“JUDICA SUNDAY 2023”
Saint John 6: 39-46
Judica: 26 March Anno Domini 2023
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Which of you here, gathered today, convicts Jesus of sin? What does that even mean.
Well, your “old Adam” sinful nature does try to indict and prosecute The Lord—it’s called self-justification. You remember Adam: “the woman YOU gave me Lord,” i.e., it’s Your fault.
The Lord takes care of your abominable and loathsome blame games. Jesus takes all of your sins and He allows Himself to be “convicted” for all the crimes, all the diseases, all the sins—of the world. He is the convicted death-row inmate that dies for your own just execution.
The Jews in today’s text—are the Confessional Lutherans who know their Book of Concord…er, wait, I mean they are Pharisees and Scribes who know their Torah; they are faux experts in the first 5 Books of Moses; they know The Commandments but do not know the reason for The Commandments. They know all the prohibitions and animal sacrifices but they know nothing of mercy or of the coming True Christ who will be the final sacrifice—The Passover Lamb of Mercy incarnate.
Unbelievers, whether they are called Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, heathens, pagans, atheists, agnostics, or heretical false-brethren—in the year 30 or 2023, will always attack Jesus. In the time of our Lord’s visual/located presence, they could actually attack Him physically; and they did. Be here for Good Friday Mass to hear Saint John report it. But in your day (this day), the enemies of the cross, of Grace that great stumbling stone to works, self-importance, and idolatrous ego, will verbally blaspheme, slander, and calumniate our dear Lord.
They called Christ a Samaritan. Now to be sure, Jesus referred to Himself as a Samaritan in that great parable of love and sacrifice. But when the Jews call him Samaritan, they are using a racial epithet, an ugly term that means He is no son of Abraham but rather a half-breed unclean and illegitimate bastard.
Our Lord refers to these hypocrites as Satan’s brood—little slimy snakes who are children of the ancient serpent. One of the things that Satan and his follower (human followers as well; knowing or ignorant) do is lie and always subvert by flipping God’s good gifts upside down. They reverse everything. Up is down, black is white, man is woman, evil is good. So, it’s natural that they call God in the flesh a devil. It is why enemies of The Faith will attack you and besmirch your good name and reputation.
The heart of Salvation, yours, is Jesus—His sacred heart obeying; suffering; dying—and being punctured by a spear in the very presence of Saint John, gushing out a flow of Blood + and water. But this presupposes that one has Biblical faith—the gift of the Holy Ghost. One cannot just “believe” in Jesus if Jesus is just any old “construct” of an ignorant or adversarial mind. It is damnable to call The Lord a devil. But it is equally damnable to call Him, “not God,” but rather a wise and powerful prophet of prophets. Yes He died on the cross—so did Peter. Yes, He rose from the dead—so did Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, and the widow of Nain’s son. For the active and passive work of Christ to have universal salvific worth and benefit (to you; for you) He had to be God. That is what Saint John is recording in this morning’s Gospel. That is THE point. Arians loved Jesus—more so than they loved David, Moses, or Abraham; more than Gabriel. Arians are damned because they knew not Immanuel. These Jews don’t even rise to the level of Arians. They were wrong about everything related to Jesus and His Holy Words in the Torah.
Abraham is NOT dead. Oh, he’s physically dead to this now-earthly realm of decay, but Abraham is alive in Christ awaiting the final Advent. Your Christian mothers and fathers and grandparents are NOT dead—they rest in Jesus’ wounds until the final trump! God is not the God of the dead but of the living!
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made. This Jesus created not just Adam from the ground, but also, Father Abraham the first of The Lord’s special designated Old Testament people. And now in the New Testament, all those who believe and confess Jesus is Lord and God are the NEW Israel, the true and genuine Jews—The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. And yes, Abraham did live to see Jesus’ day. He saw the pre-incarnate Christ (The Angel of The Lord) at Mamre, even now he sees with the “eyes of faith” the face of Christ while he too waits for the Eschaton (end).
All of the unitarians who essentially are Arians and who deny that Jesus is God are silenced by His own words of identity. “Verily, verily (truly, truly), I say unto you, before Abraham was, I AM.” I am—ego ami in the Greek to be sure, but our Lord was hearkening back to His actual name which He gave to Moses from the burning bush: YHWH, I AM!
We thank The Lord and sing His praise that we are no longer condemned by the Two large stones of the Law. And while the Pharisees sought to stone Our Lord to death, He passed by them unstopped even as He will pass by death with His own substitutionary death on Good Friday. And as He is able to raise up sons of God even from the stones on the ground—all of you in Baptismal + rebirth, He raises Himself as well on Easter Sunday. Until then…
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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