✠ Psalmody: Psalm 86:3, 5; 1; Psalm 102:15-16; Psalm 114:1-2; Psalm 40:13b–14a; Psalm 71:16b–17, 18b
✠ Lection: 1 Kings 17:17–24; Ephesians 3:13–21; Luke 7:11–16
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. We get into long stretches of life, into daily routines, into daily thought patterns and comforts that cause us to lose sight of the brevity of this life; to forget the truth that our days are like grass. You’ve seen what our dry summer and early days of fall have done to the lawns and fields around us. It doesn’t take much for them to fade away, for them to be gone, for their places to remember them no more. This is the picture the Lord uses to refresh our eyes and ears to our own reality, for life is frail, surrounded by much death; death that is never healthy to ignore or to put off as a subject too uncomfortable to face. Christians do not seek death, but neither do we fear it, for we know that for all who are in Christ Jesus, Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life, when the time comes to encounter death of any kind, it, too, is shown to be subject to His mighty Word. As we remember Jesus’ command that death yield up its victim there at the gates of Nain, let us consider three kinds of death at whose mercy we are in our fallen state while hearing what He Who is Life does about each of them.
The first death is the one whose existence is undeniable by all. All manners of pagans, witches, Muslims, unbelievers, and believers alike must confess that everybody dies a physical death, whether it be by untimely accident or disease or by timely old age. It is a temporal death, such as that as the lifespan that concludes for grass or for a flower of the field. Lord, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Unlike what grows up from the ground, and though we remember that we are dust, our temporal death has more going on than many who possess an eternal soul believe about it. At the time of our death, we do not go on to nothingness. We are not annihilated or absorbed into the cosmos, but there is a sharp fraction as the soul and the body are rent apart; the body to return ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Again, many among the living believe that that is the end, of the soul; that our destiny is but worm food, thus the great motivation to eat, drink, and be merry, if this is all that there is. And physical death isn’t approached the same way by all. Some fear it, likely for the lack of certainty, and therefore also preparation, for what lies beyond. Some welcome it, having endured much pain and sorrow in this life. Let our prayers be for those who welcome it that it is not out of despair or a want to just end all the pain, but that they and we all die well, confident in the Savior Who awaits; confident that He prolongs life in accordance with His good and gracious will, so that death is welcomed as reward for the race well-run.
The second death is that of which the Scriptures speak by the very same name, as it is written, “the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” This is eternal damnation, a certainty beyond physical death for far too many who foolishly reject Christ and experience the death that shall never end. It shall be an eternal death for it will be marked by a separation from God, in Whom is life, forever and ever. This is the death that is most poignantly associated with the punishment for sins, for in the second death, there will be the complete withholding of God’s mercy, which can still be seen, if but faintly, in many a physical death, even in those of unbelievers. Yet, since we upon the earth see not the fiery flames of hell in our digital mirrors that teach us what to believe, since we hear not the true cries of anguish sounding out from the souls currently there who have gone on from this life, who have entered into eternity through the determining portal of physical death, then we give little consideration to the second death. If we believe neither Moses nor the Prophets nor the Lord Jesus risen from the dead, then we will refuse to believe the second death until it has engulfed us in everlasting torment. Have mercy, O Lord.
The third death is one that is able to catch all the living unawares, meaning that Christians, too, must beware the danger, for having been called out of it into life, let us not return to it. It is a walking, breathing spiritual death that is a reality while still in this life. This death has an appearance of life: heart still beating, eyes still blinking, mouth still moving, but is truly dead in spirit, merely biding time until the physical and second death come and complete the trifecta. St. Paul in Colossians testifies to this state of being where there is unbelief and unrepentance, describing such seemingly alive people as being dead in their trespasses and the uncircumcision of their flesh. This living spiritual death is a foretaste of the second death, not in unrelenting flames, but in being separated from true spiritual life in God.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, for He, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is a Trinity of Life. We hear how the descended, incarnate Lord ordained His encounter with the weeping widow that day, who trailed her only son’s funeral procession out of Nain on the way to a grave of grief. Christ, the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world for her, for the dead boy, for me, and for you, shows that He comes to give life in this life; that the third death may be no more; that there if fullness in Him to be had now, as St. Paul writes, “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Beloved in the Lord, Christ has laid His hand upon your once dead body and raised you to walk in newness of life by washing away your sins and giving you the gift of His Holy Spirit. Let us not crawl back into the spiritual grave, but cling to the life that He gives us in His Holy Commandments, in His Holy Sacraments, in His Holy Church, so that we are prepared eternally for what lies beyond our last breath. In Him, you have eyes to see the truth of what awaits those who do not believe, but persist in their denial of Him Who reigns overall. Do not be disbelieving, but believing!
Your eyes of spiritual life see beyond the grave and know the threat of flame to be real, true, and just for all who do not believe. And therein lies your comfort; not that others perish, but that he who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death; the death of condemnation; the death of damnation. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. He is the mighty One to save; to save unto Life in this temporal field and meadow, to save us from the terror of the fiery pit of hell, and to save us from physical death, too.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” If the Lord tarries no longer and returns this day before we taste physical death, such is a way He may so graciously keep us from physical death. But if His return is delayed, He still delivers us from physical death even though we pass through it. This is His promise in which we all are to have confidence, as He was the One Who said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. Jesus Christ the Life grants life as we flourish in this field of time, in the endless day awaiting, and in His command that shall sound forth to all believers on the Last Day to arise. His command shall rule over physical death forever and we shall have glorious, incorruptible bodies like His.
By the shed blood of God in the flesh has the forever-remedy been won. The cause of all death has been vanquished, washed away in mighty crimson flood. Just as pain in the body may carry on after an illness has been cured by an earthly doctor, so, too, does physical death carry on among us even after our heavenly Physician has cured its cause. Take heart. Fear not. For though that pain shall likely end in our physical deaths before His Great Return, we know His cure to be sure and what once had killed us, physically, spiritually, eternally, has heeded our mighty Savior’s stern command and sacrifice. Death has no choice but to obey. May this assurance in Christ ever comfort our hearts.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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