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In the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen. In our Old Testament lesson God says to us, "See
now that I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides me; I kill, and I
make alive; I wound, and I heal..."
Our Lord reminds us that He is the only true and
proper god, and He's also the one who truly holds complete power over life
and death. We also see this
in our Gospel lesson, where Jesus comes into the city of Nain, interrupts
a funeral procession that He encounters, and raises the widow's son from
death for all to see! So
naturally as a result, the people who saw this were in awe and glorified
God, saying, "God has visited His people!"
When we think about life and death we usually just
think about the physical life or death.
Most folks are far more concerned with living a long and happy life
and not dying painfully, or too soon in their opinion. Folks get really excited at births and birthdays, and some
get really depressed and bothered over deaths of friends or family.
But if you think about all these concerns about life
and death, they're mainly focused on the physical, outward things.
I don't mean to say the physical things of our living and dying are
unimportant, but they're only part of the big picture.
We may get to live some seventy, or eighty, or even a hundred
years, or less, but don't forget the fact that once we die physically, we
stand before the judgment of our Lord!
And the life or death that the Lord gives at that point lasts
forever! And forever is a lot
longer than a mere hundred years. When it comes to knowing the Word of our Lord, life
and death are ideas that are as important as the ideas of Law and Gospel. In
ways they're very similar! Quite
simply, death comes to mankind through the Law and our inability to obey
it, and life comes to us through the Gospel and the faith that the Spirit
gives us to believe it! And God constantly uses the physical realities of death and
life to teach us about the very real and very important spiritual
realities of life and death, especially in light of His Law and Gospel!
Going back to the Old Testament lesson, God is
reminding those who have fallen away and rejected Him that He is the only
one that can help them and give them life, both physical and spiritual.
But He is also the one who upholds justice, and delivers
punishment, consequences, and death to those who reject His help and life.
God is the only true Lord, and He truly lives forever.
And so His plea, which also is an earnest warning, is that the
faithless consider the fact that their life and death is truly in His holy
and righteous hands! Sin and
faithlessness brings consequences, and the wages of sin is truly death!
But trust in Him and faith in His promises of mercy, shown to us in
Jesus Christ, is what gives life to His people, both physical and
spiritual. But again, we don't always think about the gravity of
spiritual things, especially concerning life and death.
Our Lord constantly works to teach us.
He seeks to teach the faithless to turn from their false gods,
which lead only to spiritual death in an unending hell, and He works to
teach His faithful people to show forth the good works of love and proper
faith in Jesus Christ so that His mercy may be shown to everyone!
Christ also uses the pain and death from this
physical life to teach about true spiritual life. When He encountered the funeral procession of the widow's son
at Nain He performed an amazing miracle that made a serious impact on all
who saw it. The man was dead,
and his mother was a widow who had no other sons to take care of her.
But as the story says, Jesus had compassion on her and said,
"Do not weep." The widow was of course saddened by the physical
death of her son. Likewise,
she was probably concerned about what would happen to her and who would be
there to help her and take care of her now that she had no husband and no
son. These are all physical
things of this worldly life. They're
reasonable concerns, but again, there's a bigger picture for all of us to
keep in mind. Jesus takes
these things and teaches us about true life, the life and mercy that comes
from the Lord, for not only the physical things, but even more importantly
for spiritual things! At the loss of her only son this widow was alone and
no longer had the head of her household.
But God's only begotten Son came to her and had mercy on her.
In a subtle way Jesus was mirroring the very thing He would do for
all mankind by what He did for this widow.
Like the widow, mankind is faced with isolation and sadness and no
true help (because of sin, which made us enemies with God).
But through the mercy of Christ, and His own death, as well as His
own returning from death like the widow's son, Christ restores to us our
joy and our hope. Christ
rises up from His own tomb and speaks to us, being the head of our family
which is in Christ. St. Paul reminds us of this in our Epistle lesson.
Paul looks at his own physical and worldly suffering which is for
the sake of the Church, and even in the face of such earthly death and
tribulation he remembers the spiritual truth for all who are alive in
Christ. "For this reason
I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole
family in heaven and earth is named..." Through faith in Christ and the Gospel of His death for our
sins and His resurrection we are taken into the family of the Lord, the
one true God who lives forever! And
even though we suffer pain and death in this physical life, He still makes
us alive with Him in heavenly perfect places at His side, sharing in His
eternal life. When Jesus resurrected the son of this widow at Nain
He may have only given her back her son for a time. Because sooner or later after the years go by, both she and
her son would have to face physical death again.
But Jesus taught the people at that interrupted funeral a far more
important lesson that would proclaim a more important spiritual truth:
true eternal life is found with God, in Jesus Christ.
And so the important message that Jesus conveyed with this miracle
of returning a widow's only son to her from the grave is more than just a
temporary act of great compassion, it was the message that God has indeed
visited His people, God has visited all mankind in Jesus, and it's through
Jesus that all of us are given hope and life.
So it's not a sin to feel sad at the death of loved
ones, and of course it's not wrong to celebrate new life and the continued
blessings that the Lord shows us in this present life.
But it is of, quite literally, infinite importance that we also
remember the spiritual truth that Jesus teaches us through these things.
The raising of the widow's son at Nain was more than
a limited miracle of compassion for those who mourned.
It was a sign to them, and a reminder to us, that Christ Jesus, the
only Son of God, was dead, and is now alive so that we may have
forgiveness from the death of our sins, and have true life and blessings
which will last forever. It's through this understanding, this faith, that the
Holy Spirit works within our inner being, which grounds us in love and
compels us to show forth the life of Christ that He has given us, showing
compassion to all as He did to the widow, focusing on our spiritual life
in the face of physical death as He did in St. Paul's witness, and
remembering that we are made able to stand in the company of heaven and
know that we will live forever, as our Lord does.
We are hidden in Christ and made part of His family through His
compassion from the cross. May the Lord keep your hearts and minds in this truth
of Christ Jesus, which passes all understanding.
In His name, Amen.
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