Sermon for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
Have you ever been
to a stately home
which has a family vault?
Generations of
aristocratic families
all buried in one place?
There's something creepy
about it,
something of
the Edgar Allen Poe
and Vincent Price
lurking in the shadows
of the family crypt.
For those of us
of a more modest
and lowly status,
we will find our resting place
in a cemetery
or a crematorium.
Unlike family vaults,
cemeteries and crematoria
are usually set away
from places where people live.
There's something
uncomfortable about living
in the House by the Cemetery.
Why?
Do the living not want
to associate with the dead?
[PAUSE]
For the people of Nain,
it is important for everyone's health
that the dead be carried out
of the City.
It's not that they
dishonour the dead -
they would not treat the dead
with such ritual and care -
but that the dead rest in peace
while the living are kept away
from the unpleasant nature
of death.
As far as the people of Nain
are concerned,
they know the scriptures:
"For the living know
that they shall die:
but the dead know not any thing,
neither have they any more a reward;
for the memory of them
is forgotten."
"So man lieth down,
and riseth not: till
the heavens be no more,
they shall not awake,
nor be raised out of their sleep."
"His breath goeth forth,
he returneth to his earth;
in that very day his thoughts perish."
And then comes Our Lord.
[PAUSE]
The widow's son
lives!
His thoughts have not perished!
His breath has returned!
He has been raised,
just like Lazarus,
just like Jairus' daughter.
In raising the dead,
Our Lord shows the difference
between the old life
of sin, depravity
corruption and death,
and the new life
of restoration, renewal
sanctification and communion
with God and His saints.
The Old Testament
gives us the facts
that sin leads to death.
It presents us with the Law
and then shows how the best of us
Saul
David
Solomon
even Moses
fall away.
As far as the Law goes,
when you are dead
there's nothing more
that can be said.
Indeed,
it's just a short step
from that
to believing that
when you're dead,
you're dead - finito!
[PAUSE]
What the Old Testament does do
is point beyond itself
to the One Who Lives
the true God
in Whom there is life
and love.
He is not the God of the dead
but of the living.
He is the God of Abraham,
of Isaac
of Jacob.
"Is," not, "was."
With Him appear
Elijah and Moses
after Moses' death.
And Jesus says to Martha,
before raising Lazarus,
"whosoever liveth
and believeth in Me
shall never die."
These are the words of God.
[PAUSE]
So we can be sure,
at the words of Our Lord,
the saints are alive
and have not died
because they have lived
and believed in Christ
and therefore
live beyond their bodily death
and in Eternity.
We see this
in the Revelation
of the saints who have died for Christ
alive beneath the altar
crying to God.
We see the prayers of saints
rising up to God
like incense.
Their life is in Christ
and the whole of Holy Scripture
points to this common fact
of reunion with Christ in Eternity.
Indeed, we shall be like Him
because we shall see Him
as He really is.
And we have communion
with the saints who have gone before
in the great cloud of witnesses
seen by St Paul
and told to the Hebrews
the people of the Old Testament
who once thought
that death is an end.
Indeed,
in Christ we have life
and death is no more a state
but just an event in our lives.
Just a passing from
a world of sin and toil
and into the world of light
and love.
And the saints still love us
- how could they not? -
so, looking with Christ,
cheering us on,
welcoming our entry into life
with feasts and joys,
and praying to God for us
in the communion of the saints
which we have always believed in.
[PAUSE]
The one who says
"The saints are dead"
lives in the Old Testament
waiting for the New to be born in him
from on high.
The saints live
raised
like Lazarus,
like Jairus' daughter,
like the widow's son in Nain,
and they will accompany us
from the place of the dead
back into the city
where mourning is replaced with joy
and sorrow with jubilation.
Come, Lord Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment