Glory to Jesus Christ!  Glory forever!

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Hans Christian Andersen in one of his writings has this to say, “Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken” while St. Ambrose of Optina tells us that death humbles us, advising us to, “Look down.  Remember you are earth – and you will return to earth” (Wisdom of the Divine Philosophers II, 144). 

In these most holy and revered days of the Great Fast of Lent, we are especially summoned by the Church to “Look down and remember.”  “Remember thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return” are the Biblical words our Western brethren introduce their Ash Wednesday with as they mark the foreheads of their faithful with ashes in the sign of the Cross (Gn. 3:19).  God reminds fallen Adam that he was taken from the ground and to the ground he will return following the days of toil and labor.  The Preacher of wisdom, traditionally King Solomon, echoes this Scriptural reality, adding “and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it” (Ec. 12:7).  The flesh of mortal man decays into corruption while the spirit breathed into man returns to the Creator Who is its rightful Owner and Master.  Ultimately, we do not belong to ourselves as we like to suppose, but we belong ultimately to God, whether we believe in Him or we do not (Rm. 14:7-8).  For there is coming a day, not too distant, that we all must die as it has been appointed and stand before the Fashioner and Artificer of all creation Who will render His righteous verdict upon our lives (Ps. 50 [51]:6; Hb. 9:27).

Our Funeral Service again and again compels us to take a good, hard look at ourselves – at our real selves, not the image we all have of ourselves.  Death strips us bare to the bone, exposes our nakedness, and dispels any notions if we fancy ourselves something akin to the “cat’s meow.”  As we give to our departed a “last kiss” in the Orthodox tradition, we sing of how life is but an illusive dream, a fleeting shadow, an unseemly fantasy.  “As we look upon him who lies dead,” we sing, 

let us all accept the image of our own last hour.  For he vanishes like smoke from the earth; he is withered like a flower, cut down like grass, wrapped in a winding sheet, concealed in the earth. . . . Come, ye descendants of Adam, let us look on one laid low in the earth, all the comeliness of our image stripped away, dissolved in the grave by decay, consumed in darkness by the worms, and concealed by the earth.       

It matters not our age – each and every one of us meets the same destiny (Ps. 103 [104]:29; Sr. 14:12, 17) – old or young, newborn or frail elderly.  Given this, Ben Sirach in his wisdom beckons us to ponder,

How can he who is earth and ashes be arrogant?  Because even while living, his insides are decaying. . . . When a man dies, he will inherit reptiles, wild animals, and worms.  The beginning of man’s arrogance is to depart from the Lord, for his heart withdraws from the One Who created him.  For the beginning of arrogance is sin, . . . . (Sr. 10:9-18).

Death is at work already in us, but Life is at work in Jesus Christ (2 Cr. 4:12).  “But thanks be to God, Who giveth us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ!”  This is the apostolic Gospel, the Glad Tidings we must hear this day and every day until such time that we draw our last breath.  I am well aware that there are those – maybe even among us – who feel this to be too macabre, an undue or unnecessary underscoring of our mortality.  We would rather celebrate the life of the deceased than to be reminded of their death and burial.  And yet, is this how we handle the Great and Holy Passion of our Longsuffering Jesus by remembering all those good times at the expense of His saving Death and Burial . . . . . . and Resurrection?  We must come to terms with our true reality: flesh and blood, in its current condition of mortality and fallenness – in its corruption – cannot and will not inherit the Kingdom of God.  We must repent of our arrogance and embrace our humble state as it is.  We were created by God for immortality, just as the Wisdom of Solomon assures us, because we have been made and fashioned in the image of His eternity.  “But death entered the world by the envy of the devil, . . . .”  (Gn. 1:26; 2:7; WS 2:23-24).  We must come to grips with death.  We must come to grips that death – and all its fruit: sufferings, tribulations, emotional darkness, sorrow, to name only but a few, is not the work of our good God and Lover of mankind, but wholly belongs to us who yielded to the envy of the father of lies and great deceiver of our forefather and foremother. 

For now, we are earthy, bearing the image of the man of dust.  We are his sons and daughters, “children of wrath,” that is, of sin, death, and decay (Ep. 2:3).  But, “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly,” that is, the image of the second Man Who is the Lord from Heaven, our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ Who “for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven” (Nicene Creed). 

This, beloved, is not a given, however.  Just as each of us must one day die (unless the Lord should cease tarrying and return in glory with all of His holy angels), so each of us must be and will be raised up, called back from the dead by the voice of the Crucified and Risen Son of God, just as Jesus says in the Gospel of the Evangelist and Theologian, “’for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth – they that have done good, unto the resurrection of Life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation’” (Jn. 5:24-30). 

The incorruption spoken of by St. Paul is ours if only we are found to be in Christ.  Corruption cannot inherit incorruption; the mortal must put on immortality; the earthy must bear the image of the heavenly.  We must be changed, says the Apostle, by the Man from Heaven Who is our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ.  “’Verily, verily, I say unto you,’” declares Jesus, “’he that heareth My Word and believeth in Him that sent Me, hath Everlasting Life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto Life’” (Jn. 3:15-21; 5:24-30).  The dead who hear the Life-creating voice of the Son of God experience the grace of the Holy Spirit, believe in Him, and bear the fruit of repentance and obedience – the obedience of faith (Rm. 1:5; 10:14-17; 16:26).  Only “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”  We must be conformed to the image of the Son of God, the Man from Heaven, Who trampled down death by Death (Paschal Troparion), putting on His incorruption, receiving His immortality, by partaking of His divine nature for which we have all been created (Rm. 8:29; Ep. 4:24; Co. 3:10; 2 Pe. 1:4).  This is the Mystery that awaits us if we abide in Christ God and He abides in us.      

“But thanks be to God, Who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”   

Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God,

have mercy on us and save us.  Amen.

   Glory to Jesus Christ!  Glory forever!

PROPERS:

1 Cr. 15:47-57

Jn. 5:24-30