Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2)

Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth, proclaims St. Paul this morning, and not on things of the earth. (idem) Affection is an appetite that draws us, attracts us, and captures our attention. Throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things that have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me on Good Friday. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love.  

But setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business. And it is not that affection is evil. God made it for a reason. But affection is fickle, unreliable, and uncertain. Affection, like all good things, must be tried and tested, lest it meander into the realm of evil. God’s affection and desire for us is pure and perfect. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation.

Our affection, as a response to Jesus Christ, was tried and tested on Good Friday. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome tried to capture our attention and affection with an offer of expeditious peace, the Pax Romana, a peace that would conveniently rid us of Jesus Christ’s messy and menacing death. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, tried to claim our affection with a tradition that offered cheap Grace and inexpensive discipleship. The fear and even cowardice of Jesus’ Apostles then lured us into a broken and killed affection that we, surely, would somehow get over. Human affection carries with it a kind-of loss of self-composure and meekness. Solomon, in Proverbs, tells us A fool giveth full vent to his affection, but the wise man quietly holdeth it back. (Prov. Xxix. 11) Affection threatens us with losing something or all of ourselves in order to know the good and love it with our whole heart.

And yet, God’s affection for all men persisted on Good Friday with a Passion that longs always to call forth and redeem the affection of men in all ages. The affection of God for us in Jesus Christ said to us from His Cross, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ’s affection reached the Good Thief. Come follow me. Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His affection reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Women, behold thy son…son, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) From His Cross, His affection began to move us all out of fear and despair into new life. His affection even took on our desperation and dereliction. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) With ongoing affection He mustered up enough desire for our salvation to cry, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) From the Cross, He concluded, with unbounded affection, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, God’s uninterrupted affection for us men took suffering and death up into the abyss of Holy Saturday.

And through it all, our affection was, no doubt, hesitant and halting. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to have swallowed up our affection for the life, light, and love of God in Jesus Christ. As in Adam all die (1 Cor. xv. 22) seemed to have consumed our life, light, and love.

As we move from Good Friday to this Easter Sunday, to this first day of the week, something strange begins to happen. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 3,4) In the beginning, God affectionately made the Light to inform, define, and enliven all of creation. In the same Light now, incandescent beams of Divine Affection will open the eyes of believers’ hearts to a new creation being illuminated by that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into world. (St. John i. 9) Darkness begins to flee, sin begins to be felt as dead, death begins to be conquered, and ignorance yields to Wisdom, as the Divine Affection jumps up from Death in the heart of Jesus. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have transformed the Son as flesh from Death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come to life with glory.

At first, only angels and nature sensed the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that follows the passion and affection of its Mover and Maker. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The words spoken to Isaiah the prophet are remembered

But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel,
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
(Isaiah xliii. 1)

Christ is the fulfillment of the Father’s unceasing affection for us. And yet, in this morning’s Gospel, we learn that man’s affection for God in Jesus Christ, now risen from the dead, will take time to perfect. Christ’s death seemed like an end. We read that The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. (St. John, xx 1,2)

Jesus had said, And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. (St. John xii. 32) At first, the affection of both the Apostles and the women for who Christ is and what He can do, was confused, uncertain, and halting. Mary Magdalene was moved still by her affection and love for Jesus, to anoint his dead body. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection for the Light is not yet redeemed. She ran to Saints Peter and John and exclaimed, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) Her affection remains in darkness, believing that Christ’s enemies have stolen the body. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above begins to run to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John’s affection already begins to rest in contemplation and hope. Peter’s affection outruns it with action and faith. The affection of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to then understand with John’s affection. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285)         

God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is still at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for, faith and understanding in the Light that said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Soon the Apostles will see God’s unfading Light in Christ, begin to receive His Life in Him, and return His Love through Him. Christ is risen from the dead. The Son of God made flesh, made man is Risen from the dead. In the Resurrected Light that shines through the transfigured flesh of His new life, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Life, Light, and Love – let us embrace unabated affection of Jesus Christ with our own affection –that affection and desire for becoming very members incorporate in His Risen spiritual and mystical Body, transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…apt and natural instruments of His will and way, (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) reflecting His Life, Light, and Love into the hearts of all others. And with the poet let us so begin to set the whole of our affection, the thoughts of our hearts, on Christ, who has redeemed and restored our human nature for greater things than these, rising up even to things above, not things of the earth. (idem)

Then shalt thou feele thy spirit so possest,
And ravisht with devouring great desire
Of his dear selfe, that shall thy feeble brest
Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire
With burning zeale, through every part entire,
That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight,
But in his sweet and amiable sight.
(E. Spenser: Hymn to Heavenly Love)

Amen.
©wjsmartin
  

Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, 
and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had 
received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, 
and gave up the ghost.
(St. John xix. 29,30)
 
Jesus the crucified, Jesus the suffering Servant and dying Lord of Good Friday, is betrayed by one, and then denied and abandoned by the others, including all of us. Sinful man betrays and forsakes God, denies His rule and governance in human life, and abandons Him for the temporary and fleeting pleasures of this world, as important as they might seem. So, as we look back on this Good Friday, as Christians, it is our duty to identify with any sin that reveals no acquaintance or familiarity with Jesus Christ. We do this because we desire to repent. We desire to repent because we believe that Jesus Christ is God’s forgiveness of sins made flesh. And we believe that this forgiveness of sins is truly and perfectly offered to us through the death of God’s own Son on the Tree of Calvary. We believe also that this forgiveness of sins calls us into death, first, the death of Jesus Christ, and then our own deaths. If we will not die to sin by embracing the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, beginning here and now, we will never come alive to God the Father through the Risen Christ on Easter Day.

Before we repent, we must look into the nature of what Jesus Christ is doing for us when He dies on the Cross of Calvary. St. Paul tells us that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans v. 12) By one man’s disobedience to God, sin and death entered the world of human nature. Thus, from the time of Adam to Christ all men were oppressed with, enslaved to, and overcome by that sin which prevents them from obeying God purely and perfectly. St. Paul continues:

For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. (Ibid, 15,16)
 
Jesus Christ becomes the forgiveness of all sins. He allows Himself to be brought to death by all sin. He allows Himself to feel the effects and nature of all sin. He becomes both the cause and the effect. He feels the malice of the sinful perpetrator of His death. He feels the effect of it all as the victim. Jesus [humbles] himself and is obedient [to God the Father] unto death, even death upon the Cross. (Phil. ii. 8) Thus, through His sacred humanity He brings man’s addiction to sin to death. Through His most holy Passion, He will overcome Original Sin. Through His enduring obedience to God the Father, He will suffer the worst and the best that man’s sin can do to God, and out of it make something much better and new. Sin and death will taunt, tempt, mock, deride, torture, and kill God’s Word made flesh. They will bring Jesus Christ to death. But what sin and death cannot kill is the Word of God’s Love in the heart of Jesus that persists through suffering into death and then up into new life. For even while dying unjustly, the Son of God’s forgiveness will begin to make new life, a new manhood, a new Adam whose nature will be shared as Humanity’s new life for all who believe and follow Him.

Today, we come to the vision of Christ crucified. We come to see what our sin has done to God in the flesh. To our sore amazement, we find in Jesus Christ not some obscure theological concept but the living the forgiveness of our sins made flesh. For this forgiveness of sins is God’s uninterrupted desire for our salvation. This desire is still at work in the heart of the suffering and dying Christ. What do we hear emerging from the lips of the dying Jesus? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) Father, today they kill me through ignorance, confusion, weakness, and pain, but I desire them still. Father forgive them, for tomorrow they may repent and believe and become our friends. Next, we hear. Today, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) Look Father, this convicted thief dying alongside me has confessed his sin and desires to come and follow me. Father, I desire him. This is our first death-bed conversion! And then what? Father, my Mother and dear John are here watching and waiting, dying to become a part my death and new life. Father, I desire them. Woman, behold thy son!...Disciple, Behold thy mother! (St. John xix. 26, 27) Father, already we have our first two missionaries, members of the new humanity that I am making. My Mother is ready to become the mother of your new spiritual children. My friend, my spiritual brother, is ready to become a new spiritual son to the Mother of my redemption and salvation. Jesus still desires to make all things new, to bring good out of evil and life out of death, though He is in extreme pain and agony.

Jesus continues. Father, I am suffering and dying. The pain is acute. Strengthen them spiritually now, as I grow weaker and weaker, and my pains grow stronger and stronger. For, Father, the devil is once again on my back. My wounded and lacerated head, hands, and feet are overwhelming me and crushing my sense of the outside world that looks and gazes upon me. I am becoming blind, deaf, dumb, withered, and palsied like those I came to heal. I feel the pain of Job, and I hear the words of his wife: Curse God and die. (Job ii. 9) I feel the darkness. The silence is deafening. The nothingness envelops me. Lord I am spent; is there any more for me to do? Father, thou seemest to be absent from me. The deep and mysterious power of sin is attacking me. I sense and feel the nothingness not as that pure potential “about to be” that you and I once made real. I endure man’s rejection of thee my God. I sense the distance between thee and me. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) Why…art thou so far from my health, and from the voice of my complaint? I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not: and in [this] night season also I take no rest.’ (Ps. xxii. 1,2)

But, I know that ‘thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.’ (Ps. li. 8) I gasp for that spiritual drink that will satisfy my soul. ‘I thirst.’ (St. John xix. 28) There is one more thing for me to do before ‘It is finished’ (Ibid, 30), before ‘I commend my spirit into thy hands.’ (St. Luke xxiii. 46) There is Roman soldier over there, I cannot see him clearly, but he has not moved throughout this my suffering death. He has not taken his eyes off me. He is not vengeful or malicious. He has been looking into my eyes from the beginning. By his own judgment, he knows that something is terribly wrong. And yet he also sees that something is coming to pass that will be wonderfully right. The seed of faith is growing in his heart. ‘Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.’(Idem, 29, 30) This Roman soldier, perhaps with another, gave Jesus his last sip of wine. Father, I thank you for giving me this drink through him. I thank you for moving him to provide me with the drink that is becoming his own offering of himself through you. Keep him near, my Mother and disciple will need his help in taking me down from this tree and burying me. And through them, let us welcome him into the Body of my Death, which is already becoming the Body of our new Life.

Today, we come to the Cross to repent. While we are crucifying Jesus Christ, He desires us. Neither suffering nor death, neither pain nor torture will stop Jesus from desiring our salvation. Hans Urs Von Balthasar sums up what has happened for us.

Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for Him, the less He has merited it. There is nothing familiar about it to Him: it is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, He suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of Him, to have lost Him (to all appearances) forever. It is meaningless to call this suffering “hell”, for there is no hatred of God in Jesus, only a pain that is deeper and more timeless than the ordinary man could endure either in his lifetime or after His death. (Sermon for Good Friday)

The desire for our salvation is alive in the heart of Jesus Christ as He takes on our darkness and estrangement from God. Love that is the Light and Life feels the pain more acutely than any man can because He has not earned or merited this condition. The pain is perfectly present because the Son of God must endure what is contrary to His own nature in the fiber of all His being. Because He is the Love that is the Light and Life that knows God perfectly and loves Him absolutely, His brokenness for us will be all the more pure and complete. He will lovingly endure the pain of a broken heart until He can overcome sin and open to man the gates of everlasting life once again. St. Paul tells us that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death (Romans vi. 4) because the light hath shined in darkness, and the darkness overcame it not. (St. John i. 5) 

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 

He riseth up from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.

Tonight, you and I are invited to the Last Supper of Christ. With the Apostles, we move into a realm that is fraught with fear and trembling, not grasping the meaning of it all or what will come tomorrow on Good Friday. The Apostles have been following Jesus for some three years, and they have experienced the hand of God extended to them and others through the life of their Master. In a sense there was so much to be thankful for, so many wonders and miracles, so many beautiful teachings and sayings, so much that man could endure and even enjoy. But tonight, we sense the impending doom of suffering, and death. Tonight, we feel fear and sense the approaching darkness of suffering and death.

But despite what is coming, tonight, we witness more of the Goodness of God in Jesus Christ. Come what may, no matter what might threaten His earthly mission to us, Jesus Christ came into the world to offer God’s goodness to us. Jesus has been tempted to reject His Father’s will and way. He has refused it resolutely by embracing God’s goodness. The Father desires the Son, and the Son desires the Father. Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. (St. John xvii. 1) The two move together as One for us men and for our salvation. Jesus Christ always embraces the will of the Father. Jesus has never denied God’s light and love. Tonight, before He bids us follow Him into darkness, He offers more goodness from the Father.

Tonight, the goodness that Jesus offers to us comes in the Last Supper that He shares with His friends. It is the Feast of Passover. The Passover celebrates God’s passing over the homes of the Jews in Egypt to spare them from the last plague that he visited upon the Egyptians. The Passover celebrates the Jews passing over from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tonight, Christ prepares us for God the Father’s passing over of our sins. Tonight, Christ prepares us to accept that He alone will not be passed over, but must bear the burden of our sins, defeat them, and put them to death on the Cross of His Love, tomorrow.

In tonight’s Epistle, St. Paul reminds us that The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, or the Holy Communion was instituted on the night in which He was betrayed. (1 Cor. xi. 23) Tonight, Christ imparts goodness in the face of impending betrayal. His promise to be with His friends will not be passed over because of Fallen Man’s sin. His promise will be stronger than all Man’s efforts to impede the salvation that He brings into the world. So, as St. Paul reminds us, Christ
took bread; and when He had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my Body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood; this do in remembrance of me. (ibid, 24,25)
 
The goodness that Christ will bring to us is threatened tonight by betrayal and tomorrow by malice, suffering, and death. But tonight, Christ gives us strength to fight our many betrayals of Him, to be with Him in suffering and death tomorrow. The New Passover is being established by Christ. A New Testament or covenant is inaugurated through Christ’s body and blood. St. Eusebius of Caesaria tells us that:

Since the body he had assumed was about to be taken away from their bodily sight, and was about to be carried to the stars, it was necessary that, on the day of His last supper, He should consecrate for us the sacrament of His body and blood, so that what, as a price, was offered once should, through a mystery, be worshipped unceasingly.
 
Christ prepares His Apostles then and us now for the mystery of our participation in the goodness of His redemption. We are invited to believe that bread and wine can become His body and blood for us. We are invited to believe that this special meal of earthly elements will become our share of spiritual nutriment at His Divine Table. We have been given us an example that Christians will forever follow in Imitation of Christ.

What Jesus did and said, He offered as a friend. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (St. John xv. 14, 15) Bread is broken and wine is outpoured. Tomorrow a Body will be broken, and Blood will flow. The two acts will not be divided in the end. Just as Christ’s human nature was joined to His Divine Being, so bread and wine will be joined to His Body and Blood, the essence of Himself as the Word of the Father.

Tonight, the Body and Blood –soon to be broken and pierced, offers Himself to the memory and will of His followers. Tonight, also, the Body and Blood stoops down to wash and to cleanse the dirty feet of His disciples. Jesus always serves His friends. He promises that He will feed them by stooping down to wash them. The Body and Blood, present to the Church until the end of all time, will nourish and serve. Today, He is the servant who feeds with bread and wine, and cleanses with water. Tomorrow, He will wash us in the Blood of His dying Body. Both will be one. We are washed through water and blood. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel.
But there is more that we should see and grasp before we move from the Last Supper to Good Friday. What Jesus does is who He is, the will of the Father in human flesh. Who Jesus is, is what He intends we should become. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet…These things I command you, that ye love one another. (St. John xiii. 14, xv. 17) He will give us bread and wine so that His Body and Blood, His nature, might be assimilated to us. He will wash the dirty feet of our souls so that we too might become humble servants giving ourselves to all others. To be nourished for servanthood will be perfected in the sacrifice He makes for us on Good Friday.

Tonight, we find ourselves the unwitting recipients of God’s goodness in Jesus Christ. Jesus does what he does, and we have no part of him if He does it not. Jesus comes to wash our feet, and, with Peter, we ignorantly resist. Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet. (St. John xiii. 8) Our instinct is to refuse to see how God in Jesus Christ must humble himself to save us. Proud as we are, we prefer a distant and unapproachable God: a God easier to endure. We prefer a God who does not muddy His garments with the filth and corruption of earthly existence. Our sense is that the Holy Word of God should never stoop down from Heaven to suffer the effects of our sin. God is high, we are low; the Master should never condescend to become a slave. Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man. (St. Luke v. 8) Jesus answers, If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with me. (Ibid) 

Tonight, with Jean Mouroux, we must begin to realize that, out of a means of destruction Christ made the very means of life; of a punishment the means of healing; of an annihilation the means to a resurrection. (The Meaning of Man, p. 88) Christ chose His destiny as suffering and dying servant for you and for me. At the source of this choice, there lay a measureless love, a love that never hesitated, never drew back, never murmured; a love on the contrary that accepted, desired, and bore with everything. (Ibid, 89)

If the Sacrament instituted tonight is to have any effect, we must follow Christ, the suffering servant, to the Cross. Bread and wine will remain bread and wine until we embrace His Body offered for us, and His Blood outpoured for us. Servanthood will only and ever be an earthly virtue unless we allow Christ the servant to nourish and heal us from the Cross of His love. St. Paul tells us that for as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come again. (ibid, 26) Man was made for Communion with God. Man is remade for Communion with the Father, through the death of His own Son. We are called to partake of nothing short of God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to be made flesh in us. As easily as faith submits to Christ’s death for us, so shall bread and wine become Body and Blood, fitting us to serve God and one another.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 

When Pilate was set down upon the judgment-seat, his wife sent
Unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man:
For I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of
Him.
(St. Matthew 27. 19)
 
Holy Week has been set aside from the time of the early Church to ponder our Lord’s suffering in silence. Holy Week takes us to the one moment in history that judges all others. Holy Week takes us to the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Following Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he said: All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. (St. Matthew 26.31) Jesus prophesies His silent and lonely death on the Cross. His own Jewish people will demand His death on the Cross. The Romans will facilitate it. His Apostles will abandon Him in fear and cowardice. Peter will deny Him and repent. Judas Iscariot will betray Him and hang himself.

Today, we remember that Jesus Christ predicted what the Jews, the Romans, and even His friends would do to Him. Today, we remember that Jesus Christ would willingly accept their unjust sentencing in order to save us. The envious malice of the Jewish Establishment will not stop Jesus from doing what He must do for us. The political expedience of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, will not deter Him. The fearful, cowardly, and weak affection of His closest friends and His Mother will not shake Him. The mysterious energy, wisdom, and will of God the Father in the human flesh of Jesus Christ must persist to the end. Christ has come down from Heaven to do the Father’s will for us men and for our salvation. (Nicene Creed) His Mission for us would be seen through to the end. Christ was intent on fulfilling what would be fraught with supreme significance for mankind until the end of time. His Cross would be the place of His sacrifice for us.  

In the face of what leads to Jesus Christ’s Cross and sacrifice for us, we find the Master’s silence. To it, Pilate marveled greatly. (St. Matthew xxvii. 14) Pilate’s wife sent word to her husband, have nothing do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.(ibid, 19) Pilate knows that there is no just cause for Jesus’ trial or punishment. His conscience is stirred, for he finds no evil or crime in the defendant. Why, what evil hath he done? (Ibid, 23) Let Him be crucified, the crowd demands. Pilate, who was want to release a prisoner unto the people at the feast, acquiesced. In response to the passionate envy that threatens further anarchy, we read that, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see you to it. (Ibid, 24) The Jews will confess: His blood be on us, and on our children. (Ibid, 25)

Jesus Christ accepts Man’s judgment on Him. He is rejected by virtuous pagans, righteous Jews, and His own Disciples. Jesus Christ will surrender to the unjust, unearned, and undeserved justice of fallen man. Let them do their worst. Jesus Christ is not only Master of Himself, He is also their Master as well. (The Christian Year in the Times) The Divine Providence, which is to say the Divine way, truth, and life made flesh, must continue to be Himself. Christ has a work to do, come what may. He embraces Divine Permission to do what He must to save us all. His sacrifice will be conditioned and caused by Man’s arrogance, enmity, envy, and bitterness. So be it. He will do what He must to save us. In all humility, with courage, and through faith, hope, and love, Christ will suffer and die. His sacrifice and suffering, as painful as they will be, will be well worth His good work for us.

Today, in silence, as we contemplate the trial of Jesus Christ, we cannot help but be sore amazed at what His suffering and sacrifice will mean for us. The aid of all creatures has been denied Him. He is alone with the Father. He and the Father, through the Spirit, will effect our salvation. His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane commences His final work for us. There, He comes to know the nature of evil as the source of ongoing suffering and sorrow. There, He comes to know how evil, freely willed by friend and foe alike, forever divides Man from God and Man from Man. There, evil has one last go at Him, and He feels the sense of its looming nothingness and darkness. He does not fear death. Rather, He must bear and endure the nothingness and darkness of sin, and the desolation of all men who have been and will be destroyed by it. Jesus Christ, God’s Word and Will made flesh, must be emptied, made poor in spirit, to save us by God’s Grace alone. O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. (St. Matthew xxvi. 39)

This morning, with St. Paul, we remember that though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2. 6-8) Jesus Christ empties Himself of all Divinity, in order that pure human powerlessness might be placed back in the hands of God the Father, the Creator and Redeemer of Mankind. He will not desperately grasp onto, clutch, or seize His Divine Power in the hour of His human impotence. Rather, He will obey, fear, and follow the Father as Man, found in the form of a servant, in human form, humbled, for us men and for our salvation. (idem) He will become the New Man, the Second Adam, who will be the servant of the Father because God’s will and Word alone suffice to save us.

This week, I pray, that each of us shall discover that Jesus Christ brings us into His suffering and sacrifice in order to give us new life. In Jesus Christ, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously (1 Peter 2. 22, 23), let us begin to see the Word of God’s Wisdom and Love in the power of His suffering and sacrificed flesh. Christ is a servant of God alone. Curiously enough, I believe that we shall begin to see how suffering, sacrifice, and death are being made into something new and good. For, as we approach Christ and His Cross, we do well to remember that He dies for us on a Friday that is forever called Good. On Good Friday, what threatens to be judged by Fallen Man as tragic, is made Good by the only one who can make it so. And while we can never say that He did not suffer pain and utter humiliation at the hands of sinful men, we must also say that He endured it all in perfect compliance and purposeful acceptance with the Father’s will for our salvation. Jesus Christ has accepted the truth of the age-old maxim, no pain, no gain, no Cross, no Crown.

On this Palm Sunday, we sing Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. And without a beat, we find our joy turned to malice, as we, with the Ancient Jews, cry Crucify Him. Crucify Him. Let him be crucified. Fallen Man is a mess. We are a schizophrenic mess. Once again, in this Holy Week, we can be silent and still to learn how to see and know what God in Jesus Christ does for us.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53. 4,5)
 
This Holy Week, let us listen to the silent Word of God’s Wisdom and Love that reveals power and life in the heart of our dying Lord. Let us listen as God’s Word of Wisdom and Love makes innocent sacrifice and suffering the occasion for His persistent pursuit of our salvation. Let us listen to the God’s Word of Wisdom and Love that calls us into sacrifice and suffering. Let us be determined to be embraced by that Wisdom and Love which offers Himself to God and to us in that simultaneous knot of fire that purges away all sin, pride, envy, and cruelty. Let us be determined to find the forgiveness of sins in the One who gave Himself for us absolutely and completely as Man to God and God to Man.

The Cross is the center of the world’s redemption. The Cross is the new Tree of Life, which blossomed first on Calvary, whose fruit has strength to induce all men to partake of God’s Glory. (The Christian Year in the Times, 1930) On the Cross, the pure and perfect Son of God made flesh, Jesus Christ, makes us right with God the Father once again. There alone, through the good work of Jesus Christ for us, on Good Friday, in His sacrifice, suffering, and death, we should begin to find the forgiveness of our sins. The forgiveness of sins is Christ’s chief end and purpose. Sacrifice, suffering, and death are Christ’s means to obtain it for us. For no other reason than love for us and our salvation, Jesus Christ becomes the forgiveness of sins. In becoming the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ crowns a life of giving Himself back to the Father, to do His will, come what may, against all opposition to it. In becoming the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ becomes the fruit of the new Tree of Life, food for our glorious immortality.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

That by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore,
both in body and soul…
(Collect, Passion Sunday)
 
        
The readings for the Sunday Next before Holy Week, invite us to study the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice and priesthood. (Melville Scott, Harmony of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels) Today is called Passion Sunday, or the Sunday of the Atonement. Today we are called to learn about the doctrine of the Cross. The death of Jesus Christ must call us into far more than syrupy sentimentality and the short-lived pangs of a guilty conscience on Good Friday. Christ’s sacrifice and death must command such attention and respect of intellect that sound doctrine will move our wills to submit to the great mystery of godliness. (1 Tim iii. 16)
        
Atonement Sunday calls us to remember the practice of atonement for sins in Jewish history and how Christ’s atonement perfects them all. In the Old Testament the Jewish high priest would enter into the tabernacle at Jerusalem to make atonement for the people’s sins on the eve of Passover. He would have sacrificed a one-year-old, male lamb, without spot or blemish. He then would have painted the doorposts leading into the inner sanctum of the temple, the holiest of holies, the presence chamber of God, with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. Next, he sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat, the place signifying God’s encounter with man, Moses. Then, he dredged the altar of incense, a symbol of prayer, with the blood. Finally, the priest would have undergone ritual washing for impurity and irregularity contracted by the bloody sacrifice. Thus, the Jewish high priest entered into the holiest of holies, the inner sanctum, only once a year, and every year to make sacrifice for his sins and the sins of the people. For the Jews, sinful man came closest to God by the external and visible sacrifices of the high priest. The sacrifices could make neither the priest nor the people perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. (Hebrews ix, 9,10) Neither food nor drink, bodily or fleshly cleansing, could make the conscience clean. Jeremiah had asked rhetorically; Shall the holy flesh take away from your crimes?’ (Jer. 11:15)
        
Canon Scott reminds us that Jewish promises are Christian realities, their hopes our certainties, their future our present. (idem) What the Jews did to make atonement for sin was a forerunner and precursor to what Christ would do for us. The author of the Epistle continues.

But when Christ became an high priest of good things yet to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
 
When Christ became our High Priest, in and through His death, He passed through the tabernacle of His body, His external and visible nature, beyond the veil of His flesh (idem) to God. When he finished His earthly mission to us, He ascended, to enter into the holy place of Heaven, to plead our cause and the merits of his eternal redemption for us. Through His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, Christ was opening the door of the Kingdom of Heaven to us, having torn down the wall of separation between the external world and the internal and invisible world of the spirit. Christ’s atonement for our sins was made in time and space but was eternally perfect. His redemption of our sinful human nature was made once for all, for the sins of the whole world, needing no repetition.
        
The Jewish high priest offered his sacrifice to atone for sins in the tabernacle made with hands. Christ offered his sacrifice in tabernacle of His own body, not made with hands. The Jewish high priest offered the blood of goats and calves, a life less and inferior to his own. Christ shed His own blood and offered Himself. The Jewish high priest entered the temple of Jerusalem, a model of heaven. Christ entered heaven itself. The Jewish high priest offered the death of a brute beast. Christ became His own brute beast and made His own death the test of His own obedience to the Father. Death would be no barrier to life but the means of embracing a better and more perfect life with the Father.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews, ix, 13,14)
 
Christ offers His body to cleanse our consciences from dead works through the eternal Spirit. The Jews cleansed their bodies, but not their souls. Christ offers the first completely to purify and perfect the second. He sacrifices His body completely in order to achieve union with Father, for us. He does what we could never do. He dies purely and perfectly to the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that He might unite us with God. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that

the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience inwardly, which is accomplished by faith: ‘Purifying their hearts by faith’ (Ac. 15:9), inasmuch as it makes one believe that all who adhere to Christ are cleansed by His blood. (Comm. Hebrews, ix…)
And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. (ibid, 15)
 
Christ carries us from the Old Testament to the New. He makes death not something final as an end but a means, an instrument, a facilitator for new life with God the Father. Christ makes the Old Testament New because He gives us the promise of eternal inheritance. From Christ’s death to sin and Satan, our faith and hope through love of Jesus Christ can find freedom in His Resurrection and Ascension, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter i. 4,5) And, we are baptized into His death (Romans, vi. 4). His Atonement is all effectual for those who believe.
        
Today, Christ Himself calls us to believe in what He did because of who He was. He alone is well-suited to save us. With the Pharisees, on the best of days, we tend to judge Christ. Our instinct is to be cynical about Him. We are not of God because we do not hear God’s words. (St. John viii. 47) We launch back at Him and say, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? (ibid, 48) Christ comes from God and knows God. He seeks not [His] own glory for His Father seeks and judges. (ibid, 50) The Pharisees, you, and I judge ourselves and seek our own glory. If we keep the Word of God, in Jesus Christ, we shall never see death. (ibid, 51) All we see in Jesus Christ is another man, perhaps, at best, another Abraham. How can Christ claim to offer life after death if he is but a mere man? Christ seems to make Himself out to be more than a man. Of course, in the Gospel, He prepares us for the more than a man that He is. We forget that God made us for Himself, for eternity. Christ intends to reestablish the possibility of our eternal inheritance. Thus, He does not honor himself. The Man apart from God who honors himself, dies. Christ knows God and keeps His saying, His Word. The Word that Christ is and keeps will see Him through death, for all of us, into new life. We claim that God is our God. We glorify ourselves, but Christ glorifies God. The One Christ knows surely and certainly, He glorifies. He knows, while we can only come to know.  For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. (St. John vi. 38)
        
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. (ibid, 56) Inwardly and spiritually, long before Christ’s coming, with faith and hope, Abraham saw Christ’s coming. The Pharisees, you, and I cannot see spiritually and inwardly. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (ibid, 58) Christ binds the past and the future to the present. As St. Thomas reminds us, For eternal existence knows neither past nor future time, but embraces all time in one indivisible [instant]. (Comm. John…) Christ’s source and origin come to us from the Eternally Now of God, I am. Christ is the future hope of all the ancient Jews of the past, like Abraham, in the present. He is our hope now, soon to become history, in the future. Christ derives His meaning and definition from Eternity for you and me. God revealed Himself to Moses in history as I am. Christ is God’s great I am in our history.
        
The history of God’s great I am must find relevance for us today. Christ doesn’t say it, but He is holy, harmless, and undefiled, separate from sinners, ‘made higher than the heavens’, in His unique Sonship, knowledge, and being. (idem, Scott) However, I am will elaborate for the purposes of our faith, hope and love, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto to the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) He says this so that we might find in Him the way home to Heaven, by the Truth that He is, through His life, now for the future. I am the bread of life, (St. John vi. 35) that we might feed on Him as God’s Word, nourishing us inwardly and spiritually for the Kingdom. I am the light of the world, (St. John viii. 12), that we might walk to Heaven through the light that He is. I am the door (St. John x. 7) through whom we might walk, at present. I am the good shepherd (St. John x. 110 that He might herd us home, now. I am the true vine (St. John xv. 1) that here we might begin to bud as His branches. And, finally, I am the resurrection and the life (St. John xi. 25) that He who holds the keys of death and the grave might make it into the seedbed of faith, hope, and love that leads us now, on this Passion Sunday, this Atonement Sunday, to His glory, even forever.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
                                                               (Gal. iv. 26)

At the very beginning of Lent, our Lord insists, Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) We began our journey at Christ's command. Long journeys are hard work, and this Lenten journey is no exception. For nearly seven weeks, Christians are invited to walk with Jesus towards Jerusalem.
Walking up to Jerusalem is what our lives are all about. We walk with Jesus to see how, in the wilderness and desert of the human soul, He conquers the temptations of Satan and triumphs over sin for us. We walk with Jesus to discover that, like the woman of Cana, we are exiles, strangers, aliens to God’s promises, and even dogs who must humbly eat of the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. (St. Matthew xv. 27) We walk with Jesus also to learn that we have been mostly deaf to the Word of God and, thus, incapable of speaking the truth. And today, we must learn that Jesus Christ comes to us to feed us miraculously with the Bread of Heaven.
         
But you will have noticed that our Lenten pilgrimage with Jesus up to Jerusalem will not be easy. Lenten learning about ourselves – who we are and what we need, is spiritually exhausting. Lenten fasting and abstinence make us haggard and hungry. At times, we become distracted and even lose our way. The sins that so easily beset us may well have been overcome, but seven other demons worse than ourselves threaten to consume us. (St. Matthew xii. 45) Satan realizes that he is losing our spirits, and so he attacks our bodies with renewed vigor through the elements of this world. (Galatians iv. 3) We have good intentions but find ourselves much like the children of the proverbial Hagar, Abraham’s mistress, and bond woman –giving birth to the earthly bastard offspring of vice. We want freedom as the children of promise, and followers of Jesus, who go up to Jerusalem which is above… and is free. (Galatians iv. 26) Yet it seems that the more we try, the further back we fall.
         
Today Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, provide us with what we need. Today is Dominica Refectionis –Refreshment or Mothering Sunday, when Mother Church asks us to sit down and rest awhile, to find some spiritual refreshment so that our pursuit of Jesus Christ will not be in vain. Today, we are asked to stop, breathe, and contemplate the end and meaning of all our labors. So, we read that Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. (St. John vi. 3) Jesus bids us come with Him to the mountain of His holiness so that He might give us a foretaste of our heavenly future. He knows that we are in danger of spiritual languor and listlessness. He intends to provide us with that spiritual food that will give us the dogged and dauntless determination to press on. Jesus commands, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. (St. John vi. 10) St. John Chrysostom tells us:

That Jesus calls us up to rest at intervals from the tumults and confusion of common life. For solitude is good for the study of wisdom. And often doth He go up alone into a mountain, and spend the night there, and pray, to teach us that the man who will come most near to God must be free from all disturbance and must seek times and places clear of confusion. (St. John Chrysostom: Homily xlii) 


We must sit, listen, and hear. Yet it is Lent. We are worn out, and Jesus asks us, Whence shall we buy bread that [we all] may eat? (St. John vi. 5). Our minds are bent on earthly things. Jesus intends to test us with Philip, for he Himself knew what he would do. (St. John vi. 6) Philip has seen the finger of God at work in Jesus’ miracles. Will we, with him, believe that Jesus can provide food that no man can afford and for so many? What measure of faith does Philip have? What measure do we have? Are we the children of Hagar, born after the flesh or are we the children of promise? (Gal. iv. 23) Philip answers as one in bondage to the elements of this world. On our best of days, we do the same. He responds that even two-hundred penny worth is not enough for this crowd. (St. John vi. 7) An earthly-minded Philip is calculating the cost of feeding five thousand. Too many people, too little money, he reckons. Jesus intends to reveal the spiritual poverty of Philip’s faith. At the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, Philip found Nathaniel and said We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. (St. John i. 45) Philip is bold with words to predict who Jesus is. Now will his words be matched by true faith in what Jesus can do? As Archbishop Trench remarks,

As yet, he knows not that the Lord whom he serves upon earth is even the same who ‘openeth his hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness,’ who feeds and nourishes all creatures, who has fed them and nourished them from the creation of the world…and can feed a few thousand now.
 
Andrew will substantiate Philip’s doubt. There is a young lad who hath five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? (St. John vi. 9) As Philip’s faith was overcome by too much doubt, Andrew’s faith was overcome by too little evidence. To offer to fill so many when the resources were few would have been crushing and embarrassing.
         
True faith can often be destroyed when natural demands and natural provision are wanting. To Philip and Andrew, the Lord’s hand seems to be waxen short. (Numbers xi. 23) Normally, when ordinary and natural means fail us, we neglect to remember the power of the Lord. Jesus tells us to sit down, listen, and trust. He asks us to remember that we are going up to Jerusalem, that we are dogs eating from the crumbs that fall from His table (St. Matt. xv. 27), and that we must not only hear the Word of God but keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) 

Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So, the men sat down, in number about five thousand. (St. John vi. 10) Jesus as much as said, You have nothing to set down before the men, but God provides you with a plush green dining area. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. (Ibid, 11) Our Lord thanks the Father in advance. All we have comes from the Father. What God gives to us from the hands of Jesus Christ will be more than sufficient to satisfy our hunger. Five loaves and two fishes will feed five thousand. In the normal course of life, food and drink are already multiplied into the larger gift of spiritual thanksgiving.

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field. Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. (St. Matthew xiii. 31,32) Jesus says, gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) Those who are in bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3) seldom have a thought for others who must share in our feast. With all that we are given, there must remain more for those who cannot yet feast with us. Food has been multiplied and shared with us. We must do the same. Are we the children of Hagar or Sarah? If we are the children of Sarah, with the Apostles, Matthew Henry suggests that we must

See how large the divine bounty is; it not only fills the cup, but makes it run over; bread enough, and to spare, in our Father's house. The fragments filled twelve baskets, one for each disciple; they were thus repaid with interest for their willingness to part with what they had for public service.
                                                                        (Matthew Henry, Commentary) 
 
As St. Hilary suggests, the substance [of the five barley loaves and two fishes] progressively increases. (The Passing of the Law: St. Hilary of Poitiers) And as Archbishop Trench says, so we have here a visible symbol of that love which exhausts not itself by loving, but after all its outgoings upon others, multiplies in an ongoing multiplying which is always found in true giving.... (Par’s. p. 213) Christ is thankful and feeds the hungry five thousand. We must do the same. Christ intends that we should imitate His generosity.
          
Therefore, the Apostles gathered the fragments together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. (St. John vi. 13) St. Augustine tells us that the fragments that remained were the parts that the people could not yet eat. (Tr. xxiv. 6) What remains over and above is the spiritual food that faith must learn to feed on. In the fragments that remain are hidden gifts of mystic meaning. Herein is that Divine potential for those who begin to hunger and thirst after righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) Jesus always provides more food to the spirit for those who follow Him in faith. Faith sees that the more than the multitude can eat is Spirit and is Truth. Within fragments and crumbs of earthly food, lie food for thought, food for the soul. Are we being called to feed only on earthly manna? Or are we called to digest spiritual truth? There is more to be needed and ingested from this Giver and His gifts, but not until the eyes of faith are opened and the believer’s heart is softened. Our eyes are opened, and our hearts are softened as we partake of the superabundant nature of God’s love in the Holy Sacrament today. Even here, let us then gather up the fragments that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) We will need them. Behold we go up to Jerusalem to the Jerusalem of the Cross. Mere earthly fare will never sustain a faith that seeks to behold and plumb the depths of that love that never stops giving…even in death., Christ’s death and ours.

Amen. 
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

 Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.
St. Luke xi.
 
In last Sunday’s Gospel, we read about the kind of humility and meekness that generate faith in freedom from the Devil. There, a Syrophoenician woman, a Greek inhabitant of Cana, besought the Lord Jesus for the healing of her daughter, who was grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew xv. 22) In confessing who and what she was, the good lady expressed that faith that finds freedom and liberty in Jesus Christ. She confessed herself to be a dog in relation to Christ and the salvation that He brings into the world. Her humility and meekness moved her into that faith that hangs desperately on God and His Grace. Today, our faith becomes situated more soundly in God’s Grace. Today, we learn that liberation is God’s work and that we shall not be free until we allow God in Jesus Christ to cast out our demons.

In this morning’s Gospel, we read that Jesus had cast a demon out of a dumb (or mute) man, and the dumb spake. (St. Luke xi. 14) The healing is instantaneous and follows Jesus’ response to one of disciples, who had asked Him to teach us all how to pray. Jesus had furnished him with what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. To emphasize the inward and spiritual nature of prayer, Jesus heals a deaf-mute man, whose prayer is known to God the Father alone. Yet no sooner had Jesus healed the dumb-mute man, than an equally instantaneous reaction comes from the crowd of bystanders exclaiming that Jesus had cast out the demon or devil through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. (Idem, 16) The Ancients believed that physical handicaps were divine punishment for demonic possession. That some who witnessed the miracle judged that Jesus was in league with the Devil should not surprise us. If healing could not be proved to come from God alone, Ancient Man concluded superstitiously that the Devil was up to his old tricks. Thus, we read, that others demanded a sign from heaven to prove that Jesus was working with God.
        
The problem is that men in general, and religious men in particular, do not understand the nature of prayer. Most men live on the outside of themselves and thus judge a world around them without giving much thought for themselves or the state and condition of their own souls. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician woman, they never come round to seeing themselves as strangers to God’s Promises and unworthy of His Grace. Unlike today’s deaf-mute man, they do not so much as pray to God in secret that the God who seeth in secret shall reward them openly. (St. Matthew vi. 4) Most men never ask that they might receive, seek that they might find, or knock that it might be opened to them. (St. Luke xi. 9) As a result, they are unaccustomed to God’s Gracious benevolence. So, in today’s Gospel, and as absurd as it might seem, they demand a sign from heaven, or another miracle, to prove that goodness comes from God alone.
          
On a basic level, in this morning’s Gospel, religious men in all ages are given a wakeup call and our need for the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us of our absolute dependence on God for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. (General Thanksgiving) Today, Jesus reinforces the fact that we hang on God for all good things and that God alone can cast out [our] demons.
        
The Syrophoenician Woman of last week’s Gospel becomes the deaf-mute man. Prior to his healing, he can neither hear nor speak. His impediment separates him from the world around him. He is helpless and hopeless. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician Woman, he can neither reveal to all that he is a dog nor reveal his need. His suffering and prayer are incommunicable to all other men. His fellow Jews judge him to be suffering because of his sins. Only when Jesus comes upon him to answer his prayer does the dumb speak, no doubt behaving like an infant child whose chief delight is found in being able to connect with the created order and all other men.

The deaf-mute man’s prayer is heard by God. God responds to him in Jesus Christ. He is no sooner healed than he hears that his healing must have come from Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. (idem)
Next, he heard Jesus’ response. Every kingdom divided against itself, he says, is brought to desolation. And a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? (St. Luke xi. 17, 18) Our liberated man now possessed a good heretofore denied to him. Jesus implies that he had been divided from God’s kingdom and lived in desolation. Because Satan was not divided against himself, with the help of his fellow demons he ensured that this man stood fast in his kingdom, for a time. Along the lines of his life, this man both felt and knew himself to be separated from God and his fellow men. That he had miraculously been carried into a world of potential goodness was no doubt the clearest truth presented to his newly liberated senses. Satan’s singular intention was to keep him deaf and mute. Jesus of Nazareth had freed him. Satan’s one aim is to divide a man from God’s creation, from God’s truth, and from truth’s healing and salvation has been overcome. His prayer to the Father had been answered.

With the miracle, our sufferer might have wondered about the stranger nature of the world he had entered. Would that the bystanders had praised God for such a wonderful miracle as this! But we read that Jesus knew their thoughts. (ibid, xi. 17) Jesus confronted the malice and envy of the crowd, who seemed to see no illustration for their own needs and wants in the condition of deaf-mute man’s healing.  If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. (ibid, 19) If Beelzebub or Satan had cast out the demonic spirit, Satan would have been divided against himself. If some demons had brought about this good, then Satan and his friends must have been divided. As St. Bruno says, if the spirits of evil were waging war against each other, they would have little or no power against man. (St. Bruno, The Kingdom of Evil) But if Christ had brought about this evident good, by whom and for what reason did the Sons of Israel cast them out?

But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (ibid, 20) Christ insists that the finger of God alone is sufficient to cast out any demons that plague the restless and sorrowful hearts of sinful men. The devils were united in keeping the deaf and mute man separated from God and his fellow men. The devils unite to distract and prevent us from asking God to heal and deliver us from our spiritually deaf and mute fallen natures.
When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. (St. Luke xi. 21, 22) The Devil and his friends have had their permissive power since the fall of man. The Devil and his friends had kept the deaf and mute man without hearing or speech, for a season. But a stronger than he has come down from Heaven and upon him. Satan was a strong man who kept his palace and his slaves – his goods, like the deaf-mute man, in peace. Satan’s goods were at peace since his power over him had gone unchallenged. But a stronger than he, Jesus Christ, has conquered him, broken his armour, and freed the deaf-mute man from his apparently permanent grip.

The deaf-mute man has been healed by Jesus Christ. But what of the malicious mockers and envious naysayers? Jesus says that

when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. (ibid, xi. 24-26)
 
The Jewish bystanders have believed that they were more righteous than the healed deaf-mute man, who prayed for deliverance from an unclean spirit. The bystanders lacked the vigilant and humble faith to confess that they needed God’s strong man. They rested upon their own good works. They saw unclean spirits come and go. They walked through dry, empty places, sought rest, found none, and returned to their own houses. They were now vulnerable to seven other spirits more wicked than [themselves], who tempted and harangued them. The deaf-mute man’s demon had been cast out. The bystander’s unclean spirit had merely gone out – Satan disguised as an angel of light. He would, no doubt, return. The danger for them is much worse since without any need and thankful reception of the Grace that Christ brings into the world, the last state of them will be worse than the first. (idem)

This morning the Word and Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, puts His finger on our problem, and desires to cast out all our demons. The true miracle we must seek today is that, with St. Paul, we realize that we were sometimes darkness, but now…are light in the Lord. (Eph. V. 8) True healing comes to us from God the Father, through Jesus the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. With the deaf-mute man, the miracle of our faith must be the answer to our secret, vigilant, humble, and faithful prayer for Christ to cast out all our demons. The wonderful mystery of salvation that Jesus brings into the world, should move us to ask that we might receive. Something as simple as being able to hear the Word of God in Jesus Christ and speak words in giving of thanks should move and define us with the healed deaf-mute man. With the dumb-mute man of today’s Gospel, let us be determined to hear the Word of God and keep it because we can speak the truth that has set us free to walk as children of the light so that all other men may realize that the Kingdom of God has come upon us. (Ibid, 20)

Amen.
©wjsmartin