on Luke 7:11-16

Jesus, his disciples, and a great crowd following them come to the city of Na’in, which exists to this day – a small village near Nazareth at the foot of Mount Tabor. As they approach the gates of the city, a funeral procession pours out through them. The only son of a widow had died.

These funeral processions could be a spectacle. When a loved one would die, a crowd would soon gather – because the dead were usually buried immediately. There were people professionally dedicated to mourning those who died – sort of like funeral directors of the first century – accompanied by flute players, and people weeping and wailing loudly as they process and carry the departed one to the place of burial (cf. Matt 9:23; Mark 5:38; Luke 8:52).

Jesus comes upon this scene in Na’in and he has compassion.

Notice how the Jews carry the body out of the city gates. They take the body away from us. They don’t keep the body here with us where we live. This is of course a common approach toward dead bodies even now. And it was common in the ancient world also among both pagans and Jews.

Dead bodies were regarded as unclean by the Jews. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron that any who touch a dead body or even go into a tent where a person has died shall be unclean seven days (Num 19:11, 14). Therefore, priests, who had to remain ritually pure at all times so that they could serve in the temple, especially had to keep their distance from the dead (Lev 21).

Bear that in mind when we see Jesus, our great High Priest, go near the body of the dead man and touch his funeral bier out of compassion. The bearers stopped & stood still (Luke 7:14). And no wonder, for such an act would have surprised them.

Among the Jews, the mitzvah to accompany the deceased to burial is more important than most other obligations, which is why they would willingly accept that period of uncleanness on behalf of their loved ones. Even a priest would do so if it was for his own son or other close relation (Lev 21:2). But for a stranger? That is unusual.

It would have been customary for Jesus and those with him to turn and escort the funeral procession a short distance to show respect for the man who had died and sympathy for his mother and the other mourners. But for Jesus, who was not of this man’s family, to defile himself by reaching out and touching the bier and stopping the procession was far from customary. He does this out of compassion and to teach us a new attitude toward the dead.

Think about what Christians do with the dead. Rather than keeping them is a separate place, we go into to the catacombs to worship God there. We use the tombs of our martyrs as our altars. We commune with those who have died. We believe in the communion of the saints. We bring their bodies inside our churches and put them in our altars. We venerate relics, which we sew into the antimension on the holy table. We kiss the bones of our saints. Our attitude toward the dead is different because we follow Jesus who raises the dead.

And the first person he ever raised from the dead was the only son of a widow in Na’in at the foot of Mount Tabor. Jesus touches the bier and says to the dead man, “I say to you, rise.” And the young man sits up. The one who gave him life gives him life again. The one who speaks life into being in the beginning speaks life into being again.

This is the first time that Jesus raises the dead, but it’s not the last. Three times he raises the dead before he himself dies and rises from the dead.

He later raises the daughter of Jairus, practically at the moment of her death (Matt 9:18–26, Mark 5:21–43, Luke 8:40–56).

He raises this son of the widow from Na’in, who had died earlier that day.

And he raises Lazarus who was four days in the tomb and beginning to decay (John 11:39).

Sometimes doctors have to say they were too late to save someone, but it’s never too late for the Lord. When Lazarus is dying, Jesus waits four days before coming to him. Already he has risen the dead but still people don’t understand and so they think it a pity he had not come sooner (John 11:37). Still, people are bound up so temporally in their thinking. It’s now or never, we think, but in Christ there is forever.

These resurrections prefigure our own coming resurrection. It makes no difference to the Lord who made Adam out of dust whether we have just died or have turned back to dust. He will raise us up because he has compassion on us.

Jesus has compassion on the widow and he tells her, “Do not weep.” Maybe everyone around her was telling her that – “Don’t weep.” Sometimes people say that more for their own comfort than to comfort the afflicted one. It is not something I would recommend saying to a mother who has just lost her son. But Jesus alone has the authority to say “Do not weep.” For Christ alone, the Word of God, words bring into being. When he says to the widow, “Do not weep,” he knows what comfort he alone can give. He alone can give her back her son and so he alone can righteously say, “Do not weep.”

When he later comes to the house of Jairus and the crowd is beginning to mourn the little girl, Talitha, with wailing and weeping, and the flutes are beginning to sound, Jesus has compassion on them and he says “Do not weep.”

But later still he comes to Bethany and sees Mary weeping over her brother Lazarus, already four days in the tomb. And, deeply moved, Jesus weeps (John 11:35). Now, he who alone has the authority to say, “Do not weep,” weeps. So he is with us even in our weeping. And he raises Lazarus also from the dead.

Before his own death and resurrection, Jesus raises these three. Then, at the moment of his death, “the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matt 27:52).

All of this is to show that Jesus’s resurrection is also for us. In him, we rise from the dead.

If we really believe this, it changes things for us. It changes the consequence of everything for us if we remember that after we die we will rise again and live forever in Christ. We are infinite and everlasting. You only live once, they say, but in Christ you live forever. I’m telling you, this erases our fear of death and changes our perspective about everything.

It might change what you want to put on your bucket list, for example.

It changes our attitude toward politics. Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come (cf. Hebrews 13:14).  To Christians “every foreign land is a homeland, and every homeland is a foreign land” (Letter to Diognetus). Death and resurrection erase distinctions we think are so important.

The resurrection changes our attitude about wealth. What is the point of saving and accumulating great personal wealth, I wonder, except to increase our comfort on this earth? This earthly and temporal life becomes pretty inconsequential when held up against eternal life (cf. Matt 6:19-20).

The resurrection changes everything. So let us remember the resurrection and be changed by it.

 

One morning, oh, about 10 or 11 years ago, I was running a bit late for work. I left in such a hurry, I forgot that I had taken my debit card out of my wallet. There was no cash in there either, but that was par for the course.

Anyway, after I got into my Jeep and had driven down the driveway, I noticed an index card someone had put under my windshield wiper: some kind of note, I guess. But, as I say, I was in a hurry, so I decided to just leave it there and drive on. I’d see what it was when I got to work.

Then, when I got to the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis, it suddenly began to rain. And I mean buckets of rain – a real deluge. So, I set my windshield wipers to full speed and they were barely keeping up. This, of course, dislodged the index card, which then became stuck to the windshield directly in my line of sight.

Some mornings everything goes wrong.

As a result of these distractions, I failed to immediately notice the traffic ahead of me slowing to a stop. When I did notice, I slammed on the brakes of course, but the road was slick from the rain and I slammed – ever so gently – into the car in front of me.

The car pulled into a parking lot just ahead and I followed. We exchanged insurance information and waited for the police, who came and made a report. That was the end of that. (Except for when they sued me two years later, but that’s another story). I never did discover what, if anything, was written on the index card.

When all was said and done, I noticed that one of my tires was mostly flat. To this day I don’t understand the physics behind that. There was no puncture. Anyway, I was right next to a gas station, with an air pump, so I got it over there. The machine took quarters.

I had no quarters – no cash, no debit card, no cell phone. And I’m late for work. I can’t risk driving the Jeep with such low tire pressure. I have no way to work. No way to get home. No way to let my boss know why I’m late and getting later. The rain and the distress of the morning have turned me into a disheveled sight.

So, there I am, transformed in an instant from an employed husband and father of two with a house and a mortgage, into a bum with a ridiculous sob story begging for change from passersby at a gas station.

I felt rather a fool telling my story and begging for change only to be ignored by everyone I asked both in and out of the gas station. Most ignored me completely – not even making eye contact. One to whom I did manage to speak gave me quite a look of incredulity, actually rolling his eyes. I was not believed and I was not helped. For me, they could not spare a dime, as they purchased their coffees and gasoline.

Realizing I was making something of a nuisance of myself, I decided to go elsewhere to beg. Across the street was a bar just opening up. I walked in. And there, I was listened to. The bartender opened up the till and gave me some quarters, and all was well. Thus ended my career as a beggar.

One thing to learn from all this is that, if we’re going somewhere together, you may want to offer to drive. But another thing to learn is to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and to “give without expecting repayment” (Luke 6:31, 35a).

Do you want to be taken at your word? Then take others at their word, even if your suspicions are aroused. In Christ, we may become as guileless as children – as innocent as doves, even while we are at the same time as cunning as serpents (Matt 10:16).

You might need others to take you at your word quite suddenly, as I learned from experience – even if they don’t know you and have no reason to trust you – even regarding an unbelievable situation.

That’s another thing, just because you don’t believe a beggar’s story (and I’ve certainly heard some whoppers) doesn’t mean you can’t offer to help. “The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish” (Luke 6:35b). We can be kind to the unbelievable, to the liar and the thief, to the drug addict and the prostitute.

We might be surprised to find that it’s unexpected folks who are kind to us in our time of need. I was quite struck by the fact that the straitlaced types buying gas at the gas station wouldn’t help me, but the folks at the bar, thought by some to be of less moral quality, were the ones who helped me. They gave without expecting anything in return.

Let’s let go of the question of what’s in it for us. God doesn’t show us kindness, mercy, and love for his sake, but for ours. And he commands us to do the same. Far from limiting our loving-kindness to those who can give us something in return, Jesus teaches us to love even our enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, give to everyone who asks, give even to the thief, give without expecting anything in return (Luke 6:27-30, 35).

“Be merciful,” he commands us, “even as your Father is merciful.”  And this is the point, really. He is commanding us to be like God, which we become by his grace. God is kind to the unkind and loving to the unloving. He is kind and loving to us. Let us be kind and loving to each other, also to our enemies, real and imagined. Only when there is not one excluded from our love are we in Christ.

Traditional church architecture divides the church into three primary spaces: the narthex, the nave, and the altar.

When you first enter the church through the western doors, you find yourself in the narthex. This is a liminal space – a space between spaces – a space between the world and the church.

It is there that we first come from the world into the church. It is there that we are exorcized and enrolled in the catechumenate prior to baptism. It is there that we reject Satan and spit upon him while facing west out of the doors and into the world. And then, still in the narthex, we turn to face East – toward the Church, toward the holy of holies, toward the Lord, and there we profess the true faith.

It is also there that a man and a woman (one of each) are betrothed. There they begin a new way of life together, and leave behind an old way as they prepare to be joined together as one in Christ in the holy mystery of love.

In ancient times, it was also there that the order of penitents would stand, kneel, prostrate, and do penance for their sin – not daring to enter the church further than the narthex until such time as they were reconciled with the church.

So, the narthex is a place of transition – a place of change – a place of putting off the old man and putting on the new – a place of entrance into new life in Christ (Eph. 4:22-24).

Then, passing through the narthex, we enter the nave – which is where we are all now gathered together. This space represents the church itself. Symbolically, this is where we do the living of the Christian life.

It is here that we receive most of the holy mysteries. Here we are baptized and chrismated and receive holy communion. Here we confess our sins to Jesus Christ before his icon and are forgiven by him and reconciled to his Church. Here, those who are ill often come before the presbyters of the church who lay hands on them and anoint them for the healing of their souls and bodies (James 5:14-15). Here, we are crowned in marriage. Here are monks and nuns tonsured. Here, we carry out the funeral rites. Here we’re hatched, matched, and dispatched, as they say.

Then, if we continue to move east, we come before the holy doors. And through them is the holy place, the holy altar, the holy of holies, which represents and re-presents heaven itself for us – the dwelling place of God, from whence he pours out his grace upon us.

So, we have in the church building – the house of the church – the temple – an icon of the whole cosmos – the whole created order – everything and everyone and every place and every time. We have where we were, where we are, and where we’re going. The world, the church, and paradise. The past, the present, and the future.

Let’s return and focus for a moment on where we are in the present – in this life we are now living. We are now in the nave. This word is rather interesting. It has the same Latin root as the word Navy. And it means a ship or a boat. So we’re all together in a boat. We’re all in the same boat. Sometimes they call it an ark – the Ark of Salvation.

When all the world perished in the flood, Noah and his family and a remnant of every species were saved in the ark. So, the ark floating in water becomes an image of the Church in the midst of the world. Because the Lord saves us through his Church from the ways of sin and death on offer by the world just as he saved Noah and his family from the flood by the ark. The Church is our lifeline to God to which we must tightly cling if we are to be pulled up out of the flood of distractions and evil thoughts with which the devil and the world constantly inundate us.

But really the nave of the church is better than the ark of Noah, even though the latter is a type of the former. The captain of our ship is Jesus Christ – the Son of God, whose Father so loved the world that he sent him to save the world. Remembering the ark and also the saving mission of Jesus Christ, listen to the Gospel (Luke 5:1-11):

Jesus gets into a boat, which is Simon’s, and asks him to pull out a little from the land. He sits down and teaches the people from the boat. Then he says to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Reluctantly, they do so – and they catch so many fish that their nets are breaking and they fill two boats so full of fish that they almost begin to sink.

Do you see the differences between this image and the image of Noah’s Ark? Noah and his family are shut up in the ark. Everything and everyone outside of it is left outside it to perish. But when Jesus gets into the boat he tells those with him in the boat to let down their nets for a catch – to bring those who are outside the boat into the boat – to bring so many of them in that the boat begins to sink – that the floorboards of the boat are creaking under the weight and threatening to give way – that the water of the world is so close to the edge of the boat that it’s beginning to slosh in.

This miracle of the great catch wasn’t just about feeding the hungry with a good catch of fish. Jesus tells Simon the meaning of the sign. He says, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.”

Now consider that, when we gather together as the church, we gather in the nave. We’re all together in a boat. We are the fish that have been caught and brought in. And if you find that you’re gasping like a fish out of water don’t worry – do not be afraid – we all do that. But it turns out that this boat is not like other boats and these fishermen are not like other fishermen and – in this boat – we do not remain mere fish. In the waters of the world, we may have thought we were at home like a fish in water, but it turns out that this boat is actually our passage to another life – a better life – a perfect life in Christ.

When we were in the waters of the world, we had no lungs to breathe air and so we feared the air. But the one who made all the fish and every sea creature on the fifth day also gave the breath of life to every beast of the earth and to man on the sixth day. He can give us lungs to breathe in this new world. And he does so through the holy mystery of his Church.

Once we have breathed deeply the Spirit-filled breath of Life and we have grown in strength and wisdom, the Lord Jesus will turn to many of us – perhaps to you and to me and say, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch and I will now make you fishers of men.” Let us heed this call, and bring so many into the church with us that it looks as though we might sink.

If we don’t know how, remember that the Lord will show us how. Really, it is his work through us, never our own work alone. Simon did not fill his nets with fish – Jesus did. But Simon obeyed Jesus’ command to let down his nets – even though he was skeptical. Jesus shows us the way, if we study his gospel, and live in his holy mysteries. The Lord will keep us afloat.

“Amen,” Jesus says, “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come in power” (Mark 9:1). 

Sometimes the commandments of Jesus seem a bit out of reach. For example, he commands us, “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Be like God. We are even to become one with him. This is the whole purpose of God becoming human – so that we humans might become God. Only in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit is any of this possible. That should be apparent.

We’ve got a long way to go. Coming into union with God is a journey. It is progressive movement, and not an instantaneous moment. Sure, God blinds Paul with his light, but even after his conversion, Paul is still irascible Paul, thorns and all, and even he needs growth (Acts 9:3; 2 Cor 12:7). Even heaven itself is an eternal dynamic ascent into ever greater union with God, and not a static, one-and-done, resting on your laurels kind of place.

When a young man comes to Jesus asking what good he must do to have eternal life, Jesus points first to the seemingly out-of-reach source of all goodness and says, “There is One Who is good” (Matt 19:16-17). Yet, he does not begin by commanding that the young man be good, even as the only good one is good. Rather, he begins with basic commandments – five of the Ten Commandments and the human side of the greatest commandment – that is, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 19:18-19). We have to begin at the beginning. We have to love the person in front of us, the image of God in others, before we can love God, before we can become like God.

These initial commandments are essential, but they are not sufficient. They are a necessary first step, but, alone, they do not perfect us or unite us to God. Even if we were perfect observers of these commandments, we would not be perfect.

There is a list of sins in the Great Book of Needs meant to aid penitents in confessing their sins in holy repentance. I’m sure many of you are familiar with similar lists, often called Examinations of Conscience. We might get the sense, while poring over these lists, that if somehow by the grace of God we kept free of these sins, then we’d be perfect. But it isn’t so. Perfection goes beyond the negative prohibition of sin and culminates, above all, in being with God – being with Being – with the Being One – with the One who is. After we fulfill the commandments, Jesus commands us, “Come, follow me” (Matt 19:21). “Be with me.” Only being with Jesus is enough.

The rich young man desired perfection. That’s clear, because he went away sad – saddened by his own unwillingness to follow Jesus (Matt 19:22). He knew that he lacked something. Keeping the commandments that he kept wasn’t sufficient. He yearned for more. He knew there was more.

We are created by our very nature and from the very beginning for union with God. Our created nature yearns for God. Even if we are committing no voluntary sins (and who among us can say that?) but even if we are like the young man and are seemingly guilty of nothing, it still isn’t enough, as the young man could sense when he asked, “what do I still lack?” (Matt 19:20) He could sense an absence and a need for growth.

Our need for growth is everlasting. Even when we die and are planted in the earth, our growth is not finished. Our ascent into union with God is never-ending. The divine nature of which we partake is inexhaustible (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). We begin to partake of the divine nature, but we never stop because there is no end of God. He is without end and he alone is all-sufficient for us. No riches are sufficient.

Jesus says to the rich man, “Go sell what you possess and give to the poor… and come, follow me” (Matt 19:21). If you would be perfect, turn away from the good created things that comfort you, and turn instead toward the true Comforter – the Holy Spirit.  Come, follow Jesus. Be with Jesus. Only Jesus is enough.

To be with Christ is pure joy and perfection. To be with Christ – even to suffer with him on the cross – is better than it is to drive a nice Lincoln to your big house with an air-conditioned home theater and every comfort at your disposal. It is better to be with Christ. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Matt 16:26; Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25).

As we progress in divine communion, we must turn our back on more and more of the things which distract us from that union – even good things. It’s not that the rich man’s things were bad. There is nothing bad about possessions in and of themselves. Except when they possess us.

We must regard our possessions as not really ours. All our things are actually the Lord’s. We are stewards and not the lords of creation. The Lord is the true possessor of all things. If he asks us to give something away, we’d better give it away because it is his to give, not ours.

St. Anthony the Great understood this. When he heard today’s gospel read in the church, he responded as though the passage had been read on his account, and he took it at its word. He went out immediately from the church, and gave away all his inherited possessions. He gave three hundred productive and beautiful acres to the villagers. And all the rest he sold and gave to the poor and to care for his sister. Then, no longer a rich man, he sought to enter heaven through the desert.

Jesus teaches that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. The disciples grasp a problem here very quickly – more quickly than I would have in their place. The immediate and more obvious conclusion would be, it seems to me, that the poor will have an easier time of getting saved (Matt 19:24). But that’s not what the disciples suggest. They don’t ask, “Can only the poor then be saved?” Rather, they ask, “Who then can be saved?” (Matt 19:25).

Perhaps, as poor men, they already knew by experience how difficult it was to be saved. As poor men, they knew that their poverty alone was not enough to save them. And here is a rich man whose wealth is not enough either. So, who then can be saved? And the answer is: it’s impossible (Matt 19:26). We can’t save ourselves.  The rich cannot save themselves and the poor cannot save themselves. Only with God is this possible (Matt 19:26). Only in Jesus. Only Jesus is enough. And that is why Jesus commands the rich young man to follow him, to be with him. That is the only way to perfection, the only way to eternal life.

There is only one way, and it is grace, the life of God. Our salvation is an act of God. It’s not that we don’t have something to do with it. We must do something insufficient, and he makes it sufficient. Divine Grace supplies what is lacking. Jesus takes our small and insufficient offering, as he took the five loaves and two fish, and he makes it great and sufficient. He takes our poor offering – our prosphora – of bread and wine, and he makes it himself, by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us and upon our gifts.

Bread and wine are not enough to save us. Only the body and the blood of Jesus Christ saves us. It is for the remission of sins and for life everlasting. The divine flesh of Jesus is our life. Only Jesus is enough to perfect us, to save us, to give us eternal life.