Trinity
16
1
Kings 17:17-24
9/27/20
A boy got
sick and died. We aren’t told what
illness it was, just that the “illness
was so severe that there was no breath left in him.” This was certainly tragic. The mother was a widow. The boy was her only
child. Her husband had died. Her only
child had died, and she was left all alone.
Now in the
ninth century B.C. this was tragic. But
it wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t
surprising. This is simply what
happened. The life expectancy in ancient
Israel was probably around forty years.
That is skewed somewhat by the high infant mortality of the time. Certainly,
there were some who were blessed to live longer.
But death
was just an ugly part of life. It was
tragic. But it wasn’t surprising. For millennia it was this way. In fact, the
life expectancy in the United States in 1900 was just a little under fifty
years. By comparison, the life expectancy today is right at seventy nine years.
The truth
of the matter is that we don’t expect to die.
We assume that the wonderful advances in modern medicine will always
have an answer to help keep us alive until we get really old. For us, cancer is probably the greatest fear
because it just shows up, often for unexplained reasons. And we know that while
there is great success in treating some forms of cancers, others have a low
probability of survival.
That’s why
the reaction to COVID 19 has been so striking.
When have we ever seen large groups of people completely change their
pattern of daily life because they feared an illness that could kill them? My dad has described to me the reactions to
polio outbreaks when he was young. But in my life, I had never seen anything
like that … until this year.
In uncomfortable
ways, this virus has reminded many that Isaiah’s words are true: death is
the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread
over all nations. And in this setting we need all the more hear to about
the cause of death and the answer God has provided.
Our Old
Testament lesson is a continuation from what we heard last Sunday. In response to the wicked paganism of King
Ahab and his queen Jezebel, God had announced through the prophet Elijah that he
was sending a drought upon Israel. As
the drought progressed, God did the unexpected. He sent Elijah to live with a
widow and her son in the town of Zarapheth which belonged to Sidon – the very
place from which Jezebel had come as the daughter of the king there.
Essentially, God sent Elijah to live in Jezebel’s back yard!
We heard
last week how the draught had brought about a famine. The widow and her son were about to die, when
Elijah’s presence brought the miracle that their jar of flour and jug of oil for
making food did not become empty, according to the word of the LorD that he
spoke by Elijah.
It’s a feel
good story, that takes a very dark turn in our text today. We hear this morning: “After this the son of the woman, the
mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was
no breath left in him.” The mother said to Elijah, “What have you against
me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and
to cause the death of my son!”
The widow’s first reaction to the death of her son was that it
was about her sin. Now while she was
misguided in thinking that her sin had caused the death of another, she was not
wrong in assuming that there is a link between sin and death. St. Paul tells us
in Romans, “Therefore, just as sin
came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so
death spread to all men because all sinned.” Through the disobedience of Adam in the
Fall, sin entered into the world. It
entered into every one of us because we have been conceived and born as fallen,
sinful people.
We see it in the things we say and do to our family and
friends. We see it in our thoughts which
turn to jealousy, coveting and lust. We
see it, even when we don’t want it to be there.
And this sin brings death. Paul
leaves no doubt about it when he says, “For the wages of sin is death.”
But God is the God of life. Elijah took
the dead boy and to the upper room where he lived and laid the body on his own
bed. He cried to the LORD, “O LORD my
God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by
killing her son?” Then after stretching
himself upon the child three times he cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let
this child's life come into him again.” Yawheh granted Elijah’s request
and the boy returned to life. Elijah brought the woman’s son to her and she
said, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in
your mouth is truth.”
Last week,
the woman said to Elijah, "As the LORD your God lives, I have
nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug.” But now after this experience she says that
the “word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” She had come to know that
Yahweh is the true God through the raising of her son from the dead.
There is
an obvious parallel between our Old Testament lesson and the Gospel lesson in
which Jesus raises the widow’s son at Nain from the dead. We learn that after Jesus did this, “Fear seized them all, and they
glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God
has visited his people!’”
Luke wants us to know that
Jesus came as the great end time prophet.
Moses had promised, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet
like me from among you, from your brothers--it is to him you shall listen.” Jesus performs miracles just like the great
prophet Elijah because he is this One promised by God.
After our
text, Elijah would go on to win a great victory for Yahweh at Mt. Carmel over
the prophets of Baal and Asherah. But then the threat from Queen Jezebel that
she was going to kill him would send Elijah into the wilderness and he would
say to God, “It
is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” He would ask to die. And after arriving at Mt. Horeb he would
speak words of failure: “I have been
very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have
forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your
prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my
life, to take it away.”
The prophets of the Old
Testament suffered. The prophets were killed. Jesus Christ came as
the great end time prophet who was more than just another prophet. He was the Son of God who had entered into
the world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin
Mary. He came to die on the cross in
order to win forgiveness for our every sin.
Paul told the Corinthians that “in Christ God was reconciling the
world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” How did Jesus Christ reconcile us to
God? Paul says, “For our sake he made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.”
Jesus
received God’s judgment in our place as he died on the cross. But the victory
that Christ came to win was about more than just forgiveness. Had had come to defeat what sin had
caused. He came to defeat death
itself. That’s what happened on
Easter. On the third day God raised
Jesus from the dead with a body that can never die again. This resurrected body
is the one that he will give to you on the Last Day. Our risen, ascended and exalted Lord will
return in glory, and so Paul told the Philippians that we await, “a Savior, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like
his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all
things to himself.”
You know
that this is true for you because you have been baptized. Paul told the Romans, “We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a
death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like
his.”
Your sin
has been forgiven! Death has been defeated! For you, to die is to depart and be
with Christ. For you, to die is to share
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ when he returns. It is to receive a body
like Christ’s that can never die again.
These
truths need to guide the way we live every day.
God has loved you and forgiven your sins in Christ. Therefore Paul tells
us, “Be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” We are called to love others and forgive them
because this is what God has already done for us in Christ Jesus.
And we cannot live lives that are ruled by the fear of
death. We want to live. We should want to live because God is
the God of life. Life is the gift that
he has given to each one of us. There is nothing “natural” about death. It has been caused by sin that found its
source in the temptation of the devil who is a murderer.
But we know
that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
And because he has, we know that not even death can separate us from
God. More than that, we know that death cannot hold our bodies because Jesus
Christ has already started the resurrection of the Last Day. As Paul told the
Corinthians, “‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The
sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be
to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let us live each day, confident in the victory
that already belongs to us is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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