“I AM FOR YOU”
Saint John 8: 46-59
Judica: 13 March Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord Christ is sinless. The Nazarene never sinned, could not sin, does not sin, and is the perfect keeper of God’s Law. The Christ is God, but, He is God in the flesh. His Flesh is just like yours…save for sin.
This Messiah is not just a speaker of truths but He is The Truth. You don’t always believe Him, or, at least, your actions, words, and thought give reason to others, and even to your own conscience, that you don’t believe Him.
You can believe that Jesus was a man. But even Christians struggle with Emmanuel, God in the Flesh, in so far as GOD WITH US means something more than Protestant sectarian memory love-ins and historical lectures. If the faith is purely information and memorized facts; if it’s only lifting our sinful hearts to some Oz/Mount Olympus/distant cloudy mansion, than one ought rather be at the lake right now drinking a beer.
Not only is faith, being brought into the faith as a newborn is brought into a family by adoption, a gift of The Lord but so too believing in All that The Lord said in Scripture is a gift. Revelation, revealed insight, knowledge, and trust, is purely a work and gift of The Holy Ghost. Faith comes by The Word and not by sight.
John’s Evangel, by the same Holy Spirit, is not preached so that you can slide into your own comfortable pharisaical self and feel superior to the non-believing Jews who called The Lord a Samaritan having a devil. For your own fallen nature struggles with Christ’s words about Abraham…at least…your lack of piety, reverence, and presumptuous sins, would seem to indicate. If He was just a super-sized Moses than He can still be just my pal and I need not always worship and fear as the Great Command dictates. And, if He is just a transcendent God, absent in any real way and only spiritually present, well than, I can also play fast and footloose with filial piety and obedience. If Jesus is absent, bodily, than I must bodily do something to participate in my justification, or at least, my sanctification. Those ARE the lies of the devil. The Good Samaritan is the one Who actually finds, washes, feeds, and puts you in the Inn!
Jesus’ answer to the Jewish enemies of Grace is both WHY He was persecuted, tortured, crucified, murdered…AND…why any of it matters: for you! He wasn’t just the perfect man—the wise, gentle, loving, healer and feeder—He was and is God. Jesus Holy + Name, at which every knee should bend, head bow, and tongue confess, is His Name as The enfleshed God/Man now and forevermore, BUT His Name from before time, eternal and infinite is also I AM.
Even Lutherans stumble, struggle and equivocate at times with the mystery of the hypostatic union, i.e. the personal union. One Man Who has two natures as the Athanasian Creed so fittingly puts. The uncreated, equal with The Father and The Paraclete, Second Person of The Godhead, the Son, The Logos (the Word) took from the Blessed Virgin His human nature and deigned to be a living, growing, embryo, baby, flesh and blood God/Man in her womb for 9 months prior to His visible nativity: EMMANUEL. But the one Christ, 100% man is also 100% God and not only existed before Abraham, but before Noah, and Adam, and Genesis 1.
Your Father in the parish today speaks The Lord’s words to you. Hear your Father in the Faith Saint Paul and grasp on to He Who is your Righteousness and Who gave His Body and Blood at Calvary’s altar to Redeem you back from unbelief and sin. And Who this day is in your midst as His Words say and do: for you! Your Father Abraham rejoiced to see Christ’s day. You rejoice in Jesus’ joy this happy morn over all of you, His bloody and cruciform brothers and sisters. You will not be stoned because Jesus allowed the twin tablets to fall on Him in nail and spear; thorn and whip. The Temple of His body was destroyed that He might raise it up again on the Third Day glorified and imperishable. You are now living stones in that Temple of Christ this Third Day.
Before Abraham was, The Son of God is. Your brother is I AM, and in Him you will ever be.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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