My boast in the Gottesdienst Crowd “Thinking Out Loud” this week that I would preach on gates garnered some interest from the peanut gallery. So I am posting this draft which I intend to preach, in some form, tomorrow.

Trinity 16, September 24, 2023 A+D

St. Luke 7:11-16

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

Jesus meets the widow at the gates of Nain. The ancient world was violent in ways that are hard for us to imagine. There were no police. Armies protected politicians and strategic locations, but not normal cities. Sometimes those armies murdered the politicians and pillaged the cities they were protecting. There was no forensic science because there was no real hope of justice. Crimes were simply suffered. Ordinary people were under constant threat from raiding parties and wild animals and even the weather.

City gates were hugely significant places. They were places of commerce, politics, and justice. This is because gates were both a boundary and a passageway. They separated insider from outsider, family from foe. They also either gave or denied access to the safety and comfort of the city.

The widow in Nain was taking her only begotten son out of the city, away from his home, to lay him to rest in God’s good acre. Jesus happened along even though He was not invited. Insofar as Jesus did not always or fully use His Divine rights and attributes as a Man from the time of His conception until His resurrection, it doesn’t seem that this was a planned event. He didn’t foresee it. He wasn’t on His way to Nain. He was only passing by. But He saw the widow in the gates, on the threshold of life and death, and He had compassion. He interrupted the procession. He stopped the weeping and the movement. The pallbearers got new duties. The boy would not leave his mother’s city or home. He sat up, began to speak, and was given back.

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. As a Man, our Lord Jesus Christ now always and fully uses His Divine rights and attributes. His time of humiliation is over. The sacrifice is complete and perfect. He is vindicated and exalted. There is no one to accuse us. Jesus lives.

Our Man Jesus, one of us, born of the Virgin, is also our God, the Creator of all that is, equal to the Father and the Spirit. So our Man, the liberator of our race, is fully omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent. There are no accidents, no unforeseen events, nor any places where He will not be. Yet, still, even now there are places where He promises to be for us. Most particularly, He promises to be where two or three are gathered in His Name. He promises to speak in His Word, showing us the heart of the Father, the history of His compassion and the inevitable future of His living grace. He promises to make heirs by Baptism and to unite us to Himself through His risen Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. He promises also to speak forgiveness directly to each of us in the Absolution. All this is most certain and trustworthy. For those are the things that He has instituted and promised and continued by His grace. These are how we know where the Church is. This is what we cling to in the storms and vagaries of this living death while we wait for the revelation and glory to come.

But I think we can see another promise implied in Nain, a pattern discernible to faith: the veil is thinnest at the gates, at the boundaries of life and death. There, as a gift of grace, God often gives His children a glimpse of immortality, a foretaste of His nearer presence, a comfort peculiar and surprising and counterintuitive. There is something in Jesus that likes a funeral.

To be sure, we are Temples of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is present and is present for us in Word and Sacrament. But we sometimes forget this. We become callous or secure in carnal things. We are in danger from idols and mammon and pleasures of the flesh. We become deluded and misguided by our reason and experience. The gates of Hell shall not overcome us, but they do have a role to play. They are to remind us of what is real, of what is needed, of what Jesus has done to have us. This that we might fear God’s wrath and taste death’s sting and come running back like the prodigal son to find the Father’s gracious, waiting arms. Thus, I think it fair to say, that Jesus likes funerals. He likes funerals because He likes us to not only need Him but to know that we need Him and to come where He promises to be.

To this end, the gate in the garden wall at Eden, is instructive. It was guarded by the cherubim with flaming swords. Their job was to keep us out even as Hell’s gates where meant to keep us in. Something most dear was lost. But the wall has a breach, a gate. Gates are meant to be opened and these gates have been torn off their hinges.

There are gates in the heavenly Jerusalem as well. John reports twelve of them, one for each apostle. He tells us that each gate is made of one giant pearl. These gates are always open. The pearls have all been rolled away. There are no hinges. They cannot be rolled back. For there in the presence of the risen Christ it is never night. The enemies are all cast out, to never return. There the prodigal son wanders no more and the funeral homes have all become garden centers and buffets. The flaming swords have been beaten into plowshares. If we peer into those wide open gates we see a city where widows have been restored to their husbands, where mothers hold and speak with their living sons, where Adam embraces Eve, surrounded by their children. They are not known for that awful inheritance they passed on by their transgression, but instead are forgiven. They are forgiven not only by God but also by their descendents. We forgive them. We honor them and rejoice in them. They are father and mother of the living and of such is the Kingdom.

Jesus says, “Enter by the narrow gate” and “I am the gate. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved.” And we say: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, The LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory” (Ps 24:7–10, KJV).

The lessons to be learned in Nain are profound, but they are simple. This is the core of our catechesis, the stuff of Sunday School, and the basis of all that we believe: Jesus died and rose again to free us from the tyranny of death. The Lord strong and mighty in battle is the Lord of compassion. He transforms cemeteries into dormitories and undertakers into gardeners. A great prophet has risen up among us. God has visited His people. He has ripped the gates of Hell off their hinges and they cannot hold us in. The gates of Jerusalem are flung wide open. They do not want to keep us out. This might be a cause of weeping but they are certainly tears of joy.

In +Jesus’ Name. Amen.