing and freeing those bound in the fetters of “old Adam” sin and bondage to death. But it was not the physical healings that Christ performed, the cleansings, the mercy, and the power (walking on water, stilling the storm) that are “those things” which “many prophets and kings ha[d] desired to see” which the “12” did see with eyeballs. It was The Word itself, and The Word made Flesh. Abraham heard the words of God. Abraham saw visual theophanies. So too did the great Moses, for The Lord spoke to him as a friend—from the burning bush and from the tabernacling fire of His Holy Presence over the Ark. The Hebrews “saw” the miracles of Moses, Joshua, Samson, Gideon, Elias, and Elisha…and knew them to be the mighty acts of God Himself. But the “12” they heard the very voice of God from the lips of the God/Man Christ Jesus—the Incarnate Deity. They beheld His Body and Blood from the moment it was drenched in typological Blood by John the Baptist’s hand in the Jordan, to the moment it was nailed to the Tree by the Romans at Calvary, to the very touching and handling of the salvific wounds by their own fingers on Easter eve. Paul was in the presence of the Resurrected God/Man both on the Road to Damascus and then on subsequent occasions. And the entire early Church saw Christ again and again on the altar and on their tongues in the Blessed Mass. Look at the altar top, the pastor’s hands, during the Eucharist and truly “see,” that is, hear and believe the Words of Christ: “for you!”
Take your place with your brothers and sisters of antiquity and recent history & memory dear children. Come to His font and pulpit and communion rail and “hear those things which ye hear:” And, be extra joyful that finally your Fathers Adam, Abel, Jacob, Judah, Moses, David, Jeremiah, the Blessed Virgin also hear, and “see them” with you this glorious day. I forgive you. Take eat this is My Body. Take drink this is My Blood.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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