Sermon - Trinity XVI - Luke 7:11-17

“As Jesus drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” What a sad situation. A woman who had already lost her husband to death and was a widow, with but one surviving son, now loses her only beloved son to death as well. You can probably imagine the grief this woman experienced, the tears streaming down her face as she walked slouching over behind the open faced box holding her son’s lifeless body, sobs occasionally overcoming her composure. 

The death of children is nothing unusual, but the pain of going through such a thing is still heart wrenching. Whether the child is 40 years, 4 years, 4 weeks, or unborn. Whether it was a slow and painful death, or fast and unexpected, its pain is impossible to describe with words. It’s a pain many of you have experienced. 

That numbingly empty pain of death can feel so lonesome. King David, at the news of the death of his wicked son Absalom, “was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!’” Or the prophet Jeremiah depicts Rachel weeping for her descendents: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” 

O Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, children, that pain you feel which just never leaves, clinging to you, making you feel so alone and cold, your Lord Jesus Christ sees. “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her.” Jesus, whose loves surpasses all knowledge, has tender compassion on us by raising us from death to life.

When in the shadow of that deathly darkness, and your only wish is that you would have died instead of the other, Christ comes to you in your grief and misery. Like the widow of Nain, Jesus sees your sorrow, He feels with great compassion the pain within your heart, and He joins in the funeral procession. Dear Davids and Rachels, dear widows: He knows how you feel and joins Himself to you. 

What’s more, Jesus not only joins Himself to you in your pain and misery, but He joins Himself with the dead. He takes their place of death and gives them His place of life. That only-begotten Son of a widow is Christ Jesus. With Joseph dead and mother Mary weeping, Jesus sludged through the streets of Jerusalem with the cross on His back. The great crowds followed His crucifixion procession as He was led out of the gate and up to the place of His death. 

Your children who died before or after birth, didn’t die alone. For in their lifeless bodies Jesus laid down beside them and was killed for them. Their sinfulness, their weakness, their sad mortal state was traded with Christ’s ever-living and ever-reigning joyfilled paradise in heaven!

The child who died before reaching adulthood was united with Christ in their baptism. When they were drowned in the waters of holy baptism, they were already crucified with Christ, and so their death is no death, but they have merely fallen asleep in the Lord. Just as sure as they wake up in the morning, so shall their heavenly Father awake them on the last day.

The child who died before baptism, whether in or out of the womb, has been granted faith through the proclamation of the Word. Just as John the Baptist leapt within His mother’s womb at the presence of Jesus, so do our infants who die before baptism receive faith from the Holy Spirit who worked faith into them through the Word proclaimed.

Jesus looks upon the dead, whether it’s your child, your spouse, or you one day, and He says with a cry of command: “Young man, I say to you, arise.” With but one word of life and hope, Jesus has power over the grave to heal and to save. “The dead man sat up and began to speak.” Life, not just a beating heart or breathing lungs, but true living had returned to this son who was once dead. 

Can you imagine the joy this mother must have felt in that instant? It would have surpassed all other joy combined she had ever experienced her entire life! In that moment she must have loved her son and held him tighter than she ever had before. For this her son is alive who was once dead! 

This was just one life. This was just one temporal life that Christ gave back to the son. How much more magnificent and joyful will that great reunion be in heaven when we meet again our son, our father, our wife, our sister when the dread of death is far passed from our minds! On that day Christ will say to you too, “do not weep.” Not because tears are an evil, but because the time of weeping has past.

But as we live here on earth, this is a time of weeping. And so I will not say to you today, do not weep, because now is the age of mourning. For the village of Nain, this was but one day where their tears were turned to dancing, for the next day and the rest, there would be more funeral processions and weeping to follow. 

So tears and sadness are expected. Don’t be afraid of them. Don’t be ashamed to cry. Don’t try to hide them. Don’t be afraid of looking weak. Because we are weak. We can’t hide death and the terrible thing that it is. So go ahead and weep and mourn because death is terrible. When Jesus saw that His good friend Lazarus had died, all scripture says is that “Jesus wept.” To die is a sadness. God created us for life and instead we’ve been infected with death. 

But let your mourning have its limits. For we do not mourn as those who have no hope, but we mourn as those with great hope and joy! While we may weep, weeping only tarries for the night. Don’t despair. St. Paul instructed his hearers: “I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering.” While we may weep and mourn, we should not lose heart, not lose hope. 

Therefore my prayer for you each day as your pastor imitates that of St. Paul: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

My prayer for you is that you would be strengthened with the power of the Holy Spirit who works faith in your heart to trust in the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding. His love is so unfathomably great, that because of it He has joined in on our neverending procession of funerals to interrupt it and put a stop to it. 

He commands the dead to be risen, not only the sons of widows, but all who are children of God. From the casket they rise and to the cross Jesus carries. From the procession of our funerals we leave to join Jesus in His great procession. He carries this cross, our casket, to the hill of the skull and dies in our place. In the tomb He is laid, we with Him on either side. From the tomb He is raised to lead us in the procession out of the graveyard of death to the kingdom of life.

Therefore, this icy cold death that you fear with great hollow dread, has no power to take from you anymore life. Instead, with heads raised, fear the magnificent God who has power over death to give life in its place. “To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”