The hope of a Christian funeral

Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

Do you remember how St. Paul described God at the end of today’s Epistle? He described Him as the One who is able to do far, far more than we can ask or imagine, according to the power that works in us. We have just a small example of that beyond-our-imagination power in today’s Gospel. With a word, Jesus raised a man from the dead. And He’ll do the same for you, one day, on an even grander scale. The funeral procession we encounter in today’s Gospel is the only funeral procession we encounter anywhere in the Gospels, which makes it, I think, a wonderful opportunity for us all to prepare for our own funerals ahead of time, and for the funerals of our loved ones. Every time we ponder the raising of the young man of Nain, we’re reminded of the hope of a Christian funeral.

King Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes, To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven…A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A funeral—the death of a loved one—is certainly a time to weep, for believers and unbelievers alike. Death, in some cases, may bring to an end a long life of pain and suffering, making it somewhat of a relief, but that still doesn’t make it a time to laugh. It’s still a time to weep. How much more so when death takes a young man in the prime of his life. How much more so when death takes the only son of a mother. And how much more so still when that mother is already a widow. Such was the funeral procession in today’s Gospel as it slowly moved through the city gates of Nain, heading toward the grave where the dead man would be buried, a mournful procession with plenty of weeping.

It was no accident that Jesus, and a large crowd of followers, was approaching the city just at that moment. This is the one and only time when this city is mentioned in Scripture. As far as we know, Jesus had never gone there before and never went there after. But God Himself worked out the timing of these events, even as He is always working out the timing of all things so that His good purposes for His Church may be accomplished.

Luke tells us that, When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. We need to pay attention to that. The Lord Jesus’ reaction to death is God the Father’s reaction to death as well. Yes, He is the one who first threatened our first parents, Adam and Eve, with death if they chose to go against Him. And God is the One who has been justly following through on that threat for some 6,000 years now. But He doesn’t do it gleefully, or indifferently. Nor is He indifferent to the pain and sorrow people suffer when death takes a loved one from them. He sees our sorrow, as He saw the widow’s sorrow, and He has compassion.

Someone may be tempted to ask, well, then why doesn’t God make it stop? And the answer is that He did, and He will.

God, temporarily, made death stop for the young man in our Gospel. He approached the widow and said to her, “Weep no more.” He wasn’t denying that she had a reason to weep or rebuking her for crying. He was simply informing her that there was no longer going to be a reason for it. He came and touched the coffin, and those who were carrying it stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and he gave him to his mother, allowing that man to live out the rest of a “normal” earthly life with his widow mother, until he died again.

God doesn’t make death stop very often. It remains as His curse on our sinful race, and really, on the creation itself. It remains, lamentably, a “fact of life” in the story of this world, along with the toil and suffering that come before it. This is what our first parents brought upon themselves and upon their children when they chose to go against the God of goodness and life. And we, their children, are participants in their sin. We know better than to blame God for the suffering and death that befall us. We don’t expect God to remove suffering from this life or to stop death in its tracks. It’s going to continue for a little while longer.

But we take great comfort in the fact that, on a few momentous occasions, the Son of God was able, and willing, to step in and put a stop to death, as He did in today’s Gospel. With the power of His almighty Word, the Lord of life healed the young man’s body and returned its soul to it unharmed, lightening the burden of the widow mother, turning her sorrow into joy, and amazing both sets of crowds, those already following Him and those in the funeral procession.

This account gives us just a small glimpse of the power of Jesus—power which He displayed to an ever greater extent in His own resurrection from the dead, power which He has promised to use to accomplish something similar for us. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says this: For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will…. 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. Do not marvel at this; for 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.

So first, Jesus talks about raising people to life even before their bodies die. He speaks to the spiritually dead, which is how we all begin life when we’re born into the world, and through His word, He calls people to believe and thus raises them to spiritual life. That means that, for believers, even when your body dies, you don’t die. You have already crossed over from death to life. This resurrection is even more important than the resurrection of a dead body, because this resurrection that happens through faith in Jesus is what determines where you spend eternity. This resurrection to spiritual life is what makes you a child of God. It means your sins are forgiven, you’re clothed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness, you’re made to share in the life of Christ. Not even death can take that away from a person.

And that’s the hope of a Christian funeral, that our loved one who died in the faith has not evaporated into nothingness, is not suffering in hell, but lives on, not in our hearts, not in our minds, but in the presence of God.

The rest of the hope of a Christian funeral is that the bodily death that we see there will also be fixed by Jesus, permanently stopped and even reversed at the last day. That hour is coming, closer and closer with each day that passes. Then we’ll hear the grand “Weep no more!” because there will be no more reason to weep, over anything. Then our bodies will not only be raised, but changed, perfected, and glorified. That will truly be the time to laugh, and the time to dance.

For now, there is still a time to weep and time to mourn. God doesn’t discourage that. He simply says, through the apostle Paul, that we should not sorrow as those who have no hope. Because we do have hope. The sure and certain hope of a continuing life now, and of the resurrection of the dead soon.

This is the Christian’s hope, at a Christian funeral. And it is a hope for Christians only. While we surely want all people to become Christians and to remain Christians so that this hope also applies to them, just as God Himself wants all men to be saved, we know that not all people will believe in the Lord. Many will stubbornly cling to sin. Many will seek salvation elsewhere than in Christ Jesus, the Lord of life. We can’t force others to believe, but there are some things we can do. You can remain devoted to hearing the Word of Christ and receiving His Sacraments. You can encourage one another to remain faithful until death. You can speak the truth in love to the people in your life who aren’t believers in Jesus. You can show the world by how you live that you do believe in the Lord Jesus. And you can leave behind for your family, for your loved ones, and for your church, the kind of steadfast confession that leaves no one with any doubt: This man, this woman died in the faith. This man, this woman died as a Christian. And that is a sure and solid reason to hope! Amen.