“Christ’s Multiplication of Mercy in The Mass”
Saint John 6: 1-15
Laetare: 26 March Anno Domini 2017
Father Jay Watson SSP
How fitting that yesterday was the great Feast of The Annunciation of our Lord. The day when the faith produced “work” of our Lady followed upon the Grace bestowed Evangel of God through the archangel. The Incarnation occurred and the first Christmas was set into preparation—a far greater Feast than any Passover…and God dwelling with men, with you, changed everything.
Today’s Laetare Introit has you singing “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and be glad with her.” “Her:” feminine. You joy not over the ancient city which is no more but over Saint John’s Apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from above: The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Again, fitting that Christ’s Church is typified by the Blessed Virgin. The Church must always be mother and children; Saint Mary and Saint John; Bride and Groom; Pastor and Parishioners; and the Suffering Servant and His Royal Priestly guests.
The Church feeds. Jesus feeds. Christ feeds through the Church. He gave His bride the Word but His Apostolic Ministers were entrusted to preach it. He bestowed His “keys” to the Priesthood but entrusted His stewards to administer the losing and binding. The gift of feeding the sheep comes from Jesus Himself but it is served by His Under-Shepherds using His appointed means. Christs interacts with you is all those ways that you can hear, taste, smell, and feel, His invisible yet actual presence.
Today’s Gospel is the beginning of John’s glorious 6th chapter. The same setting whereupon finishing the loaves and fishes miracle, this “son of thunder” immediately goes on to record, to “thunder,” the sundering discourse of Christ on the true Bread of Life.
The “multitude” followed The Lord, then, because they saw the “signs” which He performed upon them that were diseased. Today, the only “sign” is the “sign of Jonas—the + sign of The Cross.” For the ultimate and final eternal glory of permanent healing and peace, which is given this morning in the forgiveness of sins, can only be perceived, can only be “seen” and received by faith.
The angry mobs that swarmed Moses demanded more and better and NOW “signs” …when THEY wanted them! They were not content to be sheep, to wait and trust. They lived by their “eyeballs” and stomachs, and were not even able to wait 40 days for their pastor to return from a face-to-face encounter with The Living God.
Today’s mobs wander and flit from pastor to pastor, i.e. from pasture to pasture—church to church—like they’re surfing a buffet or a carnival side-show. And Lutherans, the true heirs of both the Church Catholic and its life-giving Evangel, the ones who care about this text, fall victim to scholasticism and protestant reformed exegesis. To receive from these first 15 verses of John only God’s awesomeness and generosity with food is to miss the Kingdom of God which is the King giving Himself as the banquet.
ALL of John’s words—i.e. all of The Holy Ghost’s words: JESUS, are infused with, and crackling and sparkling over with the spiritual, creative, energizing, energy of The Godhead. All the words of Christ are Christ—The fiery, blazing, hot, purifying, cosmically radiating Righteousness of The God/Man. All of John 6 is Sacramental because all of Jesus is Sacramental. All of The word is Sacramental. All forgiveness of sins is Sacramental because it strengthens and preserves you in the one true faith-JESUS until life everlasting.
The Jewish Passover is over. You will commemorate the institution of the New Testament Passover, the Weekly Mass—The Sacrament of The Altar—when you meet here again on April 13th for Holy Thursday. Then, but also, this morning, Jesus lifts up His eyes, by the eyes of His pastor, and truly knows that the few I. Donnelly wheat wafers and the Yellow Tail chardonnay in the Wal-Mart cruet are not sufficient for the great multitude in Augsburg’s nave. But Jesus has His Under-Shepherd take these “five loaves and two small fish” for He knows He will forgive you through the eating and drinking. Not that the eating and drinking are the chief thing, though they must occur, though you must receive His true Body and true Blood on your tongues and into your bodies, but that He gives you a feeding of Faith to believe His words: “given and shed for you; for the forgiveness of sins.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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