Luke 7:11-17
Trinity 16
✠ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
Many of the miracles our Lord Jesus did were because people asked for help–like His mother informing Him of the wedding party running out of wine, or the deaf-mute’s friends asking Jesus to lay His hand on him. But more than 1/3 of the miracles Jesus performed were ones like today’s Gospel, where no one asked or prayed for it. Jesus performs this sign for the widow and her dead son unprompted by anything except His own compassion for those in need.
Let us begin our meditation, then, by taking comfort in this truth about our Lord. For there are times in our life when we can hardly even bring ourselves to pray at all and to ask God for help. We don’t have the words. Things feel stuck or hopeless or impossible to fix. Walking through life sometimes feels like walking in a funeral procession. But the Lord Jesus sees this. He notices you, and He has compassion, compassion that moves Him to do something to help you.
The widow in today’s Gospel didn’t have a prayer. She was all alone–her husband had already died; now her only son died unexpectedly, and she was on her own. The only sound she makes is the sound of weeping. There is not a single word of hers recorded in this entire reading. Husbandless and childless and speechless, this widow of Nain embodied everything that is dead wrong on this earth, whose soil is always hungry to swallow another casket.
As sorry as we might feel for the widow of Nain, or the widow of Zarephath in the Old Testament reading, their situation is not all that unique. “Till death do us part” is spoken at almost every marriage ceremony. Those five words seem like language from another world when they are spoken by a smiling young bride and groom. But they come to fulfillment every day for a whole lot of people. And whether the departed loved one leaves behind a widow or widower or sons or daughters or buddies from way back when, there’s always someone keeping the undertaker doing his undertaking.
Of course, that’s not a very pleasant and positive thought. And so we immerse ourselves in all sorts of diversionary tactics to put it out of our mind. We buy whatever products we can that promise to help us live longer and look younger. We avoid visiting hospitals and nursing homes whenever possible. We tell ourselves that we surely will live many, many more years, that it’s not something we have to concern ourselves with now. And yet we betray that thought by trying to do things that will be remembered long after we’re gone, to attain some sort of immortality for ourselves in that way. But after all is said and done, death remains not just another step in the journey but the curse of sin and our mortal enemy. No amount of flowers or poems or well-crafted caskets or urns can undo that reality.
All we can do in the face of this truth is repent. Acknowledge how it is with you, and learn today to take your place with the widows of Nain and of Zarephath, walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
For it is in that posture of lowliness and penitential sorrow that these words of Jesus ring through to renew and revive us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of hea
ven.” “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart.”
We do not face death and loneliness alone. With you is Jesus, the One who is your Help and your Shield, the One who is abundant in mercy to all that call upon Him, the One who is the Resurrection and the Life. He doesn’t try to avoid death or ignore it or minimize it. Instead, He faces death head on to renew our bodies and revive our spirits.
To the widow of Zarephath He came in the person of His prophet Elijah, who took that dead boy from his mother’s arms, carried him to the upper room, lay on his body three times, and called upon God to restore his life. And God did. And Elijah gave him to his mother, alive once more.
To the widow of Nain Christ Himself came. The crowd with Jesus going into the city crossed paths with the funeral procession coming out. Life and death came face to face. Only one could win. The Lord had compassion on the widow; His heart went out to her and He said, “Do not weep”–not because there is nothing to cry about, but because with Christ we do not grieve as those who have no hope. And so He says, “Don’t cry. I’ve come to conquer everything that saddens you and makes you feel alone and cut off and hurt and helpless. I am here to wipe away every tear from your eyes.”
Then Jesus comes and touches the open coffin, and those carrying the dead man stand still. Jesus stops the procession of death dead in its tracks. He fights our enemy in hand to hand combat. With this touch of the coffin, Jesus puts Himself in the place of the widow. He shares in her heartache and the heartache of all those who have lost loved ones, as it is written, “He is . . . a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” And by touching the casket, Jesus also puts Himself in the place of the only son. For in so doing, Jesus is making Himself ceremonially unclean with this young man’s death. He allows that mortality to come upon Him. But that’s still not all. Jesus also transfers to the young man His own life in exchange, to make the young man clean and whole. The only Son of the Virgin Mary becomes like the only son of the widow, a dead man on the cross, to save this young man. He commands him to rise, and he does. And Jesus gives him back to his mother alive.
To the widow of Zarephath, to the widow of Nain, and now also to you, the children of Eve, Christ still comes. He comes to you while you are dead in your trespasses and sins, stops your funeral procession, and absorbs your death into Himself in order that it might be destroyed by His holy cross. He takes you from the arms of Eve, and He puts you in the only place in this world in which there is real life, in Himself, in His Body. If the widows of Zarephath and Nain and their dead sons pictured everything that’s wrong with this world, then Christ is the embodiment of everything that is good and right and holy and life-giving. For He is the embodiment of God, and in Him you are made alive.
When you are baptized into Christ, you who were dead in sin are made alive in Christ. You are crucified and raised with Him, so that it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. And since Christ lives in you, death must die outside you. Christ forces death, who wants to be your master, to be your slave. In Christ, death must kneel before you; in fact, death must lie down before you, so that you walk across it from this world to the next. For death has been enslaved and made to be your servant in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You, too, will be raised at the word of Jesus, literally, bodily, on the Last Day.
We sometimes forget that the mother of our Lord was also a widow by the time Jesus began His ministry. She also watched her Son die, and held His dead, bloody, nail-scarred body in her arms, just outside the city. Yet this Son would not leave His widowed mother grieving. Her sorrow lasted only three days, when He left the grave, and annihilated it, utterly destroying death and all the powers of darkness.
If Elijah lay on the body of the boy three times to restore Him to life, then Christ lay on the body of all humanity for three days to restore you all to life, to give you to your mother, the Church, to wipe away all your tears, and to rejoin you with the faithful who have gone before you.
Christ is alive, and through Him, the sting of death has been taken away from you. The Lord has performed this miracle for you unprompted, even without your asking. Now the Holy Spirit helps you in your weakness when you don’t know have the words; Scripture says that the Spirit intercedes for you with groans too deep for words. Now in Jesus, you have a prayer, the right to call upon Him for help and to know that He has compassion on you. Now you have the assurance that your resurrection is coming.
God has visited His people; He’s talking to you right now through His Word. He visits you in the flesh with His holy body and blood given for your forgiveness and your life. So do not weep, for Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”
✠ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠