Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
Ephesians 3:13-21 + Luke 7:11-17
Today our nation remembers the death and destruction that occurred 15 years ago today, on 9/11, 2001. We’ll mention that briefly later on.
For now, I’d like you to remember that it was 24 weeks ago today that we celebrated Christ’s victory over death on Easter Sunday. And lest we let the light of Christ’s power over death grow dim in our hearts, the Holy Spirit holds it before our eyes again in today’s Gospel. Because, as the hymn says (although we didn’t sing it today), “Who knows when death may overtake me?” Who knows when death may overtake any of us? You can never be too prepared for that day, but you can be underprepared, so watch Jesus today as He deals with death in the Gospel.
The widow of Nain had already lost her husband to death. Then she lost her only son, too, and was left bereaved and desolate—not unlike Naomi in the Old Testament, who lost her husband and her two sons to death. Remember how bitter Naomi was at first, and how hopeless, even with that faithful daughter-in-law Ruth who stood by her and took care of her. What a sad funeral procession this was as the body of the widow of Nain’s boy was being carried out of the city gate in his coffin, accompanied by a large crowd.
Then along comes Jesus, with a large crowd of His own coming from the opposite direction. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her. Don’t read over that too quickly. People wonder sometimes if God cares about our suffering, if He understands our sorrow or sympathizes with us at all. Well, the compassion of Jesus is the compassion of God. This is how He views those who grieve, especially who grieve over death, with deep-seated, heart-wrenching compassion.
Because death was not God’s intention or desire for mankind. God made us to live, not to die, to enjoy everlasting life in His presence, not to suffer death and eternal punishment. Death is the very thing God warned Adam and Eve about in the Garden of Eden, the very thing He told them how to avoid and gave them all the tools necessary to avoid it. It was their choice to bring it on themselves and on their children, and it is the same choice that we also make, by nature, to try to play God, to tell Him what’s right and what’s wrong, to do and to believe as we please. Death is the wages we have all earned for ourselves, for all have sinned.
But what did Jesus say? I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. He showed us that in everything He while He walked the earth. He shows it to us again in how He dealt with death at the gates of Nain.
He said to the widow, Do not weep. Why? Because nothing was wrong? No. But because Jesus had come, and He was about to make everything right.
He touched the coffin, halting the procession, stopping this death-march in its tracks, signaling that He was about to change the course of death.
He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother. There was no hocus-pocus. No grand ritual. No strain or effort on Jesus’ part. Just the almighty word of the Son of God—the same word that brought the universe into existence, that called the stars into being, the same word that once pronounced death upon guilty sinners. Now that word is a good word, a word of hope, a word of life.
It’s a word that Jesus has already spoken to you, through His appointed ambassadors. As He says in John 5, Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. This is the voice of the Gospel, calling out to sinners to believe in the Lord Jesus, who suffered death and the punishment for sin in your place, who rose again from the dead and gives eternal life to all who believe in His name. The preaching of the Gospel is how Jesus comes to you and says, “Do not weep.” Why? Because there’s nothing wrong? No. But because He has borne your wrongs and borne your punishment and borne your death, and will make everything right between you and God when you believe in Him.
Indeed, as St. Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter 2, But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
So what harm can death do to you, if you have already passed from death into life? What sin can condemn you if God has already made you alive together with Christ? Jesus has touched the coffin of all who believe in Him and has interrupted the course of death through Holy Baptism. Death will no longer end in the grave, and it will never lead the believer in Christ to hell. Instead, in a spiritual way, Christ has already raised believers to life.
But, of course, that’s not all. The hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. Just as Jesus stood by the coffin of the young man of Nain and told him to arise, so His voice will go out to every grave on earth and call all people to arise in the great resurrection of the body.
If that’s true—and Jesus proved again in today’s Gospel that He has the power to do exactly what He says here, then a person’s whole life has to be driven by this. How you live here on earth will have eternal consequences. Those who heard His voice calling in the Gospel during their earthly life, who repented and believed in Him and persevered in faith until death, will be raised to everlasting life. And those who failed to repent and believe will be raised to everlasting condemnation.
This was, by the way, the primary effect that 9/11 should have had on the people of our country. It should have been a wake-up call for all people to repent of their wickedness and to believe in the Son of God now, before it’s too late. Because, “who knows when death may overtake me?” And surely, by the grace of God, it has had that effect on some. But for the most part, these 15 years after that horrifying event, people continue to mock the judgment of God, and our nation as a whole continues its death-spiral with every form of depravity and wickedness imaginable, from abortion and the support for it, to unbridled sexual immorality, to evolutionary propaganda, to the love for every religion except the pure religion of Christ Jesus.
Be that as it may, the words of today’s Gospel are intended to draw you, the precious people of God, even closer to Jesus, the compassionate Lord of life and death, so that you put your trust in Him now, before death comes. This is the day of grace. This is the time of God’s favor, for you, and for your loved ones. And this is our opportunity, as a church, to celebrate and to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and the hope of everlasting life through faith alone in Christ alone. Jesus will not disappoint you. His compassion for those who grieve is just as real today as it was for the widow of Nain. And His power over death is just as real, too. Death still surrounds us in the world, but let the comfort of Jesus’ peace and love surround you even more, and let His body and blood, given to you in the Sacrament of the Altar, serve as the medicine that sustains your spiritual life until the day when Jesus calls you out of your grave to everlasting joy. Amen.
