04 AT THE CITY GATES Oct 6 2024 |
AT THE CITY GATES 2 Corinthians 4.6-15 Luke 7.11-16 Going again to St Macarios (4th cent): the world of Christians is one thing, that of the men of the world is another, and the difference between them is great. If we are living our life in this world not in the world but in the Church, then we are at the beginning of a New Year. In the Church, we entered a new liturgical year on Sept 1. And the difference between the Church’s Sept 1 and the world’s Jan 1 is great. The Church passes from the old to the New Year in the dread and life-creating mystery of Christmas and Pascha. In the Church, the years of our life in this world are transfigured into a mystical journey, an exodus inward to the ‘cave’ and ‘tomb’ of our heart (St Macarius, Hom 11.11) that has been transfigured by the LORD’s most holy Pascha into a Bridal Chamber; for, in the Church’s baptismal font, the ‘uterus ecclesiae,’ we were united to Christ in the Tomb of His death by which He destroyed our death. In the Cave of Christmas, in the Church’s baptismal Font, we were born again from above in the same Holy Spirit by whom He was conceived in the Virgin’s sacred womb, the same Holy Spirit who raised Him from the dead. In the world, we were dead in our sins and trespasses. In the Church, we are now dead in Christ. But if we have died in Christ, we have died to death and been born again into Life. ‘Again’: the word also means ‘from above,’ and even, ‘from the inner depths.’ So, understand: ‘born again’ does not mean we have been raised back into the life of this world. That life is always circling back to the grave. No, we have been born from above. It is a second birth, an altogether different birth, into the uncreated Life of God’s love that has conquered death and ‘abides forever.’ As the infant born into this world is nourished in this life from the milk of its mother’s breast, so those who are born again from above are nourished in the eternal life of God from the Body of Christ in the sacramental mystery of the Church’s Holy Eucharist. In our earthly body, what St Paul calls, this ‘body of death,’ the eternal Life of Christ lives in us like the Mighty Snow-Melt River, the River of Joy seen by the prophets, that flows from the LORD’s Holy Temple into Galilee, all the way out to the sea, into the deep, beyond all things. In the mighty current of this River of Joy, our life is hidden with Christ in God. Even in this world that lives in the darkness and shadow of death, we live in the love of God the Father, and in the communion of the Holy Spirit in Christ who now lives in us. We seek no more the things below but the things that are above. Our life is hidden with Christ in God; we now walk in the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God that has shone out of the darkness in the deep of our heart. The Savior goes before us, the Light of the Glory of God that shines from His Face illumining the Path to the Father that stretches before us. Christ Himself is that Path; He goes before us into Galilee. He now leads us in our everyday life in this world. The talking heads of this world no longer lead us. This Path hidden from the world is an ascending Path. It is ascending daily to the top of the Mountain of the LORD’s Holy Ascension. We will reach the top of that mountain when we come to the moment of our death. When in this world, they seal our body in the ground, the holy angels of God will be rolling the stone away, and we in our soul will follow Christ who goes before us like a Bridegroom in procession, into His Heavenly Kingdom in the deep, beyond all things, waiting for the Last Day when even our bodies will be raised like the ear of corn bursting from the seed that was buried in the ground. In the dread and terrible and life-giving joy of the Church’s Holy Eucharist, the old wineskin of this ‘body of death’ receives the New Wine of Christ’s Blood shed on the Cross for the life of the world. While the old wineskin of this ‘body of death,’ as it receives this New Wine, is slowly bursting day by day through the passing of the years, until it will finally collapse on the day the world will call our death, the New Wineskin of our new resurrection body is being ‘built’ by God in the hidden man of our heart – as the Woman was built from inside of Adam, from his rib that embraced his heart – fashioned as was Adam’s body from the clay, from the crucified and risen Body of Christ that is given to us as our food, the Living Bread from Heaven in the Church’s Holy Eucharist. Our Gospel makes visible for us this mystical transfiguration taking place daily in the World of the Church hidden from the world of men. It shows us what is the hidden substance of the LORD’s command given to us on the Sunday after the Feast of the Cross, shortly after our inner journey passed over into a new liturgical year in the world of the Church. The LORD says: ‘He who would be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. Why? Because he who would save his life will lose it, but he who would lose His life for My sake and the Gospel’s will find it.’ Our Gospel this morning shows the funeral procession of a widowed mother whose only son has died. It is easy to get caught up in the pathos of the mother’s grief, for it is very real. But there is a grief in the Church that is much deeper even than this mother’s grief. It is the grief of the Virgin Mother weeping at the Cross of Her Son. When the grief of the world allows itself to be embraced in the grief of the Most Beloved Mother of God, it finds itself held in the arms of the LORD’s Beloved Virgin Mother on the Rock of Hope. That Rock is the love of God incarnate, voluntarily lifted up on the Cross in order to destroy death by His death and to give life to all those in the tombs. This blessed and divine hope is incarnate in the Body of Christ, and the Church, the Pillar and Ground of Truth is that very same Body of Christ. In the world, we would say that the widowed mother has lost her life. Bereft of husband and only son, she has lost her meaning, her purpose, her joy. But, as she makes her way to the cemetery outside the city gates, it is here, where the city ends and passes out into the ‘beyond, that she and the funeral procession meet the LORD and His disciples. They are coming to the city from outside the city. That means that the LORD is coming to the mother from out of the cemetery, where the dead are buried. If, in the bible, geography is theology, then the city is this world. The city gates are the gates of our birth and our death by which we come into this world and depart from it. Because of sin, this has become the realm of death where no one remembers God and where no one confesses Him or gives thanks to Him (Ps 10.6). It is for that reason a God-forsaken and an accursed place. And it is here, at the city gates, where this life ‘passes away’ from this world and into death, that the grieving, widowed mother encounters the LORD Jesus. The city gates are the moment of Midnight when the old day passes over into a new day. But, in this world, the new day is just another day like the old day. It but marks our steps on the daily path of this world to the cemetery outside the city. In this world, midnight is where the struggle of the life of this world to break free from death takes place, and fails. The religions of the world exalt Midnight, where the cycle of birth – death – rebirth is centered, as the ‘circle of life.’ But that’s just a clever ploy of the Lie to make us overlook what this life really is: a circle of death. And so, when we seek to save our life in this world, we simply keep ourselves imprisoned in this ‘circle’ of death. And it’s here, at midnight, at the city gates, in the heart of the ‘circle of death,’ that the widowed mother comes upon the Savior who is coming to her. Turn the prism in the Taboric Light of the Church to view the mother in this morning’s Gospel in another hue. Now we see in her drawing near the city gates the movement of the soul in prayer, descending with the mind into the heart. Like the mother, the one who has seen into the depths of his soul mourns because he sees that our soul is dead, separated from God by her sins and trespasses. The mother making her way to the city gates is the soul descending beneath the surface of appearances into her secret closet, making her way out of the city of this worldly life where no one remembers God or confesses His Name, to the tomb of her heart that is deep, beyond all things, outside the city. Here at the city gates, in the sorrow of a broken and contrite heart, the soul, like the grieving mother this morning, is bathed in the warmth of the LORD’s ‘visceral compassion.’ The stormy winds of grief become calm. The turbulent sea of this world grows calm in hushed awe and silent expectation – not unlike, dear faithful, the Church on Christmas Eve, not unlike the Church at Midnight on Pascha night! Dear faithful, in the Midnight of the Church, the tomb of the heart has become the Bridal Chamber; for it is at Midnight that the soul receives the touch of the LORD’s ‘visceral compassion.’ He touches the root of her grief and mourning; and He raises her heart from death to His own eternal life in the Joy of His Holy Resurrection. This hidden, inner movement of the heart in love to the LORD who first loved us is the real movement of time. And the heart coming to rest in stillness, bathed in the warmth of the Savior’s visceral compassion, this St Gregory Palamas calls the ‘true activity.’ The liturgical Life of the Church flows through the years of our life as the Mighty ‘Snow-melt’ River of the prophets’ vision. It is the LORD Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the River of Joy, descending into the sea of this life that surges with the storm of temptations. And, as Ezekiel saw, wherever this River of Joy goes, the stormy waters of this life are made calm, and the soul, lying on the side of the road half dead from her sins and trespasses, is healed. She is raised up on the LORD’s own human nature that He deified, and in which He destroyed death and gave Life to the world, to all who believe in His Name. And He now goes before us into Galilee, leading us to the top of the Mountain of His Ascension and into His Heavenly Kingdom. Amen! |