“TRINITY 13 2024”
Saint Luke 10: 23-37
13th Sunday after Trinity: August 25 Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
How many times, daily, does one get upset or angry with God because that person’s life seems to be a wreck; a disaster loaded with death, disease, failure, loneliness, and depression? Your eyes, your senses, do not see or feel that things are as incredibly good and Gospel-laden as some preacher tells you they are. It is why after a sermon or mass is over the grim frowns and surly faces can be seen in many a Narthex or hand-shaking line.
Waiting patiently for Grace seems to be almost too difficult. Trusting in The Lord’s promises when they go against your plain eye-sight and life’s experiences are hard to accept. Fearing God above all things; why that is old-fashioned “fire and brimstone” fundamentalism.
If Is means Is, and it does, then The Words of Jesus are real and true no matter how you feel. Someone who truly has received a crushing loss or horrible accident, of course, The Lord is tender and comforting and the perfect care companion. But to ungrateful, selfish, and whining complainers, The Christ may well choose to smack you on the head with The Law to stop you from navel-gazing and self-justifying your lack of trust and faith.
So, Jesus turns to you this morning, you His disciples—for are you not His followers, His students, His servants? So, you should be following His words, learning His teachings and doctrines, and serving His people.
There is so much “brain-fog” or sin-fog that you cannot see the peace which surrounds you. Your old natures seem to luxuriate in being joyless, cranky, and, well, a “meme” of what secularists and atheists have always said about Christians as they caricature and lampoon them.
But it is not the eyes in your head that have ocular vision that matters, but rather the eyes of your spirit that have supra-natural sight. Your souls are blessed to “see” to receive and hold tightly too, the things, the realities which you see/are poured upon you and in you. Of what Adam and Eve perceived in the Garden before the fall we cannot speak to with detail. But you sinfully cavalier and blasé in not appreciating the gifts you are presented in this, the ‘end-times,’ you, upon whom the fulfillment of time has come. You hear, or you have read in the New Testament, things that not even Noah, Job, Abraham, Moses, David, Elias, and Daniel never heard. They saw through a glass/mirror darkly in prophesies with specificity. You have the life and work of The Christ at your finger-tips and in your ears. They had the passover but you eat and drink the true Body and Blood of The God/Man. And you have the temerity to sit unmoved, stoic, and gloomy? It is no wonder that non-believers do not see in Christians anything worth having.
To simply be in Christ’s presence, as were the “12,” Mary of Bethany, all those poor people that He healed, is far better than knowing the details of 2nd Chronicles, the lists of all the kings, the geography and topography of Palestine, and the differences between all the protestant sects. Books of Concord are good (indeed necessary) but devotion at the feet of Christ in The Divine Service is best.
There was a man who knew the Bible better, probably, than all of you combined. He was called a Lawyer because his specialty was in the five books of Moses. He wanted Jesus to know, just how much he “knew.” The arrogance and pomposity of sin; of self. He just knows that He knows all the doctrine, and that he does all the law; keeps all the rules. So, he tries to impress the Nazareth Rabi with his work.
He seemingly, and correctly, recites the Decalogue in its summary form: “Love God perfectly; Love one’s neighbor as oneself.”
And like you, when confronted by the reality that you really are not what you think you are, that you do not do what the hard words of Jesus demand (“this do, and thou shalt live”), you also self-justify.
“Who is my neighbor” is tantamount to whining, what is the least I have to obey; what is the bare minimum to accomplish.
Ah, and now the much loved and famous parable of the Good Samaritan. But disabuse yourself from viewing any part of it as a work-list, a check-list of the things you HAVE to do in order to be saved. You are not the star of the show, you are not the actor or the point of focus. Jesus is everything.
All of your attempts to work you way to what you think is a better life, life-style, or level of creaturely comfort has you robbed and stripped and left for dead by Satan, the world, and your own sinful flesh.
The Law of Mose, and even the words of the Prophets and the examples of men of faith can only pass by the other side—reminding you that you are blind, lame, and impotent to save yourself. Jesus comes to you (you do not go to Him). Jesus washes you in Holy + Baptism, i.e., He pours oil upon you in the refreshing regeneration to life. He pours wine on you in the Sacrament of the alter to strengthen and preserve you unto life everlasting. He carries you on His own beast, His servants—His pastors, even as those in your early life carried you to Church. He places you into the inn of His green pasture where He is preached and where He is administered. He pays your bill with the two pence of His Humanity and Divinity.
And yes, while you should do likewise to everyone else, when you do not, believe that He did and does. For He too is the wounded man. He was wounded for your transgressions when he fell afoul of the thieves of the unbelieving enemies of His good news. His wounds poured forth the fountain of Holy Blood which makes you Holy and which gives you life—as it will shortly.
He shows mercy on you.
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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