“JUBILATE 2023”
Saint John 16: 16-23
Jubilate: 30 April Anno Domini 2023
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
In The Name of Jesus!!! That should be enough. But because of sin, sinners, it is supplemented by more counsel from God—The Word of The Lord!
We prayed in our collect: “Almighty God, Who showest to them that be in error The Light of Thy Truth to the intent that they may return into The Way of Righteousness.” What does this mean?
Repent! Love God and obey God. Love your neighbor and serve your neighbor. Stop trying to harm your neighbor by getting things “your way.” Defer. Take the back seat. Stop talking and listen.
Christ is recorded by His Apostle and Evangelist, the Disciple Saint John, talking to the “12” about His upcoming arrest, suffering, and death. Jesus is telling them to expect and be ready for His being “taken away” from them, taken from “their visual sight” in Gethsemane, in the tomb, from the Emmaus table, from the upper Room, and finally from Mount Olivet at the glorious Ascension.
“A little while, and ye shall not see Me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me.”
What does this mean? The Disciples did not understand. Like all of you they too were sinners and in their fallen natures they desired and lusted to live after sight, and proofs, and satisfactions, and self-will, and glory. Christ is The Lamb of God—slain from the foundation. Christ is The Suffering Servant. Christ is The Crucified One. The life of the Christian is not one of earthly victory and success. Your walk is not a triumphal march down the yellow-brick road to either Oz or that huge and beautiful temple/palace in restored Rome, Athens, or Jerusalem. Your trek is your own exodus under the cross. Your life is cruciform—being conformed to His image. Suffering now even as gold and silver are purged in the fire.
You can only make a joyful noise unto God, and you do, because all honor, laud, and glory are IN CHRIST, of (and IN) His Name. The greatness of Jesus’ power, his “terrible…works” are all contained in His humble and obedient Law Keeping and Sin atoning on the terrible tree.
While certainly there is no sin in asking questions, questioning God, or as here, asking Jesus for clarification. But you who now live and breathe as Redeemed Saints in these Last Days, close to the end, you have the completed Testimony of God in His New Testament, the perfect codicil of The Hebrew canon. Read. Study. Listen, Understand. Or as Christ Himself says, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
You panic when you think you are alone. Have you not read Psalm 139? What’s wrong with you? We know—sin. REPENT. Repent and believe. You weep because you have lost loved ones? This is both good and natural. But how long do you fixate on what you no longer have? Are you pagans? Do you not hear yourself when you confess The Creed and the “life of the world to come?”
Jesus is with The Father. Believe! This is both His Father and your Father—“our Father Who art in heaven.” Do you not read your Catechism? Have you not been taught both God’s omnipresence and actual Immanence in His Bodily Presence? Is this blame all to fall upon your pastors for bad instruction, weak preaching, and lackadaisical presiding at The Holy Mass? I think not.
Like the “12” many if not most modern Lutherans don’t believe. Whether it is that they don’t believe Jesus is God, which I doubt, or whether they don’t believe in His bodily presence, which I do believe is the case, they need to repent, believe, and pray. Ask The Father in The Name of The Christ by the power of The Spirit for repentance and faith, and “He will give it you.”
You are not all pregnant. You will not all experience the pains of childbirth or how quickly, almost instantaneously they are forgotten after the joyous birth. You are not all physically or emotionally suffering the same aches and pains. But “change and decay in all around I see” nonetheless.
Stop hurting your neighbor. Stop hurting your enemy. Love one another as He has first loved you.
Love Jesus? Believe Jesus? Then love your neighbor.
Believe Jesus? Believe all The Words of The Lord?
Then act like it; practice it; demonstrate it.
The Blessed Saint James: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? [Ja. 2. 19-20]
The Blessed Saint John: “for this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another…hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of
compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him…my little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth… And this is His commandment, that we should believe on The name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.” [1 Jn. 3. 11-23]
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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