Luke 7:11-17; Ephesians 3:13-21; 1
Kings 17:17-24
In the Name of the Father and of the
+ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The scene is descriptive. You can
picture it in your mind with supreme clarity. A funeral procession is winding
down the hillside away from the walled city on a hill. Men are carrying the
body of a young man upon a bier. A great crowd follows, wailing in grief and
sorrow because a young man is dead and a young mother is widowed and childless.
No one can do anything to change the situation. No one can offer any real
comfort. It is an utter tragedy, senseless and inexplicable. But it is real. It
is all too real.
But, by chance, there was another
procession that day, one approaching the walled city on a hill. In this
procession, no one is wailing in grief and sorrow and no one is dead. In fact, the
great crowd was dancing and skipping and shouting out in joy and laughter, and the
one leading the procession is the Lord of Life Himself, Jesus. The great crowd accompanying
Jesus had heard his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and had followed Him
through the region of Capernaum as he healed the sick and cast out evil
spirits. They had witnessed Jesus’ power and authority in releasing all manner
of men from their captivity to sin and death. Now they would witness Jesus’
power and authority over death itself.
Jesus’ saw the grieving mother from a
distance and He had compassion for her. You must understand that He did not
simply feel bad for her, but He was filled with gut-wrenching compassion for
her in her lostness and the real and necessary wages of sin, death, that had
been paid out to her young son and her husband before him. Jesus said to her, “Do
not weep,” for the weeping, the grief and the sorrow, would be borne by
Him. And then He reached out and touched the bier, for the uncleanness of sin
and death would be borne by Him as well. But the real miracle was in His Word,
as it always is, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” “And the dead man sat up
and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.”
The scene is descriptive. You can
picture it in your mind with supreme clarity. Martin Luther once put it this way
in his hymn Christ Lag in Todesbanden (Christ Jesus Lay In Death’s Strong
Bands): It was a strange and dreadful strife when life and death contended;
the victory remained with life, the reign of death was ended. Holy Scripture
plainly saith that death is swallowed up by death, its sting is lost forever.
Death is all too real. In a sense, we
are all part of that funeral procession winding down the hillside away from the
Garden of Eden. There the poisonous venom of sin first entered our First
Parent’s veins. Now it flows through the veins of all of us who live and
breathe and die. That day it was a young man who received his wage in death,
tomorrow it is an old man, the day after a wife and mother, and the day after
that a newborn child. But, the young man that day represented the best of us,
alive in health and vigor of youth, all the world open to us and ripe with
potential and possibility. But he was taken by death, the inarguable due wage
we all earn for sin. If that young man cannot escape death, then what hope is
there for any of us?
On our own, left to our own devices,
there is no hope. We are dead. Even while we live, we live each day in the
knowledge that death is coming, sooner or later, at a time we cannot know.
There is no hope…, until we set our eyes on Jesus. When we lift up our eyes out
of this life and world of death, the trappings of worldly idolatries and
corruption, when we admit that we are dead, or at least the living dead, and
lift up our eyes, then we can see Jesus who has come, and who comes to us now,
as the Lord of Life, our Redeemer and Savior.
Jesus has compassion, gut-wrenching
compassion, on you in your grief and sorrow, your sin and death. And He does
the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and the incredible – He touches your bier.
He takes your sin, He takes your uncleanness, He takes your death upon and into
Himself. He didn’t raise the dead boy to life until He first took from him that
which caused his death. Jesus didn’t cast death away, He took it into Himself,
He swallowed it up as scripture plainly saith. He drank your cup of
poison for you, to the bitter dregs, so that you could live. He sucked the
poisonous venom from your wounds and He became what you are, the living dead,
so that you could become what He is, truly and eternally alive.
And, just as that dead young man
represented the best of us, doomed to die despite how alive we believe
ourselves to be, so Jesus has become the living man for all of us so that in
and through Him we are alive now and we will live, even through death,
forevermore. Jesus is our true Adam, in whom we are all one, who has defeated
death by dying for you, His Eve, His Bride. When faced with the serpent’s
temptation He overcame by the Word of God and faith. And when you were
threatened by the devil, Jesus, our Second Adam, took the serpent’s bite
Himself. He laid down His life in love, unto death, for you.
Life died that you might live. Life died
for you, young and old and newborn. The Bridegroom died that His Bride might
live. But the victory remained with life, the reign of death was ended.
The funeral procession that day was
heading to the tomb, and nowhere else. There was no expectation of encountering
Life; there was no hope that anything or anyone could change that hopeless
situation. But, when Jesus came, incarnate in human flesh, when Jesus came as a
man, that changed everything: The Son of God became the Son of Man. The highest
in God’s glory divested and humbled Himself and became the lowest. He who was
sinless was made to be sin for us. He who is Life became obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
The great crowd that followed Him did so
because they saw in Jesus power and authority over all manner of disease and
evil spirits. And when Jesus met that somber funeral procession, they witnessed
His authority over death itself. But His power and authority did not come
simply from might or will, but Jesus had power and authority over sin and death
because of His perfect and obedient fear, love, and trust in God His Father
above all things and because of His perfect and obedient love for all men. Jesus
bore the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is
no law.
In Jesus, people began to turn from
fear, hopelessness, and despair to faith in God’s promises finding their
fulfillment in Jesus. And so, they followed Him, they listened to His teaching,
they witnessed His miracles, they told others, and ultimately, they brought
their sick and their dying, their demon-possessed loved ones, and they brought
their children to Jesus that He might touch them with His holy hands and speak
His life-creating Word of blessing upon them, that He might raise them
spiritually, and physically, from death to His eternal life.
In a similar way most of you were
brought to Jesus in Holy Baptism. And, in a similar way many of you have
brought your own young sons and daughters to Jesus in Holy Baptism. There
beside the still waters, through the hands and the voice of His undershepherd,
Jesus touched you with His holy hands and Jesus spoke His life-creating Word of
blessing upon you. In Holy Baptism the procession of death was met head-on by
Jesus’ procession of life in a strange and dreadful strife, but the victory
remained with life, the reign of death was ended. In Holy Baptism Jesus has
touched you with His holy hands and has spoken His Life-creating Word of
blessing upon you, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And, as it was in
the beginning, so it is now, His Word brings into being what He says. And then,
Jesus returned you to your Mother, the Church.
Yes, we all have the same Mother, for there
is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that
belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all, who is over all and through all and in all. We all have the same
Mother, the Bride of Christ, the Church, which is one body, and of which Christ
is Her Head. As the Fathers have taught us, extra ecclesiam nulla salus,
there is no salvation outside of the Church. There cannot be salvation
or life outside of the Church, for the Church is the body of Christ and there
is no salvation outside of Him. We are saved by His humble and obedient perfect
life, death, and resurrection, not merely in an external and objective way, but
we are saved by being grafted into Him, born again from His death into His
life, living in, to, and from Him in selfless, sacrificial love and service to
our neighbor, especially those of the one body of faith, the Church. And if we
would bring people to Jesus that He might touch them with His Holy Hands and
bless them with His life-creating Word, then we must bring them to where He is
present with His Words and His Wounds to heal and to bestow life and to bless;
we must bring them to where He is present with His body as Her Head; we must
bring them to Holy Baptism, we must bring them to Confession and Absolution, we
must bring them to the Word of God preached, we must bring them to the Word of
God confessed, we must bring them to the Word of God eaten and drunk, that is, we
must bring them into Holy Communion with the Lord and Giver of Life, Jesus
Christ, to whom be glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and
forevermore.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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