LORD OF LIFE, LORD OF DEATH

Sunday, June 10, 2007

United Lutheran Church, Red Wing

Luke 7:11-17

Grace to you and peace in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who is Lord of life and death. Amen.

Death is at the city gate—weeping and wailing, personal and professional mourners lining the road with loud and sad crying filling the air.  A man is dead and the whole town is feeling bad.  They have come to the funeral in support of his widowed mother. A compassionate crowd who refused to allow her to be all alone saying goodbye to her son.  It’s something like what we do when someone in our midst, whether family, friend, a member of the Body of Christ, dies. 

              Jesus was nearing the town of Nain when he came upon a funeral procession as the body of an unnamed man is being carried out of the city for entombment.  Nain, whose name meant,

“beauty” wasn’t beautiful that day.  The sights and sounds of sadness drew the attention of the people away from whatever it was that made the city beautiful to the loss of a loved one. To the faithful Jewish people of Jesus’ day much about death was unclean so the body was being moved outside the city.  For many of us, living in small communities the cemeteries are either on the edge of town or next to the churches.  In the countryside, the churches often sit surrounded by the tombstones of the dead.   It’s as if to say, in the midst of death, we are in life. Or in the midst of life, we are surrounded by death.  Is the saddest sight in bereavement the sight of the dead or is it the loved ones left behind?

              Luke, in this lesson for today, makes a point of describing the mother’s incredible loss. The dead man was his mother’s only son, her husband preceding in death.  She goes unnamed but obviously has had to adjust to the emotional and financial loss of her husband.  A son would normally have had to support his mother in such circumstances but now that will not be possible. So that her grief would be accentuated by her potential financial concerns.

              There’s little doubt that Luke has given us this information about her family situation because he wants us to know that not only is her future happiness in jeopardy but her ability to survive is a real concern.  But Jesus meets the procession and stops the hearse and the funeral procession, sees her grief and is touched with compassion for her.

              The word in Greek for compassion means that he is touched in his innermost self or feelings, heart, affection, love, and here it’s visceral…”in the pit of his stomach.”  In his gut!

You know that feeling when something touches you so deeply that you ache all over and it takes hold of your whole being.  You’ve experienced this sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach

when you heard some deeply shocking news; perhaps the illness or death of someone you loved?

That’s how I felt this week, when Lois called early on Thursday morning with the news of the

death of our nephew, Jonathan.  He seemed to be recovering slowly from open heart surgery and then…death.  Almost impossible to comprehend, or even react to.  The feeling was visceral!

              I wonder if it was something like that which Jesus felt.  He didn’t even know the woman but when he saw her for the first time he felt her loss as if she were a member of his own family. That’s compassion as only God can have for a perfect stranger. And seeing her, and being touched by this compassion for her, he says, “DON’T WEEP!”  Don’t weep?!?!?!  It was her son, for goodness sake!

              But he steps forward, touches the coffin and says, “YOUNG MAN, I SAY TO YOU, ARISE!”  Now this could potentially have been the most embarrassing moment in Jesus’ ministry had the boy not responded.   After all, this was the first raising from the dead experience and it was early in Jesus’ ministry.  But, the boy sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

              Doubtless, she had not requested this or expected it, maybe only dreamed and longed for her son to be alive. No one in the procession expects a miracles.  And nothing prepares the mother or the crowd for the interruption of the procession to the grace nor the change of events.

IT WAS GRACE UPON GRACE, as one writer put it!  Here the depth of Jesus’ compassion is revealed as well as his willingness to respond to an unspoken need.

              And the crowd, well the crowd is filled with fear.  Afraid—as in “scared” afraid?  Or afraid as in filled with awe and wonder afraid?  I think it was with awe and wonder.  Joy would only set in after the initial shock.  Who can bring a dead man back to life?  For it is only realizing that God is at work, that their fear is transformed into glory for God.   By giving this blessing of resurrection the crowd not only believes that Jesus is a prophet but also, “THAT GOD HAS LOOKED FAVORABLY ON HIS PEOPLE!”

              Now there are various ways to interpret this story of the raising of the widow’s son.

Some want to take it literally, some assume that he was in some deep sleep or coma.  All we know is that the people believed that Jesus truly raised the man from the dead.  And this became a stone in the theological foundation of the growing Jesus’ movement.  So that when God worked through Jesus, not only could the sick be healed but even the dead could be raised.

The story could be telling us that Jesus was so very much in tune with God and so totally  open to God working through him, that even the dead can be raised. I don’t know how much stock we moderns put into such a story, but potentially it is an indication of what God might do today.  We readily ask God to heal the sick, as God did through Jesus on numerous occasions, but do we expect it to happen?

              But I do believe this story teaches us some very important truths about our faith in Jesus Christ.  Essentially that Jesus is Lord of Life and Lord of Death.  I believe that it reminds us that God does come through in moments of great distress and human suffering. That it reveals the very heart of God, God’s compassion, God’s loving care for very common and ordinary people.

Widows in the first century were living on the margin of society.  No social security system, relying totally for support on their extended families.  Again and again we read of poor widows in the Old Testament as in the First Reading for today from I Kings 7 where Elijah hears the cries of the widow and brings healing and life to her son.  And the  N.T. story of the poor widow in the Synagogue who gave her “mite” into the temple treasury.  The call to minister to the widows and orphans rings in my ears.  And the modern day church responds with agencies like Lutheran Social Services and Hunger Appeals to provide for people who are not able to provide for themselves or the need for advocates to stand alongside and walk with.

              This is one of those stories that fills us with the hope that God in Christ truly has the power to heal us of our diseases, and often does.  For Jesus is Lord of Life.  He has the power to change the future from sorrow to joy.  So often we participate in this ministry of Jesus as we transforms despair to hope, loneliness to community, alienation to reconciliation, death to life. Where will you focus your compassion today?  Whose future will you change with the word of life that is within you?  Who because of the work you do, will say, “GOD HAS LOOKED FAVORABLY ON HIS PEOPLE?”

              Still healing comes in other forms than being made well and living on as we hope to live. At times healing and wholeness only come when our mortal lives are over.  This resurrection story and that of the raising of Lazarus are clues to the kingdom that Jesus too would die for the sins of the world and be raised from the dead.  That core value of our faith holds us our future hope.  “FOR AS CHRIST WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD, WE TOO SHALL BE RAISED TO ETERNAL LIFE”, wrote the Apostle Paul .

              A friend and member of the congregation in San Francisco was dying of cancer after a long struggle.  His name was Steve Gaul, an electrician/his wife, Mabel, our church organist.

At his bedside days before his death I asked him, “Steve, are you afraid?”  He said, “I’m not afraid of dying because I’ve never been afraid to life!”  He was a professing Christian who believed that Jesus was Lord of life and also Lord of death.   In Christ we say like Paul, “IF WE LIVE, WE LIVE TO THE LORD AND IF WE DIE, WE DIE TO THE LORD.  SO THAT WHETHER WE LIVE OR WHETHER WE DIE, WE ARE THE LORD’S”.  Jesus is Lord of Life and Lord of Death.

              This week two deaths touched me.  The one was the death of Ethel Bollum who at the age of 84, faithfully was in worship and professed faith in Christ.  She was exempliary in her

witness to those around her.  Sitting near the side in back of the church, she rarely missed and

gave of her life faithfully throughout her life.  “BE FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH AND RECEIVE THE CROWN OF LIFE”.   The other death was that of our nephew, Jonathan Coltvet.  At the age of 41 the open heart surgery seemed to have gone successfully and seemed to be making

gradual improvement and then…no miraculous healing/no coming back to life. But he had said to his father prior to the surgery, “I’m not afraid to die!”  He had believed that Jesus was Lord of his life and Lord over death.

              Jesus was Lord of both of their lives and He is today, Lord over their deaths as well.

Jesus said to Martha in John 11, “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME, EVENB THOUGH THEY DIE, WILL LIVE, AND EVERYONE WHO LIVES AND BELIEVES IN ME WILL NEVER DIE.  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?”

We can affirm those words, for Jesus truly is Lord of Life and Lord of Death.

              So what is our response, whether we live or whether we die?  In the Psalm for this morning we read: “YOU HAVE TURNED MY WAILING INTO DANCING; YOU HAVE PUT OFF MY SACKCLOTH AND CLOTHED ME WITH JOY.  THEREFORE MY HEART SINGS TO YOU WITHOUT CEASING; O LORD MY GOD, I WILL GIVE THANKS FOREVER.”

              Last Sunday Randy had us singing rounds and then singing the words of “Lord of the Dance”.  I love these words especially…”I am the life that’ll never, never die, I’ll live in you, if you live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance said He.”  This morning I would have you turn to Hymn #763 in the ELW. “My Life Flows on in Endless Song”

              “My life flows on in endless song; above earth’s lamentation,

              I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.

                Ref.:     No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.

                            Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

              Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.

              It finds an echo in my soul, How can I keep from singing?

                Ref.:  No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.

                          Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing? 

              Amen                                                                                        Pastor Clark