Sermon - Trinity XVI 2022 - Luke 7:11-17

Raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain, Martino Altomonte, 1731

Jesus raises the dead bodily.

1. Jesus was born, died, raised, and ascended bodily

2. The body matters.

3. We shall be raised bodily

About half a year ago we celebrated the resurrection of our Lord on Easter. Today, after some waiting, we celebrate the fruits of Jesus’ resurrection, namely, our resurrection. Jesus was crucified and buried and raised, for the forgiveness of our sins, so that we may be raised from the dead to life. Indeed, Jesus raises the dead bodily. Jesus was born, died, raised, and ascended bodily, because the body matters, and so too shall we be raised bodily.

It’s incredibly beautiful that when Elijah raised the widow of Zarephath’s son and Jesus raised the widow of Nain’s son, both of those deaths and resurrections foreshadow the death and resurrection of Jesus. Afterall, by the time Jesus died, Mary was a widow, and Jesus is the only-begotten Son of of the Father. Like these mothers, Mary suffered great sorrow at the death of her Son and the prophecy was fulfilled which said that a sword would pierce her own heart also. According to pious tradition, Jesus was taken down from the cross and placed in His mother’s arms, as pictured in the Pieta, similar to how the widow of Zarephath was carrying her dead son in her arms.  When Jesus was taken to the cross a large crowd of mourners followed along with Mary, similar to how a considerable crowd was with the widow of Nain.

In both of these miracles the young men were raised from the dead and returned to their mothers bodily. “Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother.” “Then [Jesus] came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” So too, Jesus, was no longer lying in the tomb, but had bodily arisen.

We need to understand that the body matters to Jesus. Christ didn’t just poof into being man, but He became man in the womb of the virgin Mary, who bore Jesus for nine months during her pregnancy and gave birth to Jesus in the usual, very bodily, way. Jesus grew from infancy to manhood like anyone else: as a baby He nursed, crawled, and toddled until He ran around full of energy. He experienced the awkward lanky early teen years of going from being a boy to becoming a man. His ministry began when He was baptized in the arms of John in the Jordan river. Lazarus’ sister Mary prepared Jesus’ body for burial by anointing His head with nard and washing His feet with her hair. When Jesus was crucified He was beaten and nailed to the cross bodily, and when He died He stopped breathing. His body was taken down from the cross, wrapped in linens, and laid in a tomb. When Jesus rose from the dead, Mary Magdalene clung to Him,  Thomas touched His wounds, and He ate and drank food with His apostles. When Jesus ascended His apostles watched Him bodily float up from the ground into heaven. 

These details are all recorded plainly for us to read in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t just include a bunch of unimportant details for kicks and giggles. These bodily earthy details are intentionally recorded by God so that we learn to believe that the body matters. If the body of Jesus matters, then our bodies also matter.

There are two errors that are easy to fall into, on one side there are those who are complete materialists and all that matters to them is the physical. On the  other side there are those who are Gnostics, who believe that the physical world doesn’t matter, and all that matters is the spiritual. What I’ve noticed is that we tend to make both errors today. For much of our lives all that we care about is the physical, how things make us feel bodily, without regard to how things affect us spiritually. We might call this hedonism. That’s definitely an issue.

But this Gnostic tendency we have to completely disregard the body is also a very serious issue. In a way it’s related to our hedonism, where we mistreat and “use up” our body for all of the pleasure we can mine from it, because we conclude that the body is just a husk anyways and it doesn’t really matter what we do to it. 

But that is not the Christian view of the body. We believe that God created us as both, simultaneously, physical and spiritual beings. St. Paul emphasizes the body’s importance when warning against sexual immorality: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?… Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

Another thing I notice is that people will say at funerals that it isn’t really so and so in the casket anymore, since it’s just a husk, and now they’re in heaven. Or people will say that they don’t really care what happens to their body after they die, since it’s just their body; they want their body disposed of as cheaply as possible.

Well, you simply cannot separate the physical from the spiritual, because when you do the human dies. That’s what death is: the unnatural separation of the body from the soul. After death the person is still both body and soul, it’s just that their body and soul have been severed. So the Christian’s soul is in heaven, and the Christian’s body is on earth. When I die, I will be laying in a casket, and I will be resting in heaven. My body will still be me.

This is why Elijah says to the widow: “Give me your son.” Her little boy who had died was still in her arms, even though his soul had been taken to heaven. It wasn’t just an empty husk to be thrown away, but that was still her son in her arms. Or at the funeral procession in Nain, the reason they were respectfully carrying the young man out of town in a funeral procession is because that man was still himself, only dead. So when Jesus raised him from the dead, he spoke to that man: “Young man, I say to you, arise.”

So this is true for every Chrsitian: Jesus shall raise us bodily from the dead! At the resurrection on the last day our bodies and souls will be reunited. In fact, the bodies and souls of everyone shall be reunited on the last day. Both believers and unbelievers will stand before Jesus on judgment day, and the evildoers will spend eternity in hell bodily, and the Christians will spend eternity in the new heavens and earth bodily.

This truly is the great comfort of Christianity that we will be raised from the dead bodily! It’s why the crucifix is a great comfort to the Christian because it signifies that Jesus died for me bodily, so that I am redeemed in my body, and shall be raised and ascend to paradise bodily! The sight of the baptismal font is a comfort because there Jesus washed me bodily and spiritually of my sins! The Sacrament of the altar is a comfort because the true body and blood of Jesus, the medicine of immortality, enters into my body.

This means that we have great comfort at funerals, which aren’t just for the living but also for the dead. When we bring our loved ones who have died into the sanctuary at their funeral, Jesus has compassion on us and commands the dead to rise. One day when you are wheeled down this aisle, covered in the funeral pall symbolizing your baptism, the pastor will do like Jesus and lay his hand on the casket, and declare the promise of salvation to you and to all who will listen. “I am the resurrection and the life” says the Lord. “He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”