The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (7:11-16)

The sole purpose to pursuing life in the Orthodox Church as an Orthodox Christian is to grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are not here to be part of a club, or part of the antiquities department or part of a medieval museum of faith. Our faith is living and dynamic in everyone who has their hearts and their eyes directed towards Jesus Christ and the things of God. This dynamic faith gives us new life.

The great threat to us in our lives is the ever present threat of death. We are vulnerable. Soldiers go to war and they often return scarred and deeply affected because they have witnessed the horrors of war including the ever present reality of death. During our first intro to Orthodoxy class we mentioned some of the teachings of the one of the great modern theologians of the Church, Fr. John Romanides. Father John spent much of his time writing about the letters of St. Paul and trying to recapture a proper Orthodox framework for understanding St. Paul, not according to western Roman Catholic influence but according to the mind of the Greek speaking early Church fathers who understood St. Paul and the New Testament in their native tongue and with deep spiritual insights. In his dissection of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans regarding the concept of sin, he had this to say,

“If man was created for a life of complete selfless love, whereby his actions would always be directed outward, toward God and neighbor, and never toward himself–whereby he would be the perfect image and likeness of God–then it is obvious that the power of death and corruption has now made it impossible to live such a life of perfection.”

He continues saying, “The power of death in the universe has brought with it the will for self-preservation, fear, and anxiety, which in turn are the root causes of self-assertion, egoism, hatred, envy and the like. Because man is afraid of becoming meaningless, he is constantly endeavoring to prove, to himself and others, that he is worth something….These are the works of the flesh of which St. Paul speaks. Underlying every movement of what the world has come to regard as normal man, is the quest for security and happiness. But such desires are not normal. They are the consequences of perversion by death and corruption, through which the devil pervades all of creation, dividing and destroying. This power is so great that even if man wishes to live according to his original destiny it is impossible because of the sin which is dwelling in the flesh –(quoting St. Paul)”Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” “It is through death and corruption that all of humanity and creation is held captive to the devil and involved in sin, because it is by death that man falls short of his original destiny, which was to love God and neighbor without concern for the self.”

Fr. John concludes with a powerful quote: “Man does not die because he is guilty for the sin of Adam. He becomes a sinner because he is yoked to the power of the devil through death and its consequences.”

So he tells us that in essence, the problem of man is the fear of death. Death lurks and it casts a heavy shadow over us. It affects our being, it affects our ways of thinking and our whole life. Because we are afraid to die, we fall into many sins and we excuse those sins because it seems to us that the most important thing is to avoid death. I can give you the example of the hungry man who steals from another hungry man to feed himself or to feed someone in his family. His fear of death caused him to sin against his neighbor instead of showing love. My fear of death might manifest itself in greediness instead of generosity towards others. It even manifests itself when someone has a midlife crisis.

It seems to us that death is always lurking just around the corner, waiting for us and this anxiety, this life of anxiety pushes us away from doing the things that please God and towards whatever we believe will help us avoid pain or death or will give us the experiences we desire before our death.

This brings us to today’s beautiful gospel account from Luke chapter 7. We witness an encounter between Our Lord Jesus Christ and none other than death. To the one who has ears to hear and who meditates upon this gospel, there is great comfort.

Our Lord did not so much as touch the young man who was lying dead in the bier. He merely touched the bier and Our most compassionate Lord spoke words of life, “Young man, I say to you; arise.” The Lord reversed the very course of nature as we understand it. He who had in the garden, once formed clay and breathed life into it, once again took what was lifeless and reinvigorated it and filled it with His life. But there is a deeper message. This changes things. This changes everything.

We reflected on the words of Fr. Romanides, about how death is the cause of mans attachment to sin. And we understand that we suffer due to our own sins and the damage that has been caused by them in our lives and in our souls. Our greatest form of suffering is the lack of joy and peace and hope that we feel when we are separated from God. This separation is felt deep within our very cells and radiates to our hearts and minds. When we are far from God because of our sins, or our sinful heart, we feel this as an inner crises and great turmoil. We may not know exactly what is wrong, but we know for a fact that nothing is quite right, that we are missing something. That things are not well. The fear of death manipulates us into sinning and sin divides the soul, renders it paralyzed and ultimately this progresses to spiritual death. St. Paul puts it this way, “14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do…. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”-Romans 7

But the encounter of our Lord Jesus Christ with death, changes everything. Our Lord became a man and dwelt among us and by entering into history, He rewrote the story of our lives. He demonstrated that He himself had power over death and lest anyone should doubt this power, He manifested it openly by raising some publicly and manifested again when He rose again from the grave on the third day.

Therefore, the one who no longer fears death but has faith in Jesus Christ, true faith, real faith, no matter what it might cost him in this life, this one will live forever with Christ. That is our teaching. You hear about the great martyrs of the Christian faith. They got it. The love of Christ flipped a switch in their hearts. They understood that their lives were nothing without His life. They understood that through His love, death would be rendered powerless and useless. They understood that death is nothing for the one who communes with the living God. Let us throw aside all of the weights and anxieties that burden us in this life and cling to the One who alone can raise us from the grave and into the kingdom. AMEN

Source: Sermons