“OCULI”
Saint Luke 11. 14-28
Oculi-The Third Sunday in Lent: 24 February Anno Domini 2008
Fr Watson
The Lord creates. The devil destroys. God gave Adam the gift of speaking, singing, and praying. The devil tempted your first parents to lie, make excuses, howl and curse. The devil is an imbecile. Yes he is crafty, a deceiver and a liar; but at his core there is only blackness, corruption and inanity. He speaks foul gibberish. The devil is an enemy of all that God has made. Satan is a predator of all men and women. The demons will do their best to cause all humans to use their God-given voices to blaspheme, deny, profane, and disbelieve the Word. And if that won't work they will delight when because of sin, a lamb is born without a tongue, larynx or proper palate. The devil can neither create things nor physically destroy things, but he can, and always does, fan the flames of despair. Satan did not cause the man to be born mute, not directly, but he and his evil angels delighted in the tragedy. No, that man was mute because sin has unleashed all sorts of disasters in the now broken creation.
The Christ came to fix everything. The Lord walked not in the cool of the garden to find wayward rebellious killers, but He came in the flesh to walk in the heat of sin, hunger, thirst, sadness, decay and death. The Savior forgave you all your wrong doing when He suffered and died on the cross. He forgives you all the times when you have actively, through your own meanness and selfishness, made other people mute. For those times you have silenced small words of faith and devotion, you are forgiven. He also remits all the time you yourselves have stood by mute, unwilling to speak His Name and life to someone who desperately needed to hear. For being tongue-tied with "self," you are absolved.
Where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation. This means that Jesus does more than simply forgive you. He places you into Him, into a Church, a peculiar people, a sheep-fold and a family. In Jesus you are personally guaranteed eternity. You are assured not just living forever but living perfectly. You will be at peace and at joy. You will be content and filled with wonder. You have a perfect body, mind, and yes tongue.
Every time the Lord performed a miracle it was a message to the devil, to the 12, to the crowds, and to you, the hearers of the Four Evangels, that the deafness, muteness, blindness, crippleness, brokenness, darkness, will be over hopelessness-soon. When Christ healed someone, it was a crack in Satan's armor, a fissure in the wall of imprisonment that held sinful man captive. All of Jesus' miracles pointed to the Cross where His greatest work would not only rip the Temple curtain in two; but sever the very gates of hell off their damned hinges.
There is never any "middle ground" or neutral territory. There is the flock of the Good Shepherd and there is the brood of vipers belonging to the serpent of old. No matter whether foreign governments or spy organizations can (and do) run double agents, "sleepers," or "plants," Jesus speaks the truth when He says the devil does not and cannot cast out demonic forces. Evil is a negative thing without creative force or any goodness or merit. Evil, as evil, can do nothing but evil. The devil acting according to his immutable character cannot do good…period. For the devil to heal a mute man by casting out a demon would be good, and thus something Satan cannot do: this is the Word of the Lord.
Every time a baby is washed in the blood of + the Lamb, baptized in the Water of Life flowing from Christ's punctured side, a demon is banished, Satan is evicted, and another Sheep is rescued from the mute and arid wilderness of sin.
Every time the Word is preached into your ears, forgiveness watered into your cultivated hearts, the snake is driven further away. Every time the healing peace of restoration is placed on your tongues, drunk with your lips, the hordes of hell are routed and demoralized even more. Jesus lives, the victory's won. Come to the feast of Lenten triumph. The Crucified One has blessed you, taken away your muteness and now lets you stand and sing with King David: "create in me a clear heart O God."
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost