Pentecost 3 – 5
June 2016 – Year C
Grace to we and
Peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for our meditation is written in the 7th Chapter of the
Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 11 – 17:
11 Soon afterward
he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with
him. 12 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, and she
was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And
when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he
came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And
the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus4 gave him to his mother. 16 Fear
seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen
among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this
report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding
country.
Two weeks ago, on Trinity Sunday, we talked about the Holy Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We learned
that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. We learned that no member of the Trinity is
greater or less than another. We also
learned that each member of the Trinity plays a special role in our salvation.
The devil is a crafty liar. It is
his goal to deceive us into leaving our creator and saviour in order to follow
him. One of his deceptions is the
attempt to create forgeries of the things of God. He even attempts to create a forgery of the
Trinity. Chapter 20 of the Book of
Revelation tell us about the evil anti-trinity of the devil, the beast, and the
false prophet. Another forged Trinity
Satan casts before us to create fear and destroy our faith is the evil
three-some of sin, death, and the devil.
Our Gospels for today and the next two Sundays each deal with one member
of the evil three-some of sin, death, and the devil. Today’s Gospel deals with the resurrection of
the widow’s son. Next week’s Gospel
deals with a sinful woman who received forgiveness. The Sunday after that deals with a demon
possessed man. Today, Jesus overcomes
death. Next week He overcomes sin. The week after that, He frees a man from demons.
Sin, death, and the devil all demonstrate the captivity that binds us
when we come into this world. Of these
three captors, death is the most concrete.
The devil is a spirit and can’t be detected by the measuring equipment
of this world. Sin is also hard to
quantify. Death, on the other hand, has
a medical definition. We can look into
the casket and see death. We can reach
into the casket and touch death. No one
can ignore death because sooner or later, death comes to us all. Although sin and the devil also attack us,
they aren’t physically measurable in this material world. People can refuse to acknowledge sin. They can refuse to believe in the devil. Death, on the other hand can’t be denied.
Death is an equal opportunity curse.
Rich people die. Poor people
die. Old people die and young people
die. Male, female, black, white, it
makes no difference. Death is a reality
to everyone. No one escapes.
We can do nothing to stop the curse of death, but there is one who can. He
is the Lord of Life. Today’s Gospel
tells us about a time that He postponed the death of a widow’s son.
As a widow, she had already grieved over her husband. Now she must grieve over her son. She was now alone in the world. With no men left in the family, this woman
became a legal non-entity. There was no old age pension or widow’s pension in
that time and place, this widow was on her own. No man in the family meant no
provider in the family. It meant that
this woman must totally rely on the charity of others.
The Bible tells us that when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on
her. Compassion is such a inadequate
word compared to the original Greek. It
is more like His very insides ached with her pain. He felt her grief to its fullest. Her pain pierced His insides so that He felt
it with her.
Jesus not only felt the grief of the moment, but He also felt grief as
the One who created all things. He was
there at creation and He knows that sin and death had no part at the beginning. God created Adam and Eve to live forever
without pain or grief; God created Adam and Eve to live in perfect harmony with
God, with each other, and with nature.
At creation, everything fit together perfectly. Christ remembered this perfect condition and
grieved at its loss as well. So, He
grieved not only for this widow, but also for the condition that allowed death
into this world. Jesus understands more
than any other person that death is a sign of the corruption of sin.
In this modern world, the subject of sin is offensive to many – not
because sin itself is so detestable, but because talking about sin damages a
person’s self esteem. It is a subject
people are reluctant to talk about; I have witnessed people avoiding sin even
on their deathbed; a sure time for confession and reconciliation. Never the less, the results of sin can not be
denied. I can say with absolute
certainty that all people sin because all people die. The topic of sin may damage our self
esteem. It may not be politically
correct. It may be distasteful, but the
truth is that death comes to all people and death is the result of sin. As Paul told the Christians in Rome, [Romans
6:23] “The wages of sin is death,” and [Romans 5:12]
“Death spread to all men because all sinned.”
As Jesus observed the handiwork of sin’s paymaster coming toward Him in
this grim procession, He suffered with this widow who had now lost her only son
and her only financial support. Then He
did something no one else in that culture would do. He reached out to the dead son.
To touch a dead body was to become unclean. The Law is very clear: [Numbers
19:11] “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean
seven days.” Ordinarily, people who
met a funeral procession kept a very respectable distance. It is no wonder that those who carried the
body came to a stop when Jesus reached for the dead body. This was totally unexpected. Here was a rabbi with His disciples and the
rabbi was about to make Himself unclean by touching the dead body.
But this was no ordinary rabbi.
This was the Son of God who had been active in the creation of the
world. He had come to right a world that
had been turned upside-down by sin. He
had come to reverse the curse of sin. He
had come to transform the meaning of death.
When Jesus touched the bier, the impurity of death did not flow into
Him. Instead His purity overcame the blemish
of death. At His word, life returned to
the son. Jesus reversed the procession
of death so that it became a celebration of life. The depth of tragedy became the height of
triumph. Dancing replaced mourning. Hope replaced despair.
When the people realized what Jesus had done, they remembered the
prophets of old. They remembered the
story of Elijah that we read in 1 Kings 17: 17 - 24. They remembered that Elijah’s successor
Elisha also raised a son from the dead.
The people saw Jesus as a prophet like Elijah and Elisha.
Jesus was not the last prophet to raise someone from the dead. During the life of the early church, Peter
raised a dead woman whose name was Tabitha in Hebrew and Dorcas in Greek.
There is one great difference between Jesus and the other prophets who
raised people from the dead. Today’s
reading says that Elijah cried out to the Lord.
The Bible tells us that Elisha prayed to God. The record of the early church in Acts tells
us that Peter prayed in order to raise Dorcas.
In today’s Gospel Jesus spoke only to the mother and the son. He had no need to cry out or pray to God for
the life of this son because He Himself is God and has the power of life and
death in Himself. He simply turned to
the son and said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up
and began to speak. The Lord,
through whom all things were made, spoke and life returned.
The Lord of Heaven and earth did not come to this earth and take on
human nature just to raise this one son from the dead. He did not come just to feel the pain of this
one widowed mother. He came to
experience the pain of all. He came to
experience the grief of all. As the Holy
Spirit inspired the writer to the Hebrews to say, [Hebrews 4:15] “For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Jesus is not some far off powerful being, but He is intimately familiar
with all our pain, our sorrow, our grief.
There is nothing that you experience that He does not experience with
you. God inspired Isaiah to write, [Isaiah
53:4] “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
We could say that Jesus has empathy with us, but Jesus really has much
more. The word empathy has its
roots in a Greek word that means to suffer with someone. Jesus doesn’t just suffer with us, He has
suffered for us. He took the sin
of all mankind into His holy person and carried it to the cross. On that cross, He suffered the punishment we
earned with our sin. Therefore we don’t
have to suffer that punishment. He not
only suffers the pain and grief of this world with us, but He also freed us
from the eternal pain, grief, and punishment of hell. He has gone way beyond empathy to sacrifice.
Jesus’ sacrifice ended in His death, but He did not remain in the
grave. Instead He rose in triumph over
sin, death, and the devil. With His
triumph, Jesus transformed the meaning of death. Death is now a path to eternal life for those
who believe in Him. Just as He called
forth the son from death in today’s gospel, He will, on the last day, call
forth all the dead. The only difference
is that the son in today’s gospel is no longer with us. He died again. On the other hand, the resurrection of the
last day will be forever. Those who
reject God’s salvation will enter into fire forever. Those who believe in Jesus Christ will enter
into heaven forever.
Today’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus experiences our lives with us. He rejoices at the highs and provides
strength to endure the lows of our lives.
With His life, death, and resurrection He demonstrated His power over
sin, death, and the devil. As today’s
Gospel tells how Jesus called the son back to life, it teaches us that He has
transformed death into a doorway to a new life for those who believe. Jesus Christ has removed the eternal curse of
sin and provided life for all. Amen
The grace and peace of our great Triune God that is beyond all human
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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