“IN CHRIST, NO ONE IS LOST”
Saint John 6: 1-15
Laetare: 22 March Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
“After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed Him.”
What about the “these things” that are happening right now in Johnson County, Kansas, America, Italy, China, and the rest of the world? The virus itself, latching on to humans like a demonic parasite, is going over many seas to become, indeed, pandemic—“all people” affected. Did Jesus go too? The text is clear, He did. Does He still go, does He still come, is He still here? Yes. “Lo, I AM with you alway, even unto the end of the world;” “where two or three are gathered in My Name, there AM I in the midst of them.”
But for the exact “kind” and “type” of our current situation, the faithful Churches in America, might well see an increase in attendance this 22nd day of March…maybe even per the text: “a great multitude followed Him.” The crowd that Saint John, saw, and recorded, that “followed Him,” did so because they “saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased.” My dear brothers and sisters, THAT is a perfect and God pleasing reason to begin following and being in the presence of Christ. It is at the basic level recognizing that this Jesus is no mere normal Rabbi, no simple man, but Messiah. And some were being brought by The Holy Spirit to faith in the reality that this Nazarene was the I AM, the Immanuel, the God/Man.
We pray that our fellow neighbors and countrymen who are pagan, heathen, heretical, or nothing, would be brought to following the real and Scriptural Jesus, as this contagion and fear strip away their reliance and trust on themselves and their rulers. Only Jesus saves. Only The Lord gives the true Peace which passes understanding. It’s called faith. Faith is purely a free gift from God. Faith comes by The Word of God. That Word is Jesus—His Words and His Sacramental Words: PERIOD!
In the appointed Gospel text, Jesus then goes up into a mountain and sat with His Disciples. Yes, and this should make you think of the time He was on the mountains called Sinai with His disciple Moses. There He gave the Law. The Law which kills. The Commandments, unlike the coronavirus, kill everyone with a lethality of 100%.
On another mountain, so meek and mild, it wasn’t a real mountain, but more of an elevated hillock, either scattered with bones—skulls, or resembling a skull from a distance. At this “Mount” Calvary, Jesus gave the answer to The Law by becoming the all-availing sacrifice to The Father’s wrath against sin. At this Holy Mountain, the perfectly Holy and innocent One suffered and died for your transgressions and for all sin and for sin’s deathly affects. Jesus suffered and died for Covid 19, along with all other horrible, regular, and, common diseases as well. He did not have trouble breathing because of an invisible virus; He slowly and painfully asphyxiated to death bearing the weight of the world’s badness, and all of yours as well. This is Love. This is sacrifice “for you!” This is the true passover feast of the New Israel. While earthly death, whenever it might come for us, is not canceled out, eternal death and hell have already been paid for, and suffered for, by The Lamb of God—His blood slathered all over the lintel and door posts of the scarlet stained crucifix.
Sts. Philip and Andrew, and the other 10, were greatly concerned that the very large crowd had nothing to eat. Without grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, and other essential health providers—people become sick, weak, and starve to death.
The God that let His innocent Body be nailed to a tree to die a horrible death understands this; Jesus “totally gets” all the anxiety and fear and bewilderment that the world’s brokenness produces in His people. He felt compassion on the crowd of 5,000 “that” day and He still has perfect and complete compassion on the crowds of today—even when they are being regulated down to crowds of less than ten, or, as they will be, to immediate nuclear families “sheltering-in-place.” Jesus KNOWS and CARES about His sheep. He is the Shepherd that will never let you starve. He feeds you.
If He could multiply five barley loaves and two fish to feed 5,000—and He can and He did; than He can take wine and wafer-thin bread and Sacramentally unite it with His actual, real, and true, Body and Blood—which He can do and will do.
2,000 years ago He gave their belly’s some sustenance for physical strength and health—an antidote against fainting and stumbling. And now, this very morning, in the midst of an emergency that is unique in this nation’s 244 year history, He goes beyond being the Good Shepherd giving earthly bread (daily bread), to being also the Good Physician, wherein He feeds you with The Bread of Life—His Precious Body and Holy Blood which strengthens and preserves you both in Body and SOUL until life everlasting. The Body given at Calvary He gives now; The Blood He shed at Calvary He gives now.
Will you get sick from the coronavirus? Will you die from Covid 19? None of us know. Will you die on the way home from church due to a car accident, heart attack or lightning strike? None of US know. The Lord knows. The Lord knows His own. “I give unto [you] eternal life; and [you] shall never perish, neither shall any man (or disease) pluck [you] out of My hand” [Jn. 10.28].
The fragments are gathered and NOTHING—NO ONE—is lost.
We may not meet here next week. We may not meet as congregation for the foreseeable future. But this day we are “glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of The Lord. Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and be glad with her.”
Change and decay in all around I/we see? Yes. But Jesus changes not, His mercies are new every morning. The Word of The Lord endureth forever.
And IN Christ Jesus; and with Him + in you, you endure forever…
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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