“NEVER DEAD AGAIN”
Saint Luke 7.11-17
Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity: 27 September Anno Domini 2009
Fr Watson S.S.P.
Nothing the Christ does is ever by chance or luck. When it "came to pass that He went into a city called Nain" it is because that from before the creation of the world, time and matter, He was the Christ of God, the Savior of His sheep, and the Destroyer of death. There was work to do in Nain. The Galilean had to roll up his sleeves and get dirty. Jesus had to die a little.
"Nain" means "Dorothy you're not in Eden anymore." Nain is where you live and work, that is, it was "Anti-Paradise," the home of slaves, cowards, the foul, the sick, and the dead. The name Nain means the same thing Kansas or Missouri mean: "stack up the corpses; we gotta make room for another dead son."
The Lord took His Disciples with Him. The Messiah is no hermit Who would rather be alone, but a Holy Host Who delights in the community of His brothers and sisters… and "much people," the more the better.
This Evangel-Entourage was lead by the Lord of Light and Life. This parade of Mercy was on a rescue mission. He knew they were going to run "smack dab" into a procession of pain and weeping. The Lamb Who was slain from eternity was about to bump into the serpent and his lackey: death. Like two great armies surging toward each other on the field of combat.
Not the fictitious Hercules approaching the gates of the Augean stables to clean out mountains of manure, but the Creator in flesh approaching the gate of the city to clean out the putrefication of sin-death itself. As Samson once ripped the gates off of the pagan city of the Philistines to show the Lord's disdain for falsehood and darkness, so too the Christ was about to rip open the doors of the "tomb of tears" and grab back a warm and breathing body from becoming a skeleton of sin.
A dead man was being carried out. There's never a lot of protestant choosing, electing and deciding when it comes to death is there? No, the corpse is cleaned up by others, loved ones, of spittle, blood, excrement and dirt. The stiff body is carried by pall-bearers to the hole in the ground.
That is the ugliness of your trespasses Augsburgers.
Because of what you do, and harbor in your hearts, and whisper with your tongues, you and your Adam and Eve brood, bring death upon us all.
Born with the original contagion of rebellion you yourself have been carried out of Nain towards the pit your entire life. As cute and "sweet-looking" as you were as a baby, your parents knew. They prayed that you would be spared still-birth, sudden-infant-death-syndrome, terminal birth defects, and other diseases which would take you from them before you even bloomed into young adult-hood.
And now, you see your own parents carried out of Nain to the sepulchre and you fear for your own children and grand-children. Damn death to hell…. and now you know why Jesus weeps tears as large and as painful as the drops of blood He sweat in Gethsemane…because this was not how it was meant to be; this is not the Lord's original/pre-fall desire for you and yours. The Lord has wept from Abel's passing all the way till this morning's passings of His tender little lambs.
BUT NOT THAT DAY IN NAIN! No… there death was going to get its "picture" its prophecy of what was coming in a few months at Golgotha. At Nain, Satan may not have had his skull crushed, and death may not have had its shrouds all shredded, but they got a Righteous "whipping" that began to peel the bark right off their hellish hides. The wooden funeral bier that the dead man was being carried on, was already hearkening to the wood which would hold the Lamb up to the Father on the hill, the wood which would be soaked in the Blood of the Only Begotten. When the Christ reached out to touch that coffin, and that dead body, He was touching the wood and saying, "Satan…I'm coming…be gone serpent…My people will be free…My family will be free!"
Why? Because where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation. If the Lord merely forgave you your evil and then left you to rot and decay away to dust; left you to face the prowler in the dark and the gatekeeper of the lake of fire - - what would be the point of forgiveness? But the Lord not only pays for your crimes, forgives and remits all of your guilt and eternal punishment, BUT He also destroys death itself; He also grinds the feculent skull of the snake to powder.
Nain was the beginning of the end of Satan & death's rule. It was also the beginning of the beginning of Heavenly Immortality for Christ's catechumens. This was/IS a foretaste of the feast to come. What Jesus did temporarily for the young man and his Mother, He will do permanently for all of you and your Mothers and Fathers-your temporarily deceased Mothers and Father-your temporarily deceased Grandparents, best friends, children, and siblings. In Holy Baptism + you have died the only death that matters. You have died to sin, to Satan, to your old nature, and to the fallen world. In the Water and the Word you have had your corpse washed clean…not like a dead body washed and prepared by Galilean women before internment, but washed clean before placing upon your Royal Resurrected Bodies the Wedding Robes of your Groom of Grace. You have been buried with Jesus in Baptism, into His death, so that, in Baptism, you are also raised to Glory in His Easter Triumph.
Why? "He had compassion on her." Jesus doesn't just have compassion, Jesus is compassion. He is "co" with all of you. He unites Himself to you in His Sacred Meal. He is your companion, your company, your compatriot. His Passion, His inner moving of His very "being" the NATURE of God in the Flesh, is to love and rescue you…to resurrect you…and give you New Bodies. He continues again this morning, what He has already started, what He has already accomplished, by giving you Life to eat and Life to drink in His Flesh and Blood - concentrated Life: pure and priceless.
He always has compassion on "HER," His Holy Bride-the Church Catholic-and all her children.
Weep not this day my friends, your God has come to you.
Weep not this morning brothers and sisters He has taken away all your guilt, shame and badness.
Weep not This Holy Mass Day for your Savior has vanquished death forever more.
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost