Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The sermon text is from Luke 7:11-17… Jesus’ heart went out to her and He said, “Don’t cry.” Then He went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help His people.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Many of you saw pictures this week of the massive sinkhole that opened up in a Guatemalan neighborhood. The ground opened up in a huge, perfect circle, swallowing a 3 story building, leaving a massive open pit 70 feet wide and 100 feet deep. The entire neighborhood was roped off to keep people away until they can understand how and why it happened and how best to fix it.
I couldn’t get that haunting image out of my mind as I thought about our text and Jesus’ healing of the dead boy in Nain. Death, especially the death of a child, can leave a giant hole in the hearts of the survivors. Like that Guatemalan sinkhole, it can seem like the earth opens beneath our feet and everything falls away, all our hopes and dreams.
The widow in our text had already lost her husband. The death of a spouse can be devastating in our day, but back then an un-married woman with no family was in desperately bad shape. And now we’re told her dear and only son was being carried to the cemetery for burial. She must have felt the foundations of her life crumbling under her feet, as they carried her boy to the grave.
Approaching Nain’s town gate, we’re told Jesus’ heart went out to the widow. The Greek word literally means His guts were twisted. Jesus ached for the sad woman as His stomach wrenched at the sorry sight. Friends, may we never doubt our Savior’s heart of mercy for us. The Christ who said, “Come to Me, you weary and heavy-burdened”, isn’t distant from us in our struggles and pain. Psalm 146 says, “The Lord watches over the sojourner; He upholds the fatherless and the widow.”
From our perspective, Jesus’ actions are beautiful, approaching the widow with His words, “Don’t cry!” At the time it must have seemed strange that Jesus interrupts the procession. Jesus seems very bold, even a bit insensitive, interrupting the funeral service, reaching up to touch the coffin. This very act of contact with the dead would make a Jew unclean according to the ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant. Yet, death is as sleep to Jesus. The Lawgiver asserts His supremacy over the Law, and even the natural laws of death by commanding, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
Perhaps, the mourners remembered Elijah in our Old Testament lesson through whom God raised the widow’s son. Not recognizing Jesus as God in the flesh, they thought a great prophet had come, saying, “A great prophet has come to be among us. God has come to help His people.” But here is the important difference, Elijah asked for the Lord’s help saying, “O Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!” Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
God creates life and only God is able to restore it. He restored life in our text, but He doesn’t always. Many times we’ve heard there is nothing in life worse than outliving your child. It’s unnatural. That’s not how things are supposed to work. And yet the simple fact is that just as the widow in our OT lesson lost her son, just as the widow from Nain lost her son, loved ones die. Whether they be husbands that die, like the widow, or sons or daughters, whether it be from miscarriage or crib death or even at a good, old age. Little ones die, even a widow’s son.
Isaiah wrote: “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever.” But not only death brings great gut-wrenching pain – divorce, abandonment, abuse, caring for loved ones during extended illness. And Jesus was there to help in Nain, but where is He today? Where are the miracles today? One might be tempted to cry out in silent suffering, “Jesus have you forgotten me? Where are you in my time of need?”
Always remember and take comfort that even in times of grief, God is still in His heaven, and Christ Jesus sits at God’s right hand ruling all things for the good of His dear children. God still comes to help His people. He doesn’t promise to take all pain away, and that we will enjoy comfortable, easy lives this side of heaven. Death wasn’t God’s idea. It’s a result of sin. But Jesus entered into death that we might have His promise of life. God’s way of bestowing true and eternal life is through death, and young or old that’s never a comfortable, painless thing, but God has come to help His people.
The hymn writer taught us to sing, “I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless; ills have no weight and tears no bitterness. Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still if Thou abide with me.” As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, our Good Shepherd walks with us. He carries you in His arms, embracing you in the gift of life that never ends through faith in His own victory. He walks with you through the pain of broken lives and families. He enfolds His people in His care, because like the widow of Nain, He feels that same deep, passionate concern for your worries and hurts. You are His adopted children, engraved in the palm of His hand and carried close to His heart.
Yours is a mighty and living Savior, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, brings from death to life and brings His people into His heavenly home. One day, at the coming of Jesus, even these broken and lowly bodies will stand up from the dust of death and be made gloriously whole. For those who fall asleep in Jesus, we will be bodily awakened and raised to share in the victory He secured for us by His Easter victory over the grave. The Psalmist wrote, “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my Rock and my salvation; He is my fortress I will never be shaken.”
At a time of loss, the devil’s most sinister trick is to get believers to turn inside themselves. The devil’s greatest ploy is to pry our weary eyes from the cross and shine them on our own troubles. It’s not wrong to mourn loss of any kind, but as people redeemed by Christ the crucified, we have a new and living hope through Jesus’ resurrection. Paul wrote: “Brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant, or to grieve as the rest of men who have no hope.” To turn inside ourselves is to turn away from any real hope to escape depression and pain. Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid. I am going to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to take you to be with Me.”
Take comfort in the healing touch of Your Savior. Jesus touched the corpse-laden coffin at the gate of Nain that day, but Jesus wasn’t defiled or unclean. Instead, Jesus restored and brought life to that little boy. He still touches our lives today through His soul-healing, cleansing power. He touches our lives as He sends His Holy Spirit to work faith through His Word. The Spirit touches our lives and washes us clean in the waters of baptism, making sinners into saints and members of His heavenly family.
Make no mistake we believe in a God who holds in His hands life and death, sickness and health, the God who still heals and cares for His people according to His unsearchable wisdom and will. Sometimes God works through doctors and nurses. Sometimes God touches our lives today through the hearts of those who cry along with us. He brings comfort through the mutual sharing of burdens. Through fellow saints who have walked the same painful road, or through those who quietly share your suffering.
This morning He touches our lives as we receive the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. His body is life-giving food, and His blood is life-giving drink. This is truly medicine to carry us through the trials of life, and one day to see us to life eternal. These very bodies that weaken and waste away are the bodies He has claimed in Holy Baptism, the bodies into which He gives His own body and blood, cleansing our sins and pledging that our bodies too will share in the victory when our Lord returns in glory.
God has come to help you His people. Just as with the widow and the town of Nain, so we see the salvation of our God. As Jesus went to the cross to give us eternal life and healing, we saw another procession of death, with another only-begotten Son Jesus, leaving another city Jerusalem, followed by another poor widow. But in Jesus’ path to death He forged our path to life forever “kept in heaven for you who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation ready to be revealed in the Last Time.” Though the townspeople of Nain couldn’t understand it, their words are eternally true for you… In Christ, God has come to help His people. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.