Homily - When Death met the Author of Life

Luke 7:11-16 (The Widow of Nain)

At the gates of Nain, the procession of death meets the Lord of Life—and death loses. Christ turns the widow’s grief into joy, revealing that every tear will one day be transformed into the eternal song of alleluia.  A "by-the-numbers" homily - enjoy the show!

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This was an encounter between two forces: death and the very source of life. We know how this encounter always turns out. Life seems so fragile (war, disease, accidents, violence) and we seem doomed to die.

What happened (Jesus brought the dead back to life)

Focus briefly on three parts of this Gospel reading: the procession, the grief of the mother, and how it ended.

The funeral procession.  How we do funerals.  Preparation for it.  Psalms.  Preparation of the body.  Funeral service(s).  Burial.  The movement of the person from one list in our daily prayers to the other. Nine-day prayers.  Forty-day prayers.  Annual prayers.  Often with koliva or a special bread.

The grieving mother.  Do not weep.  “Blessed are those who mourn.”  Jesus Himself, always in the Spirit, wept at the death of Lazarus.  Do not weep “like those who have no hope…” (I Thessalonians). Repent of the sin that leads to unhealthy tears; and that repentance requires that we live knowing that we may never have another chance on this side of a funeral to mend a relationship.  Tears of honest grief are cathartic, as are tears of outrage at the absurdity of living in a world where death is so prevalent.  But let those tears flow in the knowledge that as outrageous, ignoble, and offensive as death is; that our tears of sorrow are being turned, as we sing in the funeral service, into the song “alleluia!”  And that is how I want to conclude...

How it ended.  This was an encounter between two forces: death and the very source of life.  Who won?  And who won when death took a man captive and found that it, instead, it was forced to encounter God?  Who won?  It was no real contest!  As we hear from St. John Chrysostom on Pascha: Christ-God annihilated death!  In a world that was made and is governed by the source of Life, death place is temporary, a consequence and concession to our sin – sin which itself is, again through Christ, only temporary.  It is holiness and life that endures forever.

Conclusion. That is the side we have chosen: we reject sin and we reject death.  We have intentionally chosen the side of holiness and of life.  It seems as though our relationship with life is so vulnerable – to sickness, to violence, to sudden catastrophes; but in the only reality that matters in the end, it is quite the opposite.  It and all its associated grief, anxieties, traumas, and pain are products of this world, doomed to end when it is remade in glory. 

Again, we have intentionally chosen the side of life.  Let’s live it as it was meant to be lived, not in fear of death but in the joy of the One who has through death defeated death and who desires us to live well both now and into eternity.