2 Corinthians 9.6 – 11

 Luke 7.11 – 16

Dear faithful, our Gospel this morning is an icon, a mirror. It makes visible the invisible reality happening unseen in the Divine Liturgy every Sunday, and, to be sure, in every service of the Church, as well as every time you retreat into the closet of your soul and shut the door behind you to pray to the Heavenly Father in secret.

The widowed mother is a mirror reflecting the soul in her unseen depths who lives for the world ‘in the city,’ whose joy and hope are in her father, mother, brother and sister, her spouse and her children, her lands, her possessions, her bodily health and beauty and welfare, which are all of the world that passes away. She is an image of the soul when she is bereft of all these worldly treasures. Her life that was in all these worldly relationships and possessions is now taken from her. She has nothing to live for. We need not try to imagine how this widowed mother felt as she followed the bier carrying her dead son through the city gates to the cemetery outside the city. We need only to look into our own soul – if we dare – to come face to face with our own inner emptiness, our aloneness, that we seek to escape by fleeing for refuge in all the diversions, entertainments and distractions provided for us by life in the city, in the world. Let me borrow from St John Chrysostom: in our Gospel this morning, we see how ‘the tinsel-trimmed parade of pleasures, carousals, drunkenness, the licentiousness and all the disgraceful pursuits’ of the city, of the world’s idols – her movies and theaters, her high-definition screens and virtual realities, the glamor of all her white-washed tombs – we see how it turns sooner or later into a funeral procession. Suddenly, the glamorous façade is stripped away, and we see the grief the soul was trying to run away from by filling her emptiness with the things of this worldly life that all pass away.

But the widowed mother’s son, too, is an icon, a mirror, reflecting the image of the soul that is dead to God because she lives for the world. Her values, her understanding, her philosophy, are all defined by the values and memes of the world, not by the Wisdom of God. She lives in the city of the world, not in the Heavenly City. She looks for meaning, for hope, for joy, in the city. By ‘city,’ I mean the world that is separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of the Holy Trinity, a stranger to the covenants and promises of God, having no hope and without God [Eph 2.12]. The citizens of the city love the darkness and hate the light because their deeds are evil [Jn 3.19]; they call evil good and good evil; and they call darkness light and the light darkness [Isa 5.20].

Therefore, attend closely to the invisible reality made visible in the icon of this morning’s Gospel. If we are each one the widowed mother, and her dead son, then hidden beneath the veil of the visible journey we made to the Divine Liturgy this morning is an invisible, unseen journey taking place in the spiritual deeps of our soul. Coming to Church this morning, we have made our way ‘out of the city,’ bringing our lonely souls and our lifeless spirits to the gates of the city, that is, to the gate of our ‘inner man’, to our heart, where we open out onto eternity. And it is here, that the LORD is found coming to us with His holy disciples, His Holy Mother, and all the saints – i.e., in the holy commonwealth of the New Israel, in the communion of the Holy Trinity, in the fellowship of joy [1 Jn 1.3] that is the life of the Church, which is His Body that was crucified, dead, and buried and risen from the dead.

Dear faithful, coming to the Divine Liturgy this morning, you have drawn near the Holy Bridal Chamber of the Church where we catch a glimpse of the Heavenly Bridegroom’s exceeding wealth and ineffable kindness that He shows to His Bride [St JhnChrys, Bapt Inst 1]. Dear faithful, those who have been baptized and clothed in the wedding garment, the Robe of Light that is Christ, these are the Bride of the LORD, the Heavenly Bridegroom.

Let’s listen at this point to St JhnChrys. He says to those who are about to be baptized:

‘Let me point out the sordid past from which the Bride (our soul) is escaping and the glorious future she is about to enjoy (if she receives the Bridegroom into her soul). But let us first strip from the Bride her garb and see her condition. Despite her plight, the Bridegroom still allows her to come to Him. He does not have her come to Him as His bride because He has longed for her comeliness, or her beauty, or the bloom of her body. On the contrary, the bride He has brought into the nuptial chamber is deformed and ugly, thoroughly and shamefully sordid, and, practically wallowing in the mire of her sins. I am talking of the soul and her salvation. Let us ascertain more clearly how deformed the bride previously was, and then we will marvel at the Master’s kindness. What could be more ugly than the soul that has abandoned her proper dignity, forgotten her noble birth from on high, [and has looked for her meaning, her hope and her joy in] worshiping idols of stone and wood, brute animals, and things less worthy of honor than these – a soul that has increased her ugliness by the smell of burning fat, the filth of blood, and the smoke of sacrifice [offering the love and desire of her soul to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life]? For from such sources as these soon arise the tinsel-trimmed parade of pleasures, the carousals, the drunkenness, the licentiousness, and all the disgraceful pursuits which bring joy to the demons they serve.’ [Bapt Inst 1]

St Chrys is lifting the veil of the visible to reveal to those preparing for baptism the spiritual joy that awaits them in the bridal chamber of the font. His words are a perfect commentary on our Gospel this morning because this morning’s Gospel is an icon of holy baptism. It is an image showing what is happening in any soul drawing near in the fear of God, with faith and love, to the Church, the Bride of God, and to the Church’s Heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, the only Lover of mankind.

Our Gospel this morning reveals that the LORD is coming to each one of us today; but He is found not in the city, not in the lusts of the flesh or the lust of the eyes or the pride of life, but at the gates that open out of the city where we are stripped of all our sophistications and refinements, and where we are found widowed and dead, bereft of beauty and form.

It says, however, that, when the LORD saw the widowed mother in the funeral procession of her only son, He felt visceral compassion, splangchna, for her. As far as I can tell, this word is used of the LORD’s compassion only in the NT. In the OT, the word is ‘oiktirmos,’ mercy. From this, I think it fair to assert that this word proclaims the mystery of the LORD’s incarnation, for splangchna refers to the guts, the viscera. In His Incarnation, the LORD’s mercy, oiktirmos, becomes flesh and blood, it becomes splangchna, visceral compassion.

This word in this morning’s Gospel thereby proclaims the LORD’s Holy Pascha by which He becomes the only true ‘wounded Healer.’ For, He was wounded for our transgressions, and only by His stripes – by His Cross and death and burial – are we healed. So, when He meets the widowed mother and her dead son at the gate of the city, we see an image of the LORD meeting us in the ‘tomb of our heart’ where we are dead to God in our sins and trespasses. In raising the widowed mother’s son, and in healing, to be sure, the grief of the widowed mother’s heart, we see an image of the LORD Jesus Christ – in His divine mercy that has become visceral compassion – destroying death by His death and giving life and joy to those in the tombs.

Dear faithful, if we wish to take this morning’s Gospel to heart, then let us rouse our souls from her deadly slumber. Let us take hold of our bed, our cross, and walk, live, in the death of Christ and no more in the death of the world; for in the death of Christ is resurrection and eternal life in the communion of Christ’s Holy Church. In the death of the world is death and an eternal aloneness. To live in the death of Christ is to live in the visceral compassion of the LORD that heals our soul and raises us from the misery of death to the joy of eternal life. Let us, then, take up our bed and begin walking to the gates of the city, to descend through prayer and fasting into our secret closet, to shape our mind and soul in the doctrines not of the ‘city’ but of the Church, and begin to live in the presence of Christ who comes to meet us in our souls at the gates of the city. Amen.