“LIFE”
Saint Luke 7. 11-17
Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity: 7 September Anno Domini 2008
Fr Watson SSP
You want glory and success. You don't want cross and suffering. These desires are not strange but totally normal-for sinners. To disobey actively or to disobey by mere inactivity, any of God's Commands, is to choose death. To disobey the First and Greatest Law is to choose death. "Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me" saith the Lord. Jesus re-spoke it as: "Love the Lord your God with all your soul, strength, heart and soul." The Lord is Life. To fail to embrace the Life perfectly is to be in the darkness. Life is the opposite of death. While Christ is the Lord of the Living, the devil is the Lord of Death.
Because of sin the world no longer works normal-the way God designed and made it. Because everyone born in the sinful world is born a sinner, and remains a sinner until the end, everything these people "do" (everything you "do") is tinged with sin and cannot make things better. Your actions and efforts can never fix things and make things right. In fact, things are so bad that only the Lord can undo the damage. Everything had been reversed and turned around, turned inside-out by sin. The Lord now chooses to remedy the ruin by again turning things around, turning them back the way He chooses them to be. But He didn't do it with wisdom, the way of the world, glory, as the Greeks would have liked (and you). He didn't do it with signs and miracles that would always remain irrefutable to logic, reason, and the physical senses, glory, as the Jews would have liked (and you). No, He did it His way with servitude, (slavery), humiliation, sweat, blood, pain, death, and internment: the way of the Cross.
The fact that you are sinners means that your own fallen egos, opinions, viewpoints, desires, and needs, don't like the way Christ does things.
You want victory not defeat. You would opt for success and not failure. If you could be your own Messiah, your own "anointed One," you would bring health not sickness, wealth not poverty, growth not loss, and longevity rather than untimely passings. You want glory but Christ wants you to have Cross. Now to be sure, the Lord will give you glory-but not yet. Jesus will give you more glory than passes human understanding-but not now. Your ultimate and unfathomable rewards come at the end not in the first inning. For now, Christ gives you Cross, Crucifix, because He's on that Tree for you. The dawn is sweeter after a long dark night of the soul. The cool glass of water always tastes better after a grueling day of humidity and sweat. The blue sky and bright sun always are more cheerful after a week of overcast and rain. If these things are true for temporary things (and they are) how much more true for eternal things must they be! First comes the Law then the Gospel. First comes tears then the comfort and smiles. First comes the bitter herbs then the honey. First comes Maundy Thursday and Good Friday then Easter morning. First comes death then eternal life.
The Blessed Redeemer did not, does not, and will not promise you a rose garden. He speaks plainly, honestly and with love: "let the dead bury the dead; anyone who will not leave home, family, and wife for My sake is not worthy of Me; if they mock, abuse and kill the Son of Man will they not also do so unto you; Take up your cross and follow Me." First comes exercise and trials, and then comes the hot-tub and sense of accomplishment.
Jesus raised the widows' son back to life for multiple reasons: all good. God is good. God hates tears. The Lord loathes pain. Jesus knows His enemy, your enemy, is death. Jesus came to seek the lost, the lonely, the outcast, the sick, the ones in the dark, and the dead.
People die because, as sinners, they disobey God. Jesus is Life, without sin, perfectly obedient to the Father, and is here to give you His life and take away your death. People die because of sins in deed and thought. Jesus died on the Cross, which includes that cross which you all refuse to carry. Jesus, by dying for your sins, takes them all away from you and gives you His purity. Jesus took your dark tomb and gave you His open and empty sepulchre. Jesus took back His life from the clutches of death and devil and lives eternal as the Living One. When the Lord resurrected Jairus' daughter and Lazarus, when He brought back to life the son of the Widow, He was telling them, and you, that what He would do for Himself on "the third day," He also will do for all those that are His.
The young man that Jesus brought back to life would, one day, die again, and be buried. But on this day, the day of our Text, the joy of being made alive in Jesus, was momentarily un-surpassed…it was "like" the young man's Baptism into Christ. An even greater resurrection awaited him at the end of time. You too have been baptized into Jesus. Baptism is the first death, your first death. That sacred washing of regeneration united you in Christ's passion, death, and YES, resurrection. Jesus died and you die + in Him. Jesus was raised and lives forever and you too will be raised and live forever with Him, even as you now live in Him, receiving a foretaste of this eternal heavenly reward by receiving Him in His Words of Forgiveness and His Supper of Salvation.
Until then…there will be many more funeral marches for your own loved ones. Until then, until the final Resurrection, the ultimate rescue from death and Satan, there will be many more tears and heartaches. But Jesus gives, and gives, and then gives some more of Himself, to steady you and guide you on the way to the gates of glory.
Jesus did not give the raised youth back to the father of the family, for the youth had no living Dad at the time, hence the "Widow of Nain" was his only surviving parent. How instructive and filled with enlightening typology. The young man is given to his Mother, the Bride of his Father. It is enough for the moment. It is all that is needed according to the good giving of Jesus.
Dear Saints, you certainly have your heavenly Father Whom you are privileged to come to in prayer, boldly stepping before Him clothed in Jesus' perfect righteousness. You have this invisible, yet present Father that you lovingly call Abba-dear, tender Father. But for now, Jesus gives you Himself, under the Cross, that is, under the humble, lowly, and still struggling "means" of Words preached, Meals eaten, and Washings + remembered and made active. Jesus gives you all these, Himself, through His Bride-His Father's temporary "widow," if you will, the Holy Mother Church. The two shall come together and become one-one flesh-writes the Apostle about both earthly marriage and Jesus and His Bride. When you love the Church you love Jesus, and, of course, vice-versa. One is never found without the other.
His parade of Life, your Mother's parade of Life goes on this morning. With the throng of the Saved and Forgiven you are ushered here, once again, into Jesus. Life!
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost