Trinity 16
Lk
7:11-17
9/20/26
Not all funerals are the same. To be sure, death is always a source
of grief. It is always the loss of a person who was a spouse, parent,
grandparent or friend. Death was not part of God’s very good creation in the
beginning. Instead death has been caused by sin, for as Paul told the Romans,
“The wages of sin is death.” With good reason the apostle told the Corinthians,
“The sting of death is sin.”
Death is always a source of grief. But not all deaths are the same,
and therefore not all funerals are the same. Recently we had the funeral for
Aleda Doelitzsch. Aleda died when she was 101 years old. She had lived a long
and remarkable life in which she had touched so many people. Her entire life
was a witness to her faith in Jesus Christ. There was indeed mourning, but at
101 Aleda now had to live in a nursing home. All recognized that the Lord had
blessed her with a long and full life and that it was time for him to take
Aleda to himself.
The grief and mourning at a funeral is very different when the
death is an obvious tragedy. When life is cut short in ways that we don’t ever
expect and loved ones are left behind in difficult circumstances all sense the
tremendous loss that has occurred.
If a funeral like Aleda’s really is one of family and friends
coming together in thanksgiving for her life and that fact that she is now with
Christ, then a funeral for a tragedy is family and friends coming together in
support of those who have experienced an unimaginable loss. The funeral
procession that Jesus encountered at Nain in our text was definitely this
latter kind of funeral. It was a funeral that had been caused by a tragedy.
Luke tells us that the disciples and a great crowd were
accompanying Jesus as he approached the town of Nain. Our Lord’s miracles and teaching attracted a
crowd wherever he went. These people were following Jesus in expectation of
seeing what he would do next.
As they
approached the gate of the town, they were met by another crowd that was coming
out of Nain. It was a funeral procession heading out of the town. A large crowd
from Nain had joined in the procession, and Luke tells us that this was because
of the circumstances of the death. It was certainly tragic.
A woman’s only son had died. God’s Word teaches
us that children are a blessing. The Psalmist writes, “Behold, children
are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows
in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is
the man who fills his quiver with them!” On the other hand our world treats
children as if they are liability. They are considered to be a cause of
unnecessary commitment and expense, and it is common in our world for couples
to take steps to prevent children from being conceived at all.
The world in which Jesus lived had
been shaped instead by Gods’ Word. It viewed children as a blessing. The great
tragedy for a woman was not being able to have children – to be barren. To have
only one child meant that this woman had avoided this status – but just barely.
She had only one child, and so this son was incredibly precious to her.
Now, he had died. This was a great
tragedy. But the grief was compounded by the fact that she was a widow. Her
husband had already died. The woman had no husband who could provide for her. Now
she had no son upon whom she could rely. She was alone, and those around her in
the town perceived the heartbreaking circumstances.
Our Lord is the all-knowing Son of
God. When he saw the woman he understood all of the circumstances that were
before him. As our Gospel lessons tells us, “he had compassion on her.” Jesus had compassion on the woman. He saw
what sin had done to her life in the death of her son. And he felt deeply for
her. The Greek verb used here conveys the sense of something felt in your gut.
But Jesus didn’t just feel
compassion for her. Instead, he acted. First, he said something that seems
completely inappropriate. He said to her, “Do not weep.” Who comes upon a
funeral procession – a scene of tragedy – and tells the family not to weep?
Then he stopped the funeral
procession itself by doing something shocking. He came up and touched the bier
on which the dead son’s body was being carried. A dead body was something that
brought defilement – it made a person unclean. But Jesus ignored this as he
touched the bier. Those carrying it were certainly shocked by this action. We
learn that they stood still.
Jesus said, “Young man, I say to
you, arise.” The dead son sat up and began to speak. And then Jesus gave him to
his mother. At that moment fear seized
all who saw what had happened. They stood in awe and glorified God saying, “A
great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”
In our text today the people
exclaim, “God has visited his people!” They are right. Jesus Christ was the Son
of God in this world. He was God visiting his people in order to rescue them
from sin and death. He was God visiting you in order to do the same.
The people see the miracle and say
that a great prophet has arisen among them. It’s not hard to understand
why. In our Old Testament lesson we hear
about how Elijah raised from the dead the woman’s son at Zarapheth. They are
right. Jesus is a prophet. But in this identification we also see that God’s
visitation of his people takes place in a way no one expects.
Immediately after our text we learn
that John the Baptist was in prison. John was the “prophesied prophet” – the
prophet who was the fulfillment of what Isaiah and Malachi had written. He was
the one sent by the God to prepare the way. He declared about the One coming
after him, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming,
the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with
the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his
threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will
burn with unquenchable fire.”
John proclaimed the One who would
bring God’s end time judgment. But then John confronted King Herod Antipas
about how through divorce he had taken his brother’s wife. And so Herod had
John thrown in prison. John sat in prison as he heard about Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus was working miracles. But there was no end time judgment and destruction
of evil doers. Quite the opposite. Herod sat in his place, while John the
Baptist languished in prison.
So John sent two disciples to Jesus
and had them ask this question: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we
look for another?” 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 answered using words that drew
upon Isaiah chapter 35. There Isaiah said, “Say to those who have an anxious
heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with
the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the
blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame
man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”
In his answer Jesus announced that
he was God visiting his people. He was the coming One - the presence of God’s
end time salvation. That’s what was seen as he gave sight to the blind and
cleansed lepers – as he raised up the dead. But then Jesus added, “And blessed
is the one who is not offended by me.”
Jesus was telling John that things
didn’t look like he expected. And the explanation for this is found in the fact
that Jesus is indeed a prophet – the prophet like Moses promised by God.
Certainly, the prophets did mighty works like we see Elijah carry out in the
Old Testament lesson. But the prophets
also suffered.
In the chapter after our Old
Testament lesson, Elijah goes on to win the great victory over the prophets of
Baal at Mt Carmel as Yahweh sends down fire and burns up Elijah’s offering. But
in the chapter after that Elijah has to flee into the wilderness because Queen
Jezebel - the great Baal supporter – is trying to kill him. Overwhelmed by what
we would call depression he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough;
now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” The
prophets suffered. And the prophets were killed. As Jesus said, “O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it!”
It is sin that has caused death. It
is sin that brings God’s judgment and damnation. Jesus Christ was God visiting
his people to provide rescue from sin and death. But he had not come to do so by a mighty
action of victory that would be praised by all. Instead, Jesus was the Son of
God who was here to suffer and die on the cross. As they approached Jerusalem
before Holy Week Christ said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and
everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be
accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked
and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill
him, and on the third day he will rise.”
When Jesus died on Good Friday it
seemed that all had ended in failure. On Easter as they walked on the road to
Emmaus the two disciples described Jesus as “a man who was a prophet mighty in
deed and word before God and all the people.” They spoke of his crucifixion and
lamented, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
As the risen Jesus walked with them
he responded, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these
things and enter into his glory?” Jesus had walked the way of suffering and
death but in his resurrection we understand that this death has given us
forgiveness and salvation.
In our text this morning we see
Jesus raise the widow’s son from the dead. The people exclaim, “A great prophet
has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” These words teach us
that God works in ways that we do not expect – ways that at times seem to be
the opposite of God’s work for us. There are times when we face great hardships
and difficulties. The circumstances of life seem to indicate that God’s love is
absent.
The apostle Paul says in Romans
chapter 8, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together
for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The reason that
we can have confidence that these words are true is because we have seen the
way God worked in Jesus. We know that
the cross of Good Friday looked like humiliation, weakness, and failure. But in
Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter we see that the cross was in fact God
working powerfully to save us. And because we have seen God do this in Christ,
we are no able to trust in him no matter what things may look like.
In our text Jesus touches the bier
on which the son’s body was being carried and said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” Christ raises him from the dead and this
action points towards what he will do on the Last Day. For now we often do not
understand. But, the death and resurrection of Jesus is the reason that we
trust God is at work in our life even when nothing else seems to indicate this.
As Paul told the Corinthians, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”
But we do so in the confidence that
the day of sight will arrive. Because Jesus has risen from the dead, we will
too when he returns in glory. We have this hope that helps us to move forward
trusting in God. It is the living hope, because as Peter said, “Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has
caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead.”
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