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 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 rejoicing, and the one leading the procession is the Lord of Life Himself, Jesus. The crowd accompanying Jesus had heard His teaching and had followed Him through Galilee as He healed the sick and cast out evil spirits. They had witnessed His power and authority over sin, and all that sin had brought into the world. Now they would witness His authority over death itself.
Jesus saw the grieving mother from a distance and had compassion for her. He did not simply feel sorry for her. He was filled with gut-wrenching compassion for her in her grief and lostness, and for the terrible wages of sin that had been paid out in the death of her son and, before him, her husband. Jesus said to her, “Do not weep,” for the weeping, grief, and sorrow would be borne by Him. 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 put it this way in his hymn Christ Lag in Todesbanden: 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 Parents’ veins. Now it flows through the veins of all who live and breathe and die. That day it was a young man who received his wage in death. Tomorrow it will be an old man. The day after, a wife and mother. The day after that, a newborn child. The young man represented the best of us: alive, healthy, vigorous, with the whole world seemingly open before him. And yet death took him. If he could not escape death, 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 knowing that death is coming, sooner or later, at a time we cannot know. There is no hope, until we set our eyes upon Jesus. When we lift our eyes from this world of death, from its idols and corruption, and admit that we are dead, or at least that we are living the life of the dead, then we 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, upon you in your grief and sorrow, your sin and death. And He does the unthinkable and unimaginable: He touches your bier. He takes your sin. He takes your uncleanness. He takes your death upon Himself. Jesus did not simply cast death away. He took death into Himself and swallowed it up, as Scripture plainly says. He drank your cup of poison to the bitter dregs so that you could live. He took the serpent’s venom into Himself so that you might become what He is: truly and eternally alive.
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 will live, even through death, forevermore. Jesus is our true Adam, in whom we are all one. He has defeated death by dying for you, His Eve, His Bride. When faced with the serpent’s temptation, the First Adam fell. But when Jesus, our Second Adam, faced the serpent and bore the serpent’s bite, He remained obedient to His Father. He laid down His life in love, unto death, for you. Life died that you might live. The Bridegroom died that His Bride might live. The victory remained with life; the reign of death was ended.
The funeral procession that day was heading toward the tomb, and nowhere else. There was no expectation of encountering Life. There was no hope that anything could change that hopeless situation. But then Jesus came. The Son of God became the Son of Man. He who was highest in God’s glory humbled Himself and became the lowest. He who was without sin was made to be sin for us. He who is Life became obedient to death, even death upon a cross.
The crowd following Jesus had witnessed His authority over disease and demons. Now they witnessed His authority over death. But Jesus’ authority was not merely the authority of divine might. It was the authority of perfect and obedient fear, love, and trust in His Father, and perfect and obedient love for His neighbor. And so, people began to turn from fear, hopelessness, and despair to faith in God’s promises fulfilled in Jesus. They followed Him. They listened to His teaching. They witnessed His miracles. They told others. They brought their sick and dying, their demon-possessed loved ones, and their children to Jesus, that He might touch them with His holy hands and speak His life-creating Word.
And in a similar way, most of you were brought to Jesus in Holy Baptism. There, beside the still waters, through the hands and voice of His undershepherd, Jesus touched you with His holy hands and spoke His life-creating Word of blessing upon you. In Holy Baptism, the procession of death was met head-on by the procession of Life in that strange and dreadful strife. And the victory remained with life; the reign of death was ended.
In Holy Baptism Jesus has touched you and spoken His life-creating Word: “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 have the same Mother. For there is one body and one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
We have the same Mother, the Bride of Christ, the Church, which is one body and of which Christ is the Head. As the Fathers have taught us, extra ecclesiam nulla salus: there is no salvation outside of the Church. There is no salvation outside of Christ because the Church is His Body. We are saved by His perfect life, death, and resurrection, not merely in some external and objective way, but by being grafted into Him, born again from His death into His life, living in Him and from Him in selfless, sacrificial love and service to our neighbor, especially those who belong to the one body of faith.
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 Word and His Wounds. We bring them to Holy Baptism. We bring them to Confession and Absolution. We bring them to the Word of God preached and confessed. We bring them to the Word of God eaten and drunk, to Holy Communion with the Lord and Giver of Life. For the procession of death still winds its way through this world. But Christ has come into it. Life has met death, and Life has won.
So, lift up your eyes. See Jesus. He comes to you with His Words and His Wounds. He touches you with His holy hands. He speaks His life-creating Word. “Arise.” And because Jesus lives, you shall live.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment