Trinity 16
Lk
7:11-17
10/1/17
There are tragedies that shake a
whole community and bring it together in support someone in their midst. At the end of July in Beecher, IL Lindsey
Schmidt was driving her children to VBS.
A member at Trinity Lutheran in Crete she had her three boys – all six
years old and younger – with her.
Lindsey was pregnant with their fourth child. As they were going to church, the driver of a
pickup truck ran through a stop sign and slammed into the family’s Subaru. Lindsey and all of the children were
killed. Her husband Eddie had to bury
his entire family.
In its first century setting, the
scene that Jesus encounters in our Gospel lesson was a similar tragedy that
shook a community and brought it together in support of a woman. We learn that Jesus and his disciples, along
with a great crowd that was travelling with Jesus, arrived at the city of Nain.
At the city gate they encountered another considerable crowd that was leaving
the city.
Luke tells us that this was a
funeral procession. His description soon
explains why a good sized crowd had gathered.
The only son of a woman had died.
Then Luke adds: “and she was a widow.”
The woman’s husband had previously died.
As I mentioned last week, widows were among the most vulnerable people
in the ancient world. With no husband to support them, the only people they
could count on to provide for them were their children.
In this case, the woman had only one
child – a son. This was surprising. The
Old Testament taught God’s people to view children as a blessing. Large families were typical. For some reason, this woman apparently had
only one child. He would have been extremely precious to her. And the fact that he was a son was a great
blessing, because after the death of his father he would be able to help care for
and support his mother. Yet now, this
only son had died. The woman’s husband
was dead. Her one son was dead. She was left with no one. Others at Nain saw the tragedy and so a
considerable crowd was accompanying her to the burial site.
We are told that when Jesus saw her,
he had compassion on the woman and said, “Don’t weep.” Our Lord’s compassion – his care for this
woman – is a great comfort that we find in this text. He sees what the sin of a fallen world has
done to her; he sees what death has done to her, and he is moved. He is moved by care and concern.
This compassion – this care and
concern – is the same thing that Jesus Christ directs towards you. Our Lord sees all of the ways that sin
manifests itself in your life. He sees
the ways that your selfish actions damage the relationships in your
family. He sees the ways that you
disobey God’s ordering of the world, and the harm you incur upon yourself by
doing so. He sees all of the ways that
the presence of sin in the world and your life causes pain and suffering. And he has compassion on you.
Now compassion is one thing. No doubt, many of the people who accompanied
this poor woman in the funeral procession felt compassion for her. It is certainly appreciated. But for the most
part, it also really doesn’t do you all that much good. And that is where we
see in our text that Jesus is different. For we are told, “Then he came up and touched the
bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you,
arise.’
And
the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Jesus has compassion. And then he also has the power to do
something about it. He raised the son from the dead and gave him back alive to
his mother.
Naturally
the crowd – both the people following Jesus and those in the funeral procession
– were amazed. We learn that “Fear
seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen
among us!’ and ‘God has visited his people!’”
In our text
the people call Jesus a great prophet. But here’s the thing about prophets that
Luke’s Gospel wants us to recognize: they suffer and die. Immediately after our text we are told that
from prison John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or
shall we look for another?” John was a
prophet. He had prepared the way for Jesus who was now carrying out his own ministry.
And yet John the Baptist sat in Herod’s prison because he had spoken the truth
to Herod.
Our Lord
answered: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive
their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one
who is not offended by me.” Jesus said
that he was the One sent by God. His raising of the widow’s son demonstrated
this. But he also told John that the way
God was working through Jesus probably didn’t look like what John expected.
It didn’t
because Jesus was a prophet too – the final and great prophet like Moses whom
God had promised. This meant that
suffering and death was the path for Jesus as well. On his way to Jerusalem Jesus said,
“Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following,
for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.”
Because
Jesus Christ had compassion on us he journeyed to the cross. He went because it was only by going through
the suffering and death of the cross that he could provide the answer to sin
that you and I need. It was only by
offering himself as the sacrifice for sin that he could win us
forgiveness. It was only by passing through
death and then rising on the third day that he could defeat sin’s final outcome
and give us resurrection life.
In our text
we see that Jesus has compassion on the woman. He restores life to her son at the same time that John the Baptist is
in prison. Our Lord gives the son life
and then also tells John, “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Jesus
Christ leaves no doubt that he is the One in whom the kingdom of God – the reign
of God – has broken into this fallen, sinful world. He is the One who has
compassion on us and he has done something about it. He is the One who has secured the victory for
us, even as we await the final consummation.
This sets
before us a reality of the Christian life that we cannot avoid. We have not yet
escaped this fallen world. We haven’t even yet fully escaped the fallenness in
ourselves. When we look around us we see
tragedies and injustice and suffering. When we look inside ourselves we see
doubt and jealousy and anger. The old Adam is still there doing his best to
resist the new man created by the work of the Holy Spirit. The devil wants us
to focus on these things. He wants us to let these define the way we see our life
and world.
But this is
a lie. It is a deception. These things do not change the fact that in Christ
the victory has been won. We are not what we were before. We are a new creation in Christ. We are a
royal priesthood. We are saints.
And it does
not change the fact that the Spirit has not only created new life, but also
sustains that life as we struggle against the old Adam. It is the Spirit by
whom we are able to cry, "Abba! Father!”
It is the Spirit himself ho bears witness with our spirit that we are
children of God. And indeed when we do
not know what to pray for as we ought, the Spirit himself intercedes for us
with groanings too deep for words.
Jesus says,
“And blessed is the one who is not offended by me,” even as he looks upon us with
compassion. In our text Jesus speaks to
the woman as he says, “Don’t cry.” Then
he approaches the funeral bier and applies his life giving touch. Our Lord continues to speak to us through his
Word. He speaks the comfort of his
victory for us. He speaks his love and
care.
And he
touches us through the gift of his Sacrament.
His body and blood, given and shed for us, touches us and in doing so he
forgives and strengthens. He bears
witness to the certainty of our resurrection and transformation because as he
said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my
blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
In our text today the people
exclaim, “God has visited his people!”
These are our words too. They are because the incarnate Son died on the
cross for us and rose from the dead on the third day. They are because he continues to visit us through
his Means of Grace as the Spirit creates and sustains faith. These
facts now define how we view life.
There are times we don’t understand
why things happen. There are great
tragedies like what happened to the Schmidt family in Beecher. There is pain and suffering and
heartache. When we encounter these, our
answer is to turn in faith to Jesus Christ. We turn to the One in whom God
visited his people with salvation. We turn
to the One who by his own resurrection has overcome death itself. We turn to
the One who not only had compassion on us and but did something about it to give
us comfort in the present and a living hope for future.
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