St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday Sermon – Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 6, 2010
“Doing Something About Death!”
Text: Luke 7:13-16
Because weather is weather, sickness is sickness, cancer is cancer a disaster is a disaster, and unemployment is unemployment; because life is life, life is not without cancellations & postponements.
In the heat & humidity of June in Nebraska, when there is severe weather; when there is thunder & lightening & strong winds, baseball games, swim meets do get called off, rescheduled.
When families have to deal with major surgeries, prolonged ill-nesses, serious accidents, nagging health issues -- that can some-times mean family trips, family vacations get put on hold.
It happens! Weather is weather, sickness is sickness, disaster is disaster, unemployment is unemployment; life is not without cancellations & postponements. Not only that, but people being people, people sound off, sign off, take off, get turned off. Sometimes once-promising engagements get broken off. Once in a great while, a wed-ding that should have never been planned in the first place, gets called off.
But you know, as long as I’ve been around, as long as I’ve been in the ministry, as many funerals as I have done over the past 40 years, as many obituaries as I see in the newspaper every day, I have never once heard of a funeral or a memorial service being cancelled or
called off. There’s never a sign on the doors of our church that say: “Sorry! No funeral today. The deceased came back to life!”
Almost 300 funerals I’ve done here at St. Paul Lutheran, laid a lot, a lot of God’s dear people to rest in peace in the hope of entering paradise & experiencing everlasting life in Christ, but not once have we had to erase someone’s name and date of death, date of funeral from our church records because their funeral was called off.
In this world, with all the ingenuity, all the technology, all the medical resources we mortal human beings have at our disposal, we can do a lot of things to preserve and prolong life, but here we are this morning and the truth that God’s Word makes clear to us; the reality we all have to live with in this life is that while life is life, we can none of us do anything about death! Death is death!
What’s also true is that death is no respecter of persons. Death does not discriminate. In today’s Gospel reading in Luke 7, Jesus approaches a town called Nain and with Him are his disciples and a great crowd. They come upon a funeral procession; people weeping, wailing; sad, sad people slowly shuffling along behind the body of a young man being carried shoulder-high on a funeral “bier” out to the cemetery. Not only has there been a death but it’s been a hard death to take. A widow – a woman at the bottom of the Jewish socioeconomic ladder – as if life wasn’t hard enough for her already, this widow’s only son who provided for most of her needs bas been taken from her by death. It’s true, death is no respecter of persons.
It’s hard for us to imagine because we look back at this story from the perspective how most widows today seem pretty well taken care of, but in Jesus’ day the death of this widow’s only son meant without her son to help her, without her son to support her, without her son to be a voice for her in community affairs, this widow herself was as good as dead.
Many times we’ve seen this happen; seen funeral processions, casket carried from the church or funeral home to a waiting hearse, cars with their lights on slowly heading single-file down the street, across Brown Ave., arriving at the cemetery! Family & friends gather under a tent, at the edge of an open grave. It is what some folks have told me the hardest, saddest part of a funeral, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. That’s when the finality, the separation, the emptiness of life without a loved one, especially someone young, and in the prime of life, that’s when the sadness of it all really hits home.
That’s what’s going on here when Jesus & his disciples come upon this funeral. Death appears to have the last word. The widow’s son is gone leaving her all alone, hurting, helpless, no insurance, no Social Security, no assisted living, no going to a care home.
That is the way it is with the death of a young person. Death is no respecter of age! A fatal accident, a fatal disease, a suicide is no blessing in disguise, nothing to be glad about.
That’s the way it is until Jesus shows up.
And when the Lord Jesus saw the widow, he had compassion on her and said to her,” Do not weep.” Then Jesus came up and touched the funeral 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.
What a moment, what a miracle, what a difference Jesus makes. Just by showing up, the whole, sad, painful, heart-breaking reality of losing a son to death is reversed. Jesus stops the funeral process-ion; Jesus and walks up to the men carrying the corpse of the widow’s only son. Jesus speaks, the widow’s son stirs, he rises, he speaks, death is not the last word! Death is undone, defeated, right then & there the funeral is cancelled. The young man, now fully alive again is given back to his grieving mother.
Before Jesus enters the picture there is nothing but a dead end. But after Jesus raises the young man, the last word is the people glorified God saying: “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has visited his people.” “God has looked favorably upon his people.”
Can anything be done about dying? No! Can anything be done about death; about being dead; end of the road; no more life? Yes! Some-thing marvelous, something miraculous, something glorious & trium-phant has been done about death by the Lord Jesus Christ who thru His own resurrection has defeated death & been raised, risen to new life.
When there’s been a death, a really sad death, life is not just a matter of moving on, getting over it, life for believers is experiencing the hope & promise of resurrection.
The story is told if a young woman living in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War. Her husband, who had been stationed at a nearby Army base, was killed a year earlier during a training exercise. At the time they had been married just four months. During the following year, this young widow felt more dead than alive. She merely went through the motions of living. Family & friends were worried about her and wondered if she would ever “snap out of it.”
Easter Sunday came along and a friend asked the young widow to go to church with her. It happened that they went to hear the legendary Peter Marshall, former Chaplin to the US Senate, who preached in an old Presbyterian church that still stands in downtown Washington, a few blocks from the White House.
That Easter morning, Peter Marshall spoke of Mary coming to the tomb and how her tears turned to joy. He described the sound of a wind rustling through the tomb as if the breath of God were blowing by. He described the sight of Jesus rising up from that cold, stone slab, swaying a bit on wounded feet and then walking out into the garden. He described the smell, “the whiff of strange scents which must have drifted back to Jesus upon leaving the tomb behind, the smell of linen & bandages, spices & myrrh, close air & blood.”
By the time Peter Marshall finished that sermon, the people in that church felt as if they had been there in that garden to witness the first Easter themselves!
When the service was over, the young widow practically walked on air as she left the church and her friend couldn’t believe the change which had come over her. “What happened to you in there?” the friend asked. “The weight has finally been lifted,” the young woman replied, “now I can go on living again.”
The Good News from the Gospel for this Sunday is that resurrection doesn’t just happen on Easter. Resurrection happens whenever Jesus shows up, speaks up, meets up with us in Word and Sacraments.
We who are dying are not defeated by death because we know, we believe, we trust Christ has done something about death.
You heard that, Easter Sunday, 8 weeks ago. Now I say it with a new twist: Christ is risen, He is risen for us! Jesus not only has done something about death, Jesus will do something about death when it’s my death, your death, or anyone’s death who knows & trusts in Christ, risen from the dead, risen for us and for our salvation; risen for us fulfilling for us the hope & promise of eternal life.
The resurrection of Jesus is a promise. It does not solve all problems; it does not mean the end of dying. Rather, the resurrect-ion of Jesus is a God-given signal that the those fallen in war; those who lose their battle with cancer, those whose lives are cut short by accidents & natural disasters, and all the people who seem to be slipping away from us are not meant to be discarded or forgot-ten, and will not be. The resurrection of Jesus is a sign that they – and we – are meant to be more, not less than what we are; and that not even death, as authoritative and final as it seems, has the last word.
The last word is that Jesus not only has done something about death, he will do something about death. He does not cancel it, He has conquered it. If there’s a good sign to think about putting on the doors of our church the day of a funeral it might be “Funeral For Now, Resurrection For Sure.”
“Brighter scenes will commence; let Jesus give us confidence.”
