Return To Life
THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
The Christian spiritual life is a life of movement. We are either moving towards God or moving away from him- there is nothing static about it. To be human is to be in motion; we are moveable creatures. We are moveable because we are imperfect. We are progressing; we are becoming. Our movability means the train of being has left the station, and we are in motion towards completion, an attribute of humanity that clearly defines creatureliness. We did not make ourselves but were fashioned by Divine craftsmanship; every person is made in the image of God; crafted in the Divine likeness.
We are not Gods, created and equal with the true God, but carry attributes and characteristics analogous to the One who made us. For there is One God, and we are the people of his pasture and sheep of his hand. We are moveable, in-process, but the Triune God is immovable because, in a real sense, "he's already arrived." "He's already there" and has been since before eternity.
Immovability emerged as an early Greek philosophical idea found in the writings Parmenides and others, who understood the cosmos to be in a static state of perfection or immovable. The universe was understood to be "uncreated and indestructible; complete, immovable, and without end." Now, who does that sound like? Would we not find the fullest understanding of Parmenides' immovability in the God of creation? Well, so did the early Fathers of the Church who took this Hellenistic philosophical category and correctly applied it to the Triune God as it relates to His perfection. God is indestructible, complete, immovable, and without end: again, he's already arrived. He is perfect.
All things come from God, and the story of humanity, our story, is a tale of return back to Him. St. Augustine, at the very beginning of his book Confessions puts it this way, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." The human condition is like a procession: we are either processing towards the Lord or away from him. Hebrew spirituality likens this to the way of life and the way of death. We're either processing in and towards the Divine life or away from Him towards atrophy, decay, and death. Moveable creatures either progressing towards being perfected (a kind of eternal immovability) or far, far away from the Divine life, forever striving, agitated, and unsettled in eternal torment.
In an age of never-ending options and nuance, a narrow, two-path view of destiny and spirituality may appear over-simplistic even naive. The fact of the matter is, there are only two ways to walk in this pilgrimage of life: the way of Christ or the way of the world, which is the path to destruction. Life is a pilgrimage which began when Eden's gates were closed to humanity, a pilgrimage back to the God of the Garden, the God who desires to walk with men.
You see, the life of faith is a pilgrimage, a journey, an exodus of a lifetime. And the greatest discovery a pilgrim can make is discovering that while we may be on pilgrimage, there is another pilgrimage going on, a Divine one. As we are journeying toward the Lord, we discover that he is coming to meet us. And today's Gospel account is a wonderful illustration of this spiritual reality.
Today's Gospel is about two processions that converge together in a city called Nain, which means beauty. The first procession is a funeral cortege (a very solemn procession) involving a large crowd of the city residents (Luke says, "most of the city") transporting a young man's body to the cemetery, whose life has been cut short in the springtime of life. The mourning is intense, as it always is whenever someone with so much life ahead of them tragically and suddenly dies. And what could be more moving than a mother's weeping over the death of her only child? The city of beauty is saturated with sorrow.
In this case, however, the woman’s sorrows are multiplied. She is a widow, which makes her vulnerable and greatly disadvantaged. In Jewish culture, it was a man's duty to provide for a woman. Hebrew culture understood marriage as a place of protection, nurture, and stability for women (not the oppressive and restrictive tyranny of liberated modern thinkers). Marriage was a type, a picture of YHWH's covenantal protection and love for his people Israel, like eagle’s wings spread protectively over them.
When a husband died, it was the eldest son's duty to care for his mother until a kinsman-redeemer might marry her. Now, Without a man to provide for her (her only son being dead), and no social welfare state, she is reduced to begging, a beggar of her fellow residents, a beggar among her family of origin, destitute and abandoned; like Naomi, she is tasting the bitterness of life.
Now, what might we learn about the spiritual life from this dramatic scene for our own growth in the lifelong pilgrimage of faith? First, we learn of God's incredible compassion for those mourning the loss of loved ones. Jesus himself wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, even though he knew he was going to raise him from the dead. Likewise, for any of us who have buried a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a son or a daughter, a brother or sister, or good friend, Jesus has compassion on us.
We need to remember; he never intended death. Death is unnatural. It is a consequence of sin. But Jesus didn't leave it there. He entered into our world, took on our human nature, even took on human death in order to redeem it all, and make eternal life possible. Just as the multiplications of the loaves and fish were foreshadowing the far greater miracle of the Eucharist, so these physical resuscitations of Jairus' daughter, of the beloved Lazarus, and the widow's son of Nain foretell a far greater miracle: that Jesus wants to give our loved ones who have fallen asleep and to us as well, the miracle of resurrection from the dead. Resuscitations are temporary, but resurrection is forever.
Jesus, who is rich in mercy and compassion, refuses to let us grieve in solitude but graciously shares his compassionate touch with us. Only Divine compassion can provide us with the true and only hope for our beloved departed: the hope of bodily resurrection. And this great hope comforts and alleviates our fears towards our own death. “For it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Heb 9:27). But for those upon whom the divine gaze has been received by faith, who trust in the healing touch of grace, Jesus says, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" Although the procession of death marches on, the procession of Divine Life is greater.
Knowing this, we come to the second point of today's Gospel: that these same two processions witnessed in today's Gospel continue down to this present day. One procession is a death march, a funeral cortege, a journey toward death. The second is a procession of life that involves walking together with Jesus. The procession of life is a procession in which Jesus seeks to bring us fully alive. Our Lord's triumph over death is precisely what he desires to give us: life. And the way of life is not an event, a philosophy, or even an approach to living. No! It is a relationship.
Jesus says, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," and for us to experience his risen life, both now and in the future, we have to enter into that deep relationship with Jesus. We must respond to grace, trust by faith, humble ourselves, turning from sin, and unto holiness and virtue. It means not just hearing him, but following him, step by step, word by word, thought by thought.
The path of death is to order our lives apart from Jesus Christ. So many, many people are as dead men walking; multitudes of people hollow on the inside and faint as ghosts on the outside. Others are wasting away, decaying daily by sins and vice, full of hatred, envy, lust, and anger towards their neighbor and often against God. Not able to recognize their deadness because they slip in and surround themselves within the death march, one within the great multitude who follow in the wake of death unto the cemetery, not realizing that they already reside in the city of the dead.
Some of the most tragic cases within this procession of corpses are those who mistakenly think they're alive because they have some intellectual knowledge of Christ and his teachings, they may know some or much of the Scriptures, sometimes they pray and even attend church regularly, but the Lord Jesus Christ isn't really alive in them because they are going through the motions of faith, but within the life of their soul, at the deepest levels of their being, they're not in a relationship with Jesus, they're not walking with him. They are white-washed tombs, spotless on the outside, but on the inside, selfish, wicked, and corrupt. The energies and motions of their lives (even religious motions) take them further and further away from life.
In the Book of Revelation, Jesus spoke to the Church in Sardis, saying, "I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you."
There are many who have a reputation for being alive, for following Jesus, for walking with him on the procession of life, but instead, like the Christians of Sardis, they're dead. Jesus describes, however, the path to life. It involves waking up, remembering what he has taught us, repenting, and keeping his word. Jesus wants to touch us all and bring us fully alive. The way he does this most poignantly is by meeting our repentance and humility with grace, mercy, and reconciliation. When we confess our sins to God and his church, he pardons, absolves, and reconciles us back to himself. The immovable God moves in mercy towards the penitent child and brings us lovingly back to himself.
What sweet and soothing music to the ears of imperfect pilgrims such as we are. And what a comfort to all who by faith are on a journey towards their Maker. Our God rejoices thus over every pilgrim prodigal who finds his or her way back into the arms of life, "My son was dead and has been brought back to life again." Every single reconciliation in your life, every time you confess your sins to God and are restored, is nothing short of a miracle, a glorious type of resurrection.
The third and final lesson we can glimpse from this episode is that Jesus' procession of life is also a procession of death, but a different type of death. We know that Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem, where another mother would watch her son die and carry him to be buried outside the city walls. But it was through his loving death that he made resurrection possible for all of us, teaching us the principle that in order to save our life, we must lose it and that unless we fall to the ground and die like the grain of wheat, we will bear no fruit.
The path of life, the journey of true faith, is a path in which we lose our lives for God and others, in which we love others as Jesus has loved us first, in which we sacrifice our own needs and desires so that others may live. The path with Jesus, the relationship with Jesus, always involves this type of self-emptying love.
Only Christ can take what is dead and make it new and alive, for Christ is the compassionate God. He is the One who left the glory of heaven, "who came near to the city," the One who "saw our great need," the blessed One who reached out and touched us who were dead in our sins and trespasses and in doing so, gave his life that you and I might return to life: THAT is compassion; that is the tender mercy of our God.
Friends, Divine Mercy, is showered upon us each and every day, in the big and the small things of life, in ways that we may never even know; showers of grace upon grace rain down upon the children of God. And here at the table in the Lord's house, we receive the touch of life through the Liturgy as we receive the effectual signs of his incomprehensible love and compassion given in the bread and in the wine; his body which was broken for you; his blood which was poured out for you; to heal your wounds, to bind up your broken heart, to raise you from the death of sin unto the hope and joy of new and eternal life.
This IS the Divine mercy of God in Christ towards all who believe. So, my beloved, I bid you come and feast at the table of the LORD. Return to the One "who is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy." Rejoice with the prophet who says, “Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things. Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. Whatever sorrow, need, sickness or burden you carry today, Christ says, Weep not. Arise, come, return to me and I will refresh you. Amen+
