“CHRIST HANGS FOR YOU”
Saint Matthew 22: 34-46
18th Sunday After Trinity: 4 October Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Christ comes to silence Pharisees and Sadducees. You are the former when you hypocritically delude yourself into thinking you’re better than your neighbor—the neighbor that you do not love perfectly as The Lord commands. You are a Sadducee when you hypocritically convince yourself that your own traditions are more important than God’s Word, His command, to fear, love, and trust in Him perfectly.
Jesus speaks Law to you—He silences your old nature by killing it. He slays your old Adam by speaking truth.
Jesus rescues you from Satan’s prison. Jesus fulfills the first and great commandment. Jesus also fulfills the second, which is “like unto it.”
Christ doesn’t keep the Law perfectly because He is God and is omnipotent. Christ keeps the Law because He is The God/Man the second and perfect Adam, Who is sacrificial love in the flesh; in the flesh and blood.
There is no flock without a shepherd and no shepherd without a flock. There is no family without a Father and children. There are no siblings without brothers and sisters. And, there is no love without a lover, the object of His love, and love as conscious and chosen action.
Your Pharisee argues with The Lord over Trinitarian mystery, either complaining that it’s not as clear in Hebrew Scripture as you demand or that you need not confess it with your body but only your Gnostic inner brainiac. Your Sadducee self gathers with old nature and also complains.
Jesus comes to you today not with systematic and dogmatic “proof texts” but with His Word of Law: repent of your unloving black heart and meanness. Jesus stands among you this morning with His Evangel of forgiveness. Jesus is not a proof text but Lord and God; Light and Life; Body and Blood—for you! He had all the Law and The Prophets, their preaching, teaching, and condemnation of sinners—of sin—driven into His pure Body on the Cross. He was hanged in torture and death to atone for your failure to have the Law and Prophets daily hanging before your eyes, tongue, and hearts.
The Christ of Love is One in Three and Three in One because love is the Lover the beloved and the love that unites: in, with, and under. The Father that begot the Son, and that spoke of His Beloved at the Jordan and at the Mount of Transfiguration speaks peace and loosing to you at the + Font and at the kneeler of Absolution. You are now His beloved child. The Spirit that hovered over the face of the deep at Creation and over The Blessed Virgin at Annunciation, and over Christ at His Baptism comes and makes His home with Christ the Word in you. The Holy Ghost tabernacles with you via your called and ordained New Testament speaking apostles and grants you new life in the Gospel of the Lamb. And Jesus…Jesus who is the Son of David, The Son of Mary, the Son of the Most High, places you on His right hand at Table; places you upon His holy footstool in His heart and side.
Ask no more questions for He is here to embrace you at His Feast.
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