“CHRIST THE PRESENCE, CHRIST THE MEAT”
Saint Luke 14: 1-11
17th Sunday after Trinity: 23 September Anno Domini 2018
Father Jay Watson SSP
The essential things that all people need, and that The Lord KNOWS His own children need are food, drink, clothing, and shelter. But even more importantly—see Genesis—“it is not good that the man be alone”—companionship is needed, family, fellowship, communion!
Especially in St. Luke’s Evangel, The Lord is seen to be involved in table fellowship on multiple occasions: eating and drinking AND teaching. Christ’s True Church today must never neglect any of these things. A Church that only teaches but neglects the Truths of The Sacrament of The Altar is flawed greatly. A community that celebrates The Mass reverently but neglects to catechize on the truths of The Holy Word, both inscripturated and enfleshed, is flawed greatly. Thanks be to God that His people here can have Jesus come into this house to not “eat bread” with you on THIS Sunday, not the Sabbath of Christ’s rest but the eternal rest in Peace, by giving you The Bread of Heaven to eat.
One might think it good that the Pharisees were “watching” Jesus. Not so. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing, by the Word of God. They knew what God had been teaching. They rejected it. Those today who are professed agnostics, atheists, and dismissers of Jesus, are not the wise, discerning, and skeptical “intelligentsia” that they think they are; they are simply hard-hearted, self-deluded, unbelieving little monsters with their scaly fingers stuck in their own ears, shouting “naaah-na-naaah-na.” They are like the “rich man” Dives, who pleads from hell that “if one were to return from the dead” then his pagan brothers would believe. No. Man, by nature is evil, murdering, and rejecting. Only The Lord by The Word, Christ brought by The Holy Ghost through The Word, creates faith and saves—Heals!
In our Gospel Jesus restores to health and man who had dropsy (i.e. edema; an abnormal swelling disease). In fact, your fallen sinful nature is touched by The Law, at first, whenever you hear of one of these glorious physical healings of Christ. You at first almost become angry and jealous because He healed them but He hasn’t healed you.
Your old sinful selves need to be slain; need to repent and receive Him Who comes to feed you and love you. For you too are great hypocrites. You do all sorts of things for yourselves without ever helping your neighbors, your adversaries, and your enemies. You think you are kings, and popes, and “masters of your fates” but you are not. If you continue to take the “highest rooms” (i.e. the highest seats, positions, and offices) than you will be like the heathenish Asherah poles and groves to Baalim on the high places of your own pride. Like the Tower of Babel, great will be the fall for all standing on the sand of man—which reverts to the dust and ash of death; ask Adam.
Jesus know that you are the ass or ox fallen into a pit. You were conceived and born in sin. The wages of sin is dropsy and all other diseases and sadnesses. You are not so much punished for any individual sin but you do age, suffer and disease away, on a long 40-year march to death, because you are “man” you are sinner. So, the ox can’t get out of the well, it can’t cooperate, neither can the lost sheep. The ox can’t do anything because it’s dead.
Jesus is The Savior and He is your Savior. He became the slain ox, that the Old Testament, Genesis through Deuteronomy (and the rest) slain sacrifices pointed to. Jesus rode the ass of your failure to love, to obey, to be the “son of God,” all the way from Olivet to Jerusalem to Golgotha and to Hell, to become the ass on the cross, the worm of all sin, that He might take the lowest of all “rooms” for you and in place of you.
And yes, now that you have been pulled out of the pit, now that you have been given new life (A Baptismal + regeneration and rebirth), now that you have been given a family, a Holy Groom, and a blood-bought guarantee that one day soon your dropsy will be gone…now what? Well, I suppose I could tell you what you now need to be doing, to be working at, ways to better love your neighbor and God; ways to stop being pharisaical. Come to Bible Class today. But even that statement is the Law.
Jesus says instead, I say “in the stead and by His command,” “Friends, (brothers and sisters) (come) up higher, (come to altar and the rail) (you) shalt have worship (i.e. you will receive) in (His) presence of them that sit at meat (Him).” Be exalted in His Body and Blood. He answers all things!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194