In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus meets a funeral procession on its way out of the city of Nain. It was a funeral procession for an only son of a widow. Almost the entire city had come out to show their grief, support, and curiosity.
Did you notice where Jesus met them? Jesus met the death march procession: at the gate of the city. “What is so important about that?” you ask. Well, it is something that we might miss because we no longer live in cities surrounded by walls and barriers in case of invasion by foreign powers. However, we do know something about fences, gates for animals, for property, and parking structures. We know what doors are: for our homes and our buildings for work or business. Some gates and doors are very large and wide and tall. Some are less so.
Gates and doors are both barriers, but gates and doors are also the way into and out of places. How do you get into a parking garage or a stadium? Through the gate. How do you go into or out of your house or into a store, a bank, or other business? A door.
They can also be barriers to those who wish to enter but shouldn’t: for example: It can be to keep out criminals, or wild animals in the case of animal fences and gates. They can keep people or animals in a place as well, so that they do not go wandering off if they are likely to get lost. I am thinking specifically of animals, children, and those with mental health disorders. But they can also be barriers to exit for prisoners and other such situations.
To repeat then: gates and doors are both barriers or thorough ways to control traffic and who or what goes in or out at specific times.
In the Bible the terms door and gate are significant in their usage. After the fall into sin, God placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the entrance into Eden and the way to the tree of life. When the flood was about to take place, it was God who “closed and sealed the door” of the ark. It was on the doors and doorways that the blood of the spotless lamb was to be painted so the Angel of death would pass over a household in the original Passover meal which led to freedom and exodus from Egyptian slavery. There were gates into the temple of Jerusalem, but there was a closed door to the Holy of Holies where only the consecrated priests could approach the special earthly presence of God.
In our text for today’s Gospel Nain’s gate is called a “Pulay” which specifically a gate of the wider sort, like a city gate. It is the same word that Jesus uses when He refers to the entrance into Hell, which would fight against the Church in its confession of Christ: “even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Interesting. The way to hell is wide. In Matthew and Luke Jesus also said: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Mt. 7:13-14)
Wide is the way that leads to destruction. This could be its own sermon regarding unbelief and morality, but let us ask this question: What is the widest of wide gates through which all of us must pass? Death. Death of our bodies is a result of our own sin and the curse of sin in this world. The wages of sin is death. The end result of that sin is the very thing we often fear and fight: death itself. Like I said last week: why do we worry, why do people covet, steal, kill, hate, slander, disobey, etc.? It is because ultimately each one of us is selfish. This is a result of original sin. This rebelliousness deserves the punishment of being barred from the grace of God, and being ushered through the wide gates not only into death of our bodies but through the gates into the immense abyss of Hell. To be trapped as prisoners in eternal punishment.
Many try to escape this eternal death seeking redemption by different doors. They may try being the best and most holy person they can be, thinking that will earn them favor with God. Others may try various religions, or pursue their own mixed bag variety of spirituality. Some may think that they can do whatever they want, live however they want, that God’s grace is cheap and will save all people or people who just aren’t the worst, which they assume they are not. Satan uses many pastors, leaders within the church bodies, who are really thieves and false shepherds, who say that “broad is the way that leads to salvation, and narrow is the way that leads to destruction.” You see they reversed it. They introduce false teachings, skewing, and twisting Scripture, pointing people to works or lawlessness recruiting, directing, and hastening their entry to those broad gates of Hell. We all deserve this as we daily sin much and deserve God’s wrath.
But there is a way that changes the gates of death; A miraculous exchange so that bodily death is no longer the entrance to damnation but eternal life for soul and body; a door through which people must be brought already in this life for their salvation to be rescued from destruction at the end.
It is narrow and singular. Jesus said: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Also “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
How do we find Jesus who has been sent from the Heavenly Father? How do we unlock this door to be brought into salvation?
In the midst of death here on earth He meets you. Jesus, the Son of God, descended from the Father to meet those dead in their trespasses and sins, and overthrow the curse and the damnation caused by sin. This is the significance of the detail that Jesus the door to life eternal met the funeral procession at the wide gates of Nain as He meets humanity at the wide gates of death and sin. He did this at Nain to show what Jesus came to do in His earthly ministry: defeat the curse of sin: death itself.
In His perfect earthly life, and then in His crucifixion and His death, death and life contended, they fought. The perfect spotless lamb of God shed His blood and gave up His life at the cross to achieve victory. Even though they rolled a great stone in front of the door of the tomb’s dark prison which held the Son of God’s body, He could not be held. The angel rolled back that stone to show that the tomb was empty. “See, He is not here. Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. The yawning gate of death has lost its dread. The door of salvation has already been opened for you. The door which guarded the Holy of Holies has been replaced with Jesus through whom you have access to the Father. This door does not wait for you to find Him. He finds you. You know the way. He has already come to you. He used your parents, your friends, your family, your pastor or neighbor, He uses His Word even now as He used the Sacrament of Holy baptism to enter the locked door of your heart and mine. Now His blood covers us over, as He works faith in us, to open our eyes, to see Himself and His cross, the narrow way of rescue from spiritual death through His death to life in spirit, mind, and body. For believers, Christ victorious stands at the gates of death, now death is no more than an entrance to the fulfillment of all God’s promises of redemption through Jesus Christ.
Beware the wolves who in this life lurk at the gates of your heart, the spiritual thieves from without and even our sinful nature from within, that would have us turn away again unto destruction.
Become students of the Word. Do not be lazy, but exercise your faith to become strong in the Lord. So that as you learn and grow you may receive Him rightly where He promises to continue to meet you. Here at this altar. Receive the very blood of that Passover Lamb, the Son of God in the Lord’s supper given and shed for you for your forgiveness, to seal you for life everlasting.
As St. Paul said in our Epistle lesson today: “according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” In Jesus Christ you too may arise, that is be resurrected in mind and heart now and at the last day. The people of Nain did not fully realize it, but they Confessed Jesus Christ as the One who would be raised. They said: A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”
Jesus Christ, the prophet of all prophets, the priest of all priest, king of all kings, has been crucified but has been raised and is raised among us by His working of Word and Sacrament. God has visited His people and has opened to us the way of eternal life. Do not weep. Rejoice, in Jesus Christ crucified and risen for us, Amen.
Pr. Aaron Kangas