“ABOMINABLE FOR YOU; SANCTIFIED FROM HIM”
Saint Matthew 24. 15-28
The Third Last Sunday in the Church Year: 11 November Anno Domini 2007
Fr Watson
The Lord Jesus quotes Daniel's prophecy for it was the Lord Himself Who gave the Prophet the vision and words of things to come. Not only is Jesus the creator of all things, the author of all Scripture, but He is also the content and fulfillment of all that the Old Testament points to.
Things that are abominable are evil. The devil is an abomination. These are things which are the opposite of good. God is good. Abominations are against God. Sin is abominable. Satan is abominable. The corrupt and broken world is abominable. You, your old-Adam, sinful selves, are abominable.
Desolation is opposite of fullness. The void is desolate. The good God created the universe and it was good. Adam was desolate because he was alone, lonely, incomplete. The good God created animals to be his companions and then Eve to be his helpmate. Being fruitful and multiplying is good. Being barren and desolate is bad. The Garden, teeming with life and vegetation and fruits of all kinds was good. The desert, the wilderness, filled with sand, dirt and rocks, and vast expanses of no one else is bad; abominable.
The Holy Space is wherever the Holy One is; yes… but more precisely, wherever Christ is "for you" is the Holy Space. It is not that your fishing boat isn't holy or that the golf course is not sanctified, but Jesus is not in those places to give Himself-the Holy One. His Word is Holy. His Church is Holy. His altar, font, and pulpit are holy. The communion rail is holy because He meets you there. The chalice and paten are holy because His Holy Blood and Body are there-for you! Your own bodies are now holy because He is in you; His Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost the comforter, makes your bodies His New Testament temples.
Is the Christ predicting the "end of time" in today's Gospel? No, for at the eschaton there will be no time to flee anywhere or to look for Christ. Jesus was predicting the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD and the destruction of the Temple. The Temple like any dwelling, building, place or altar is Holy when God is there for His people. If the Lord withdraws His presence or decides to relocate It elsewhere than that place is no longer holy-in the same way as it once had been.
It all means what it has always meant. To rebel against the Holy Trinity is abominable and leads only to desolation; and ultimately to the desolate solitary desert of Hades and damnation.
All of the world's abominable actions, thought, and utterances were first unleashed when your first parents disobeyed by putting themselves first. All of the world's present sadness, insanity, despair and hurt are because you continue to follow in Adam's footsteps.
God the Good, Jesus the Just, Christ the Compassionate has come and set all things right.
Adam stood condemned, thrust into the desolate, and now abominable, world of hard ground, thistles and sweat. But there stood in front of him, the Promise of the Seed, the coming Messiah Who would set all things right.
There stood all the broken and dying Israelites, thrust into the desolate wilderness for forty years; the abominable fiery serpents biting them for their own abominable acts. But there stood in from of them the Bronze Serpent; the "type" of the Crucifix to Come, the promised Messiah Who would set all things right.
As, Christ predicted by Daniel, and then reiterated Himself, there would stand in the year 70 AD the abominable Standards of the Roman Army on the then desolate ruins of Jerusalem and its destroyed Temple.
But that was not the end. The Temple of the Jews, like the Tabernacle before it, were only "types" of Christ. While the Lord dwelled with His presence in both, in Cloud above the Ark, in the "fullness of time" the Lord dwells with actual Body and Blood in the Flesh He assumed from His Virgin Mother, Mary. No more clouds; no more Theophanies; now God was in the flesh forever and ever.
Daniel's strange prediction is not some bizarre tele-evangelist's theory of Millenniums and Middle Eastern wars, but a stark prophecy of when, how and where the coming Christ would fix everything. Outside the doomed city of David, outside the walls of Jerusalem was the real desolation. There on the city garbage dump, the place which the Romans used for public executions-Golgotha (the place of the Skull) it would be so desolate that the sky would turn black and the Father would allow His Only-beloved to be sacrificed. There the pure, innocent, spotless Lamb of God would become abominable by coating Himself (inside and out, through and through) with your sin-the filth of your rebellion and treason in thought, word and deed.
As Moses wrote: "it is abominable to be hung to a tree." But only by Christ becoming abominable for you, are you made Glorious and Radiant. The Body of God broken for you in death is given you in His Body the Church through Holy Scripture, Holy Gospel, and through Holy Washing and Holy Eating. The Blood, shed for you on that horrible desolate tree, is now your drink of Faith, Life and Immortality.
The end of the Church Year means that you are closer to celebrating the Nativity of God. The end of Time, fast approaching, means that you are closer to being able to see with your eyes and fully experience with your Heavenly bodies, the God/Man Jesus Who remains Incarnated for you.
The Holy Jesus, the Holy God, make whatever He touches and inhabits holy; He makes it His.
His Word here today, like it was with you at your Baptism, marks you as one redeemed by Christ the Crucified. His Supper, Himself, marks you as His disciples, His Lambs feeding at the trough of His Body, His green pasture.
Taken in by this kind of loving Lord you are safe and at ease. Your own souls and spirits, which receive this kind of gracious Savior are comforted, pardoned and at peace.
Gather now together with me, fellow eagles, gather where the Body is, where the Blood is, where the Good News is, where the Good is, for you.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost