“THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD”
Saint Luke 7: 11-17
16th Sunday after Trinity: 6 October Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Little children when asked would they like an ice-cream cone right now, or 100 cones in a month will chose the first. Adults when asked would they like fun, joy, and pleasure right now or eternal peace, comfort, and happiness later…well you know how you usually choose. Even Aesop knew that fallen man is the profligate grasshopper and not the wise and prudent ant. We call that sin. Sinners like glory and not cross. Sinners don’t want to have problems in their lives. Sinners don’t like to get hurt, to age, to grow old and infirm. Sinners don’t like losing loved ones to death, and dislike even more the thought that they too will one day be carried out of a city in a casket.
Sinners are like Narcissus, admiring themselves in the reflecting pool of self. This is why The Lord must change that fake pool into the hard, cold mirror of the Law. The deceptive counterfeit beauty of the “angel of light,” Satan, must be revealed and shown as the beast from the pit. The sinner must see the corrupt stinking and decaying creature his own fallen Adam actually is.
The Lord Christ going to the city of Nain happened. But the deeper meaning is that this entire world is now the city of Nain. You think you live in Topeka, Lawrence, Olathe, Shawnee, Bonner Springs, et-cetera, but you live and DIE in Nain—in the fallen world of decay and death. Don’t look to temporary comforts and mammon and spiritual “highs” (which are like quick carb and sugar bombs), but look to the bloody crucifix of your Savior and receive that Body and Blood and forgiving acquittal!
The devil wants you in the procession of the dead. He wants you depressed over earthly death, despondent over the end—thinking it’s final—and despairing over the reality of…everything. The Lord, Who knows you’ve been like denying Peter and traitorous Judas, does NOT want you to end up like Judas.
Jesus comes to Nain; He comes to you with many of His disciples. How did Jesus arrive, how was He there? Did the people simply have a “good and warm feeling” in their hearts? Did that grieving Mother simply have to think really hard and meditate on those passages from Hebrew Scripture that she knew and believed in? No. No because God was no longer only God as Godhead, Father, Son + and Holy Ghost, but God was Man: Immanuel. Jesus, God in the flesh, came walking right up to her and the casket. Jesus walked right up to the dead body.
Did that dead man, the son, the only son, of his weeping mother, believe in the coming Messiah while he was still alive? Maybe. Probably. Let’s say yes. The corpse had been just like Saint Bartholomew: a man in whom no guile was found; a man looking for the “consolation of Israel.”
Do you know mothers who have lost believing children? Do you know of faithful Christians who too are corpses, buried six-feet down in the decaying sinful earth? Do you know your own fallen and deadly—dead—nature apart from Christ?
Jesus forgives sins not by thinking, not by wishing really, really hard, not by being “good” or helpful or nice. The Christ forgives sins by sweaty, painful, and unpleasant hard work—WORK at obeying The Father’s Laws perfectly. The Christ absolves you of death itself by sweaty, painful, and unpleasant suffering on the cross. Jesus forgives sins by dying—dying dead.
Did the fact that her son died believing in The coming Seed of Abraham, The Seed of Mother Eve, The Christ of God; and that he died a forgiven trespasser; did that give her comfort and peace? Well, YES…it did…it Does! But there’s so much more.
Jesus’ compassion is fleshly. Even as God took on flesh from the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Divinity assuming the humanity in a Personal Union of ONE God/Man Jesus of Nazareth; even as the elements of bread and wine take on the realities of Christ’s actual, real, and true, Bodily Body and Bodily Blood in the Sacramental Union; so too all those Whom Christ has chosen from Eternity, and to Whom He comes to in time and space—Baptism +, Absolution, and Supper, share a Mystic Union with Him, With God. He is in you as you are + in Him. He is The Head and you are the body. He is The Groom and you are the bride: One Flesh. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” [Eph. 4. 5-6]
It’s all about the real, concrete, and solid. No gnostic, gossamer, spiritual fuzziness or wispy abstractions. It’s body, bone, blood, breath, and living Jesus…living Disciples of Jesus…living brothers and sisters (YOU) of Jesus.
Forgiveness of sins is the path, the means and way, to LIFE and Salvation. We confess the Resurrection of The Body because Jesus rose again, lives and reigns forever.
No, The Lord did not raise from the dead everybody who had died believing in Him, back then, in the years 27-30 A.D. (or so). But along with Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus, this young dead man from Nain was raised: “And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.”
Jesus’ action then is His promise to you right now; from the moment of your re-birth at the font to His imminent return in Glory—Bodily, His promise, His Word endures. And now He places into your BODY…His BODY. That is a pledge and promise you can glorify God with in this Procession of Peace; this March of Mercy.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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