Jesus interrupts the procession of death

Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

The 16th Sunday after Trinity is our annual funeral preparation. It’s God’s gift to us ahead of time enabling us to concentrate for a little while on his word and grace before the day comes when we have to face death ourselves or the death of a fellow believer. It’s easier to concentrate now, when you’re not in the midst of grieving. So God sends us these texts now so that we can think about them and prepare ourselves by means of them, so that when death comes, we have something solid to hold on to.

We know all too well that death comes. It came early this morning to our brother in Christ Pastor Chuck Hudson of Richmond, Missouri. The Lord finally took him home to Himself after many months of battling lung cancer. He was 71. But death comes even to young men. Even to only sons. Even to only sons of widows, like the widow in our Gospel who had practically everything taken away from her in an earthly sense. Sooner or later, death always comes.

We may well wonder, Why now?, or Why in this way? But there’s no wondering why. We know why. There’s no place for shaking your fist at God. This is the devil’s fault. This is our first parents’ fault. This is the fault of every person in our ancestral line. And finally, this is our own fault—maybe not for any particular sin, although sometimes it is—but for the fact that we have sinned at all against God’s holy commandments. The wages of sin is death.

Death almost always brings with it sadness and grief, even for the Christian. Don’t imagine that you shouldn’t grieve, or that grieving means your faith isn’t strong enough. Death is not natural—not as God created our nature to be. For human beings, death is the unnatural separation of two things that were never meant to be separated: body and soul. No, death is not good. Death is evil.

But God often takes things that are evil and turns them to His good purposes, and we see that in today’s Gospel.

The widow of Nain was grieving when Jesus came near to her city. The funeral procession was on its way to the tomb where her only son was to be buried. But Jesus interrupts the procession of death.

He has compassion on her. This is God’s reaction to the consequences of sin. He knows we’re guilty. He knows we deserve the consequences. He Himself imposed the consequences. But it’s important to understand, He doesn’t sit back and laugh. He doesn’t shake His finger and tell us how we deserve what we’re getting—at least, not toward those who fear Him and believe in Him. The Psalm puts it this way:  As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. The compassion we see in our text is the compassion that’s always there for those who grieve. We can’t see it on His face or hear it in His voice. But our Gospel gives faith something to cling to, even though our eyes don’t see it.

Do not weep, He says. Not because death isn’t sad. Not because weeping is wrong or because there’s nothing to cry about. But “because I’m going to take away your reason for weeping.”

Then Jesus steps right up to the coffin and lays His hand on it. And He says to the dead boy, Young man, I say to you, arise! And he did! “I say to you.” That only works if the speaker is God, who spoke the universe into being, who gave life in the beginning, who sustains the life of every creature every moment of every day, who imposed the sentence of death on the sinful human race. That One—only that One—has the right and the power to reverse the sentence.

Of course, according to His own counsel and will, in keeping with who He is, God can only reverse the well-deserved sentence of death if the undeserved sentence of death is imposed on someone else, and not just anyone else, but on the God-Man, Jesus Christ. That has now been done. Death was undeservedly imposed—and willingly suffered! —by our Savior, with a single goal in mind: to apply His death to sinners so that He may give His life to sinners.

He applies His death to sinners when He brings us to faith. He applies His death to sinners through Holy Baptism. You Christians have already died, as far as God’s holy Law is concerned. You died with Christ. You died on the cross. Your death sentence was carried out as you lay with Jesus in the tomb. And you also rose with Him from the dead. You rose with Him to new life—a life that you’ve been living every day as believers in Christ. In Scripture, that’s called the “first resurrection.” Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power.

The second death is the death of hell and eternal condemnation, of torment that lasts forever. Those who take part in the first resurrection—by faith in Christ Jesus—may face the death that separates soul from body, if Jesus doesn’t come back first, but they’ll never have to face the second death, and even this “death,” this separation of soul and body, has been turned into a sleep.

There will also be a second resurrection. Jesus will come and speak to the dead, Arise. And the dead will be raised. For those who died in unbelief, the resurrection will not be a resurrection to life, but to suffer eternal death, the second death. For those who die trusting in Christ, the resurrection will be to eternal life. And the dead will be raised incorruptible.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us just a small glimpse of that great day. But even more, the Holy Spirit urges us to stay close to Him who is the Life during this life. He comforts us with the sure knowledge that Jesus has compassion on those who grieve because of death. He wants us to picture Jesus at the death bed as surely as He was at the gates of Nain. He wants us to picture Jesus with us at funeral home, with us at the foot of the coffin, with us at the graveside of our loved one who has fallen asleep in Him. And He wants us to remember that He has already spoken life to that Christian, and to all believers, already raised them from the dead, so that whoever lives and believes in Him will never die, even if they sleep for a little while.

So mix in that sure hope and comfort with the grief you will experience at the funeral of a believer in Christ whom you loved. It’s natural to be sorrowful. But Christians don’t sorrow as those who have no hope. We sorrow, we grieve as those who have a sure hope.

One other thing before we leave this Gospel, though. It’s even harder to deal with this at the time of death, so we should deal with it now. The sure hope and comfort of the first and the second resurrection is for those who have heard and believed the Gospel of Christ in this life and who have persevered to the end of their life in faith. In other words, it’s for those who died as faithful Christians. We have no such hope for those who die in unbelief, which is why it’s impossible to have a Christian funeral for those who die as non-Christians. And by “non-Christians,” I include also those who may have called themselves Christians, but whose life and confession demonstrated that they did not actually trust in Christ Jesus. As Jesus Himself once described such people, They honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.

Well. You can’t believe for someone else. And you can’t force anyone to believe. What you can do—all you can do—is to invite. To warn, which is simply to speak the truth in love, when you have the opportunity. And to pray. To pray that God would have mercy on your unbelieving acquaintance, that He would not give up on them but continue to work on their hearts through His Law and Gospel. Come! Come to church with me! It’s important! I want to have the comfort when you die that you will be raised to life in the second resurrection! Even then, some won’t listen. Some won’t come. And if they come, some won’t believe. The stubbornness of unbelief is strong. But some will come, eventually. Some will listen. Some will believe. For some, it may take years of inviting, years of warning, years of praying. But it will be worth it, in the end, if nothing else, because you have confessed Christ in this world, and because you have held out to others the same hope that God himself holds out to all creation. God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, and His Spirit works tirelessly on them through the Gospel.

And in inviting others to know Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, don’t forget about yourself. Don’t forget to leave a clear and constant confession of your faith for your loved ones, so that when you die, no one has to wonder, did he still believe in Jesus? Did she still trust in Christ? No, by your words and by your life, let the people around you know that, for all your faults, for all your weaknesses, you lived daily in repentance and faith. Let them know that Jesus has already interrupted the procession of death for you, and He’ll do the same for them. And soon, after you’ve slept for a little while, He’ll touch your coffin and say that blessed word, “Arise!” Amen.