In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
When we are in a missionary situation as is this community, it is important for us to remember and keep remembering Who He is that we are serving, and what we are about. This is the case especially when we continue to make beginnings, as we are doing. This Gospel lesson today about the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain is an important lesson for us in this : Who is He that we are serving ? Just Who is Jesus Christ ?
When the Lord raises the young man from the dead, He does it out of compassion most likely because this widow, with her only son dead, would have no-one to look after her. This was in the days when there was no social welfare, as there was not in most of the world. We, in Canada, tend to get a little bit lax about these things and forget how good we have it here. The fact is (in those days, and to this day in most of the world), if a woman is a widow and her only son has died, it would mean that she would have nowhere to live. She would have no-one to look after her. She would have no home. She would end up being a beggar. It is a horrible situation for any woman to be in, except that in some cases there is a certain amount of relief.
Our little monastery in BC, in a sort of way is avant-garde in this respect, I think, because every year that little community that has nothing buys a cow for a widow in India – a different widow every year. Why do they do that ? If they buy a cow for a widow in India, this cow will give milk (in India they do not kill or eat cows). With the milk this widow can make some money, and she can have at least a basic, minimal existence. I guess there are some other things that you can do with cows, also, to make money (farmers know that sort of thing, and I do not have to explain it).
This widow in Palestine does not have any such resource. In case you do not know where Nain is, it is a little place not far from Mount Tabor, the place of the Transfiguration. We could almost say that it is in the valley at the foot of the mountain. It is here that this is happening. The Lord, out of compassion, raises the widow’s son, and restores not only her son to her, but her livelihood, her protection, her dignity. He restores everything to this woman. The response of everyone around is as we heard it : everyone is completely amazed. They certainly recognise that Jesus had to be at least a prophet, and a great prophet at that. I think that the only other record of resurrection through the prayers of anyone in the Old Testament will have been through Elias and Elisha. Those two are the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and so the people are immediately associating Christ with them.
Who is this that is able to do such a thing ? He is more than a prophet, as we know. He is the Son of God. He is the Lord of the living and the dead. He is the One who is the Word by whom all things were made. As such, He can do precisely what He did : raise the dead. This He did many times during the years of His incarnate service on earth. It is not as though He does not still do it sometimes. There are occasions still when people are resuscitated from the dead by Christ through the prayers of the faithful. Even in these days it does happen. This is Who He is that we are serving : the One who is the Lord of Life.
He is the Lord of all life, and He is the Lord of your life and my life. It is important for us to remember this since we have to ask in association with this : why did He create us, and why does He continue to create us in large numbers (not by recycling, as some people think) ? He creates us so that we might enter and live forever in a loving relationship with Him. He is the Giver of Life ; He loves to give life. He loves to give life in love. The two things, “life” and “love”, are synonymous and go together (it does not matter what cynics say). We are created to love. We are created to give life with Him. We are created to nurture life together with Him. At the same time, we are created to worship God.
How are we to respond ? Love is a two-way street. God creates us. He gives us life. He gives us everything. Even though we seem to think we do it all ourselves, nevertheless, He is the Source of all. He gives us everything. How do we respond if we love Him ? Every polite Canadian knows that we have to say “thank you”. We Canadians are quite good at saying thank you (in fact, if we do not send thank-you notes for numbers of things, the giver can get a crooked nose). We know that we ought to be thankful, and express this thanks. We know that it is expected of us Orthodox Christians with each other.
How much more is it the case with the living God. We should be doing our part to express our thanks to the Lord. Our whole life should be, in fact, a loving response of thanksgiving. Everything about our life should express this thanksgiving. That is why in traditional Orthodox cultures (which Canada has not yet become), people are always giving glory to God for everything. If someone says thanks, the person being thanked gives glory to God right away. I like to tell about when I was a “green” seminarian many years ago, and I was visiting a Greek women’s monastery. The nuns were so nice to us, and hospitable. As a polite Canadian making my departure, I thanked the Abbess, and she said : “The Lord”. I said : “Thank you, also”. She said : “The Lord”. I said : “Yes, Mother”. Of course, I meant : “All right, I catch the drift”. She understood that we have to refer everything to the Lord. Who am I, myself ? God is everything. Everything has to be referred to the Lord Himself.
Ukrainians have a language full of expressions of referring everything : glory, thanksgiving, health – absolutely everything – to Christ. Our English language needs to find the way to do the same. We Orthodox Christians in Canada have to develop this habit. We have to learn from our ancestral cultures (that have been baptised by the Gospel) what they did in response to the Gospel, and do it according to our culture here. We have to find the way to do it. It is not as though we have to find it so freshly, because many Christians (not Orthodox Christians) who lived in Canada (let’s say before about 100 years ago), actually did come from a culture that knew this also. The English language does have some history of this. However, certainly in the last fifty years, it has all gone out the window. Even things I remember from my childhood are generally forgotten. It is important that we Orthodox Christians recover this way of speaking, reminding ourselves to give glory to God and thanksgiving to God for everything.
Primarily, this means that we ought to remember where we belong on Sundays and feast-days, and every possible occasion. We belong here, together before the Lord’s Table, giving thanks to Him. That is primarily the focus of this Divine Liturgy. There is a considerable amount of praise in it, but the main part of the whole thing is thanksgiving. With the praise there is thanksgiving. When we are standing here today in this assembly (in this temporary Temple), we are being what the Lord created us to be. We are doing what God created us to do : expressing together our joy at being one in the love of Jesus Christ. We are expressing our gratitude to God that we can be together. We are expressing our gratitude that we can have this mutual encouragement with, and for each other in this mutual thanksgiving and glorification of God. We owe it to the Lord to be here as often as possible. We owe it to the Lord, who gives us everything. Because of our love for Him, it is part of our loving response. It is part of who we truly are. It is part of what we have to do to be who we truly are. We are expressing our true selves by being here today, together, worshipping Him, giving thanks to Him, expressing our love for Him, and allowing Him by His Body and Blood to feed us, to renew us, to strengthen us and to enable us to persevere.
We heard today what the Apostle had to endure (and that was only a shadow of what he had to endure). All sorts of abuse the Apostle Paul endured. He, along with the other apostles, suffered all sorts of horrible things. They were being tested by people who could not believe that God loved them in this way. This unbelief, this testing happens to this day for us. We do not get beaten up usually (not in Canada, not yet). We do not usually get put in jail because we are Orthodox Christians. We do not usually lose our lives because we are Orthodox Christians in Canada at this time. However, people sometimes are not very nice to us. People sometimes will ridicule us. Sometimes people will say very bad things about us. Sometimes people will shun us and ignore us because we are Orthodox Christians.
When people are unkind to us, it is important for us to be patient, to give thanks to God, to pray “Lord have mercy” for the people that are treating us badly. Part of this is simply waiting. Through our prayers, sometimes people who treat us badly ultimately find themselves turning about, as the Apostle Paul himself was turned about in mid-track. He, himself, who was a persecutor of the Church, was turned about through the prayers of believers, and through the Grace of the love of Jesus Christ, whom he met on the road to Damascus.
When we are blessing those who are persecuting us, and praying for those who are treating us badly, in the course of all this, we open the door for the possibility of their hearts to soften and to change. Very many times in the lives of martyrs we see that the suffering and the death of a Christian will turn about the hearts of the executioners, who become Christians and who, themselves are also killed. It has happened many times in Christian history. It has happened even in the most recent Soviet persecution in eastern Europe. The persecutors, the punishers, the torturers had their hearts softened by the faith of the Orthodox believers.
It is important for us to do simple, straightforward things about being faithful as Orthodox Christians : loving the Lord, remembering to put Him first in everything. Everything else falls into place. If we do not put the Lord first, our lives are distorted, weak and emaciated in the long run. Let us, dear brothers and sisters, do our part now together in offering ourselves, our lives and each other, all together, to Christ our God, glorifying Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.