Luke 7:11-17

Trinity 16

September 16, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

The woman’s situation was desperate. She was a widow, and now her son had died. Her future was uncertain. And so, understandably, she wept. We don’t know why or how he died.  We do know that this grieving woman and her only son were surrounded by a crowd as he was being carried out of town to be buried when they came across another crowd. This crowd was gathered around the only Son of God, who too would die and be carried outside of town to be buried. 

As these two crowds converge, the Lord Jesus sees this grieving mother and has compassion on her. There is no mention of anyone’s faith here. The grieving and widowed mother does not run to Jesus for help. Neither the disciples nor the crowds petition Jesus to do something. The dead boy does not ask for healing. This is important. Jesus acts not because He is asked, but because of His compassion for this woman. And so first He tells her to stop weeping.  It’s not that He was rebuking her for shedding her tears for her dead son, but that there was no more need for crying. For death could not hold her only son.

And so Jesus touches the funeral bier. Normally, this would have made a person ceremonially unclean. Yet instead of being defiled, Jesus cleans and heals. The power of cleanliness and life is in Him. Jesus speaks, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the son of the widow rises.

And isn’t that just the way that Jesus works. Jesus speaks, and the dead rise. In Luke’s Gospel this is all very important. Raising of the dead is the only prophetic miracle that Jesus had not yet performed. The raising of the dead is the miracle which demonstrates Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophetic hope and that with Him the kingdom of God has come. Jesus is greater than Elijah who restored the life of a widow’s son in our Old Testament reading.

And the result is faith. Those who witnessed this miracle glorified God. The crowds recognize and confess the visitation of God. God has visited His people because they see the signs of God’s activity in Jesus.  “A great prophet has arisen among us.” The crowd says.  “Arisen,” which comes from the same word that Jesus used to call the dead man to life. This resurrection foreshadows two others in the Gospel of Luke: first, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and more importantly, Jesus’ own resurrection.

By these resurrections, Jesus is teaching them, and us, who He is.  If Jesus is only a teacher and miracle worker, then He has come to lessen human suffering. This is the Jesus that the world wants: the social justice warrior, the anti-establishment revolutionary, the radical rabbi.

But we who have heard and have believed the Word of God, understand that Jesus must also suffer rejection, and even death. We know what kind of prophet this Jesus truly is: a teacher, a miracle worker, and the One who will suffer on behalf of the world and die upon the cross. We know of Easter, that death cannot keep the only Son of God. St. Paul writes in Romans 6:9, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again: death no longer has dominion over Him.”  We know that God will do for us Christians what He has done for Christ. He pulled Christ out from the closed and sealed grave in an instant. As Christ spoke to this dead man and commanded Him to rise, so too will we be commanded to rise from our graves, rise to life eternal with Him.

This miracle gives special comfort to all who mourn. The dead are not beyond the voice of Christ. It doesn’t matter how long death has held a person, nor the age or time of death, for all will hear His voice. He calls not just into His presence, but in the presence of one another. He will restore the dead to the living, and the living to the dead. He will wipe away all tears in the final consummation of compassion and pity.  Christ’s compassion and love, as taught in the Epistle is far more abundant that all we ask or think, and the power at work within us will give life to our mortal bodies through His Holy Spirit, who dwells in us.