“THE PRIESTLY PUBLICAN”
Saint Luke 18: 9-14
11th Sunday After Trinity: 7 August Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord spoke a parable. I won’t. You are not a character in a catechetical homily, but, you are the truth of Christ’s lesson. His teaching is not merely proverbial it’s ontological. The truth of Christ’s words is constitutive of your very fallen nature—your sinful being.
While there are two men in the story you also have two men warring in you every day—as did the Apostle. Your inner Pharisee is every bit as pompous as the one St. Luke records. Your deluded hypocritical self really does think you’re better than others. Your self-righteous and self-justifying flesh may not proclaim that you are righteous, not totally, but you still revel in being in the “right” or at least in the right/correct denomination and not as those Eastern Orthodox synergists or Papist idolaters. “God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, contemporary worshipers, women-ordainers, sodomite-enablers, or, even as this publican.” And, by “publican,” you really mean someone, anyone, who has crossed you. No, you are not a part of a false-teaching sectarian group and no you are not in the communion of historical church bodies—East & West—which have lost the purity of the Gospel. But, you are, when you sin daily, part of the devil’s parish. The fact that you are a Pharisee is bad. The fact that you are sinner is bad—more than bad. But the danger is your amnesia and your blindness to this fact. You need to recognize that you “stand” in the temple to pray and that while “praying” selfishly to yourself and for yourself, you fail to gaze into the mirror of the Law. When you are prattling and pontificating about yourself you are not hearing God’s accusatory indictment; you are not seeing yourself in Jesus’ parable.
You are like other men are: Repent. You are an extortioner. You are unjust. You are an adulterer. Intellectualizing your sins is as bad as intellectualizing your “faith” in “a” Jesus. Even the demons have this kind of knowledge. Repent. Cease from flippant words and let the Spirit guard you tongue. Let go grudges and affronts done to you and visit nothing but love and help to those of the faith that have let you down. Stop trying to be “in control” and sit at Jesus’ feet as He feeds you His precious Body and His pure Blood. Come to Confession and fully embrace your Baptismal + Washing in Holy + Absolution. The Spirit desires to strengthen and exercise you daily in a Holy habit of bathing in Christ.
Something else to believe, teach, and confess, is that you are not the publican. You can be, and you are, when you confess your sins with a contrite heart. You are the publican when you daily drown your “old Adam.” But your permanent status is not the “good guy” of the parable. The tax-collector was still a tax-collector—still a thief and Roman Empire quisling and collaborator. His smiting of the chest was salutary, and produced by Faith in Messiah by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling Word of God, to be sure, but, “this man went down to his house justified” because He was in The House of The Lord by Grace; by Faith, and The House of The Lord was in Him.
Christ is the publican. Christ is the doer and giver and everything in this parable, in this life, in your life, in The Church.
The two men in the tale who were sinners; and the entwined reality of your own daily struggle, simul iustus et peccator, is rescued and freed from Satan’s tyranny by the Two Natured God/Man—Divine and Human and yet One Lord, One Christ. Jesus was not as other men are—disobedient and murderous—but the perfect Son, the perfect Second Adam—and Israel. Jesus did not extort but gave freely—gave His own suffering and death at Calvary, and today, His Body and Blood in Eucharist. Jesus was never unjust but was Justice itself—personified in the Justice of sin being punished in His own innocent Flesh. Jesus was not an idolater but rather the sacrificing Son always loving His Heavenly Father and the chaste and virginal Groom purifying and protecting His now virgin Bride—Holy Mother Church, and her wise Virgin children. Jesus fasted for forty days. Jesus tithed with His very life. Jesus allowed others to smite His breast, back, head, face, hands, feet, and Holy immaculate heart. Jesus went down to death and to the sepulchre so that you would be carried up by angels this morn to His Holy House. Jesus was humbled but He is now exalted in Glory at the right hand of majesty; at and on the altar of Augsburg. He exalts you now as your Publican Priest.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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