Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke
7:11-17)
The dead man
sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Each Sunday, we say a very unusual thing
in our divine service: Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the
company of heaven, we adore and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising
you and saying: Holy, holy, holy. Through the holy and life-giving
flesh of Jesus we are united in the Divine Service, as we hear the Word of God
and come to receive Christ’s body and blood, to everyone who has died in the
faith before us. I will preach about this in more detail on another Sunday, but
the book of Hebrews tells us that in the church we have come to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.
Many of our songs and hymns proclaim a
certain reality that we are standing in the faith of our fathers. Each Sunday
we confess the Nicene Creed which has been recited in Christian churches for
1600 years or so. Each Sunday we sing the song which is called the Gloria in
Excelsis Deo: Glory to God in the highest. This Christian song goes all the way
back to the maybe the second century. Each Sunday we sing psalms, many of which
could be even 3000 year old texts. This is not to mention the fact that the Holy,
Holy, Holy and the Glory to God
in the highest were given to the church to sing by
angels directly out of heaven. The Holy, holy, holy was recorded by Isaiah from
his vision, and the words Glory to God in the highest were reported by the
shepherds keeping watch in the fields at the time of Jesus’ birth. We stand in
a long tradition, and we stand in unity with all those prophets, and martyrs
and saints and apostles that have come before us.
But if there is one thing that separates
us in our modern times, where everyone thinks they know everything, is that
people think that the resurrection from the dead is not possible. God will
judge the Christians of our time on this point. In our reading today we have a
man risen from the dead by Jesus: and many Christians today think that this is
just a “story”, just a “myth”, and instead of teaching us an historical fact,
it is simply “making a point”. Yes, the events make a point: the point that
this event makes is that Jesus raises the dead, and proves it by actually doing
it, so that we can also be comforted by the fact that one day Jesus will also
raise our bodies from the dead, and draw us in body and soul to himself to live
with him. When we die, our souls are separated from the body and are united
with Jesus so that they are kept safe by him. But on the last day there will
also be a reunification of our bodies with our souls and a complete
transformation of our bodies so that they will be like his. We say in the
Apostles’ Creed: We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life
everlasting.
Today, many pastors and churches want to
make the faith entertaining to people. There is even a church in Gippsland
which has changed its name to “Enjoy Church”. What’s going on? The church
doesn’t give you entertainment, it gives you salvation! If we want to replace
the resurrection of the dead with entertainment, then don’t be surprised if the
angels, the archangels and all the company of heaven would turn our backs on us
and refuse to sing the holiness and the majesty of our risen Lord Jesus
together with us who have lost the faith that they confess: the faith that they
can see it with their own eyes.
I say this not to cause you to despair, but to call your minds to consider the great seriousness and wonder and joy of our holy Christian faith! Without faith we are nothing, and our faith doesn’t come from us but is created in us by the Holy Spirit! God’s word doesn’t lie: he speaks it to us with power, in love and in truth. May God our heavenly Father send us the Holy Spirit and create this living faith in us!
In our reading today, we read: Soon afterward [Jesus] went to a town called
Nain. This miracle happened soon after another
one and Jesus wants join lots of miracles together like one big long sentence.
We should also remember that each word of the bible is kind of a miracle which
fits together one after the other, just like Jesus’ miracles fit after each
other. This verse is the only place where the town Nain is mentioned: it’s a
town in Galilee, which by road today is about 144kms north of Jerusalem. That’s
about the distance between Moe and Bairnsdale, which is a long way to go on
foot. Even today, it’s just a small place of about 1500 people, smaller than
Yarram. This should remind us that small places can be incredibly significant
in God’s plans—today there is a church in Nain which commemorates the event in
our reading.
We read in our reading that when Jesus
went to this town, his
disciples and a great crowd went with him. Just
before this, Jesus had healed a Roman centurion’s sick servant. You might
remember how this centurion said: I am not
worthy to have you come under my roof…but say the word and let my servant be
healed. Now Jesus is not just going to heal a
sick man, but he is going to raise a dead man! So Jesus takes a crowd with him
who witnessed the first miracle so that they can come and witness an even
better one! He wants to teach the people here that one day there will be a day
when you will be completely healed of all your sicknesses: your cancers, your
blindness, your pain, your surgical wounds, your arthritis, your carpel-tunnel,
your flus and colds. Jesus himself will bring an end to all these things and he
will wipe away every tear from your eyes. But not only that, but he will also
raise your bodies from the dead! And it will all happen through the power of
the word of God which you even have the opportunity to hear on this earth. We
read and preach the word of God in this church because this is the word that
will heal you of disease and sickness and it is the word that will rise you
from the dead.
We read: As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother. Maybe after the people had seen the centurion’s servant healed, they thought that maybe he would have been healed anyway. Here’s a man who’s dead. What do you think Jesus is going to do now?
The dead man’s mother was a widow, and a considerable crowd from
the town was with her. You can see the
great pain and sadness of this mother. She had no other children, and she
looked to her son to look after her. The pain is all the more great because
this is her only child. It’s a great tragedy for her, and the people of the
town feel for her too. They felt compassion for her, and wanted to walk with
her and support her and comfort her.
We read: And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to
her, “Do not weep.” Here we see our
Lord in his human flesh looking upon this woman with his human eyes, having
compassion on her from the depth of his human heart, and speaking comfort to
her with his human mouth. But don’t you know also that these eyes are full of
the resurrection and full of Christ’s divine nature so much so that these are
God’s eyes that are looking at her! Don’t you know that these are the compassionate
sighs that flow from God’s heart which desires to comfort all people! And don’t
you know that this Jesus who speaks is speaking the words of God with the mouth
of God! Believe this great mystery.
Jesus our Lord is not just a human being, but he is true man and true God in one person. There is nothing that he does or says that is not the action or word of God and the action or word of a man at the same time. Jesus is equal to the Father in his divine nature, and obedient to him in his human nature.
Jesus says: Do not weep. We might have a
friend who would say the same thing to us if we were crying. They might say to
us: “Get it out of your system”, “it’s good to cry”, “let it all out”. Jesus
doesn’t say this to this woman. He says: “Do not weep.” Why? Because there’s no
point crying over something she can’t fix? Is he saying to her: “Stop your
crying. Get over it”? No. He says: “do not weep”, because of what he’s going to
do. This is not human comfort, this is the comfort of God, this is the living voice
of the man who calls himself and who truly is the Resurrection and the Life.
Then he came
up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. Jesus comes and touches the coffin, so that you can know that the sacred
body of Jesus, his holy touch is powerful, and will bring about your salvation.
This body of Christ—the flesh of Jesus—contains all the power of God. When a
blacksmith takes a piece of iron and puts it in the fire, the uses the iron to
burn something, he uses the iron to do fiery work, to do the work of fire. Since
the human body of Jesus is united in one person to the eternal Word of God, the
body of Jesus does “fiery” work, it does godly work, it raises dead things. And
so when Jesus comes and touches the coffin, the people stand still. The time
for resurrection is the time for all mortal flesh to keep silence. Jesus says: Be still, and know that I am God.
Jesus said,
“Young man, I say to you, arise.” Jesus
doesn’t do his work simply through his body or his touch by itself, but he does
it through his word. When Jesus speaks, then we can believe in him. Because
Jesus speaks and calls this man to sit up, we can have no doubt at all that it
is Him who is responsible for this man’s resurrection and no one else. In the
same way, baptism saves us and gives us salvation and eternal life: but we
wouldn’t know it unless Jesus had said something for us to believe in.
Otherwise, we would be saved by works, by the work of baptism, and not by
faith. Faith believes in the word of Jesus. Jesus actually says: Whoever believes and is baptised will be
saved. We are baptised and we know that his
word does not lie. The Lord’s Supper is also a wonderful gift of the body and
blood of Christ given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. But we
wouldn’t know this if it weren’t for the words of Jesus: This is my body, this is my blood, given for
you, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. We eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, but we know that his word
does not lie. In the same way, Jesus doesn’t just touch the coffin in our
reading, but he also speaks a word to the dead man.
We read: And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to
his mother. Just so that we can know that the man is
truly living, he speaks, and then Jesus fulfils his compassion and love for
this woman. He gave this woman an “election promise” when he said to her: “Do
not weep”, and now he follows through with it! He is not like a politician who has
to make promises that he can’t keep, but he always follows through and delivers
his promise. We read: Jesus gave
him to his mother.
Fear seized
them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among
us!” and “God has visited his people!” And this report about him spread through
the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
May we also be seized by this kind of
fear that was in these people, and glorify God! What happened before these
people then happens to us too, in a spiritual way. A great prophet, Jesus
Christ, arises and stands among us each and every day, and walks with us, and
kills of all our doom and gloom and brings new life to our hearts and minds and
souls. Jesus himself visits his people in the flesh, and he himself is true
God. He raises us up from our spiritual death of sin each day through his
powerful word. Each time this happens it is a great miracle, even greater than
the last time it happened. But also let us never forget that each time Jesus
speaks to us his powerful word of the forgiveness of sins bought with his blood
which he shed on the cross, that his will is done on earth as it is heaven. And
just as this man was raised from the dead in that small town in Israel, Jesus also
promises to raise you from the dead on the last day. I believe in the Holy
Spirit, the Holy Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of
the body and the life everlasting. Amen.
Come, Holy Spirit, and create and work
in us a living faith through the powerful word of Jesus Christ. Raise up our
mortal bodies, our sinful flesh, and breathe new life into them here in this
life and also there in the next life, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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