On Earth As it is in Heaven
Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, October 6, 2024
Scripture Readings from Luke 7:11-17 and 2 Cor. 6:16-18; 7:1
When Jesus meets the funeral procession spoken of in today’s Gospel reading, He does what we commonly see Him do when encountering a person grieving the loss of a family member. He has compassion on them. For review, Jesus and the disciples are entering the ancient city of Nain, while a group of mourners is exiting to bury a woman’s only son. Luke identifies her only as a widow. Jesus greets her in today’s passage with the words, “Do not weep,” and then He touches the bier raising her son to life again. And in doing so, Christ demonstrates the manner in which the Kingdom of God above, is delivered to His people here below. In other words, “Thy will be done, on earth as it in heaven.”
These are of course, the very words Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, but i think because we speak it so frequently it often loses its meaning in our minds. “On earth as it is in heaven” is just that. God’s reign here on earth as a mirror of the way things simply are in the heavenly realm. “As above so below, as the phrase goes.” And as Christians, we are the one’s who usher forth God’s will here on earth.
Thomas Merton writes that
“The city of God in heaven is reflected on earth in the society of those who are united … by sacrificial and Christian love, by mercy and compassion, by selfless and divine pity… By renouncing their own pleasure and immediate satisfaction in order to help relieve the needs of others [they, in turn] help others to become free … and thus fulfill their destiny here on earth."
And here is a beautiful depiction of we, as the body of Christ, who are to exemplify the same compassion Jesus extends to the widow in today’s reading. Christ extended His hand of compassion to a widow, who would have otherwise been without her only son, not to mention financially destitute without a provider. Christ restores her to her place in society. As Christians, we too are to come together, united by the illuminating light of God, which has “shone forth in our hearts,” as spoken in today’s Epistle reading, to shower the same compassion on those who need us most.
But what happens if we cannot muster the same compassion that Jesus felt toward the widow in today’s Gospel? If we’re being honest, none of us can truly measure up to Jesus’ level of compassion, to the genuine love that God has for all people. But it is good to remember that the love of God resides within all of us because all humans are created in the image of God. If you’re having trouble finding compassion for your fellow humans, i would suggest looking inward. Shut off the cacophony of noise around you and seek true inner silence.
What exactly does this look like you might ask?
Fr. Martin Laird has an excellent write-up on this. He states,
“Most of us live much of our lives caught in the whirlwind of the stories going on in our heads… [But] without the story, they have no power…. Contemplation is the way out of the great self-centered psychodrama. When interior silence is discovered, compassion flows. If we deepen our inner silence, our compassion for others is deepened. We cannot pass through the doorways of silence without becoming part of God’s embrace of all humanity in its suffering and joy.”
As Christ has taught us elsewhere in the Gospels, the way up, is down. If you wish to lead, serve your fellow humans. These are pathways toward genuine inner contemplation. “Always consider others better than yourselves, writes the apostle Paul. “Let the same mind be in you that is in Christ Jesus.”