“GOD’S DEATH AND LIFE FOR YOU”
The Passion According to Saint John
Good Friday: 14 April Anno Domini 2017
Father Jay Watson SSP
Of all days not to receive the fruit of what we solemnly commemorate. Your Lord and your God gave His pure and innocent Body on the Tree to pay for your badness. The Christ of God shed His holy and immaculate Blood from those horrible five wounds (the fulfillment of the Five Books of Moses which you fail to keep) to wash away your sins. And we do not get to taste His Mercy and Love in the Blessed Sacrament. Synodical traditions are hard to overcome. Maybe next year.
Jesus died. Really. God died. Really. And that is because Jesus is God. You really did confess that in The Creed last night and last Sunday—Palmarum. This why our Symbols rightly call The Blessed Virgin both Gottesmutter and Theotokos. For if Mary is not the Mother of God then you remain damned in your trespasses.
But Jesus is God and He is Good. This day of His atonement is indeed a Good Friday…the Best Friday. Today is both historical—factual and actual—Atoning of the sins of the world; but also, a day in the year of our Lord 2017 in which, linked together with last evening’s Mass, and tomorrow’s Holy Saturday Rest & Vigil—culminates in the Great Feast of The Resurrection in a short 39 hours from now. And on Easter morning you will have His joyous, ALIVE Words, from His Glorified Alive Body, His alive Mouth, proclaim sweet, Easter Lilly Gospel into your ears. You will dine with Him your King by dining upon His Sacrificial Flesh and Blood.
So, though your back is stiff too often; your neck stiff too as you chafe and rebel at your just and proper burdens and obligations…what a son and daughter owes their loving Father. His back was shredded raw to vicariously suffer for you. His seamless robe was stripped from Him that He might place it upon you as a Baptismal + Wedding Garment, making you pure, virginal and white in His Blood.
So, though your haughty head refuses too often, to even look at your neighbor with love, much less actually lift a finger to love in deed; and though you turn your head away from His Word to gaze at self. His Sacred Head was punched, slapped, and crowned with thorns so that your heads—the heads of His beloved children might be crowned with holy nimbuses of adoption as Saints.
So, though your hands which sin in many and varied ways and your feet which carry you to many other occasions to leave “The Way.” His hands and feet were pinned to rough wood so that you might reside safely in the wood of the Ark of His Church, having all your tears wiped away by those precious hands.
And finally, though your hearts still continue to pour out all sorts of obscenities, still blackened in “old Adam” fever. He, The Christ, blots out your heart and gives you His very own—right through the rip in His side, in Water of + soothing, and Blood of restoring life.
Is this day, this evening, Law or Gospel? Is Good Friday Law or Gospel? Is the Crucifix, now buried from our East Wall Law or Gospel? Is it all Law?
Jesus. He’s the answer. He is all in all. Tonight, like all nights and days is both. Remember your sins in contrition and then grasp onto His promise “for you.” As The Baptist cried: “Repent and Believe.”
And don’t be a hound-dog about it. Don’t mourn, and weep, and feel sorry for Jesus. Weep over your own transgressions and resolve with and by The Holy Ghost, to fight the good fight and to set your eyes on Christ Crucified for your forgiveness.
We end, and we exit this parish tonight in The Gospel. We know the “rest of the story.” We gather on the morn of Sunday coming, “and soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song”
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