Trinity 16

Luke 7:11-17 - Trinity XVI - September 23, 2012
Jesus Encounters & Conquers Our Death

God said to Adam and Eve, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  Death is a bad thing.  People will try to call it a part of life.  But it’s not.  It’s the end of life; and we know it.  When God created our first parents male and female, He did not create them to die.  He created them to live.  That’s why God made them male and female.  That’s why God makes us male and female.  When God joins man and woman together to be one flesh he joins them together for the express purpose that they might be fruitful and multiply, that is, that God might through their life-long union create new life.  Life is a good thing.  But, of course, sin affects what God made to be good.  And its corrupting effects are disastrous.  It’s sad to say, and it’s sadder to see, that it is within marriage where the most devastating results of sin are found. 

Just consider. 

Husbands abuse their wives – they’re mean, lazy, and even violent.  Wives deny their husbands the respect they need – they’re snotty, vindictive, and stubborn.  Husbands resign themselves to the fact that their wives are their bosses, and so shirk the responsibility of headship.  Pornography has become so commonplace these days that women will actually resign themselves to the fact that their husbands regularly look at the stuff.  And what we all see on basic cable is hardly much better.  All these things sow seeds of dissatisfaction and resentment into the very institution that God created to satisfy men and women with each other.  And in this endless quest for mammon and pleasure, even within marriage, children are regarded as burdens to be avoided (or at least limited) rather than as blessings to be received in thanksgiving.  That’s what God calls them.  Blessings.  Blessed is the man whose quiver is full.  Life, remember, is good.  And life is more than food and drink and clothing.  That’s what Jesus says.  Do we believe it?  Life is something that God creates – something that we receive from Him, not that we create ourselves.  And nowhere is this lesson taught more clearly than in marriage.  

Now, it’s no wonder in such an environment as ours where sex is exploited for personal gratification and children are regarded as impediments to individual satisfaction that the marriage bond itself is held with so little respect.   Divorce is seen as a quick solution to whatever unhappy void people find in their lives.  This is because marriage is treated as nothing more than the fickle commitment of two willing parties rather than as the one-flesh union that God Himself creates.  But if this were so, who are we to say that Adam and Steve cannot be just as committed as Adam and Eve?  They just might be.  But marriage is so much more that our own commitment.  Sex is so much more that the temporary fulfillment of passing lust.  The relationship of love and service that God creates between a man and a woman within the sacred institution of marriage is intended to create and foster and defend and satisfy human life.  Life is good. 

But death is bad.  Our culture’s hatred of marriage, our culture’s obsession with sex, our culture’s contempt for the fruit of the womb is nothing less than a preoccupation with death.   The love of self is sin.  The wages of sin is death.  Marriage is good, because life is good.  Life is good because God is good.  Life comes from God.  To reject God is to reject life and to embrace death.  Death is bad.  Death is bad because sin is bad.  The sin that affects marriage, the sin that separates husband from wife, brother from brother, mother from daughter, the sin that causes us pain when others commit it, and that leaves us empty and unsatisfied when we commit it — this is the very sin that brings death and that separates sinners from God. 

It is important that when we Christians talk about sin, that we don’t just talk about sin in the abstract.  Like: We are all sinners.  We all make mistakes.  Sure.  As long as the message does not get too sharp and expose our lives too accurately, it’s easy to nod in approval at good old-fashioned morality.  Ah, but the law uncovers more than that.  And it is intended to.  Sin is found in the most sensitive of places, and in the most sacred of relationships, and in the most private decisions we make.  We need to learn how to identify sin where it is. 

In order to do this, we need God’s word to teach us – not just about the things that we do, but also about who we are – what our natural powers are.  Do we by nature fear God?  Do we by nature love Him and trust Him above all things?  No, we do not.  By nature.  This means from birth, from the moment we were conceived – as David prays in Psalm 51, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.”   

Of all pain that our sin brings to marriage, the saddest thing to see is that it often affects the children the most.  Poor kids suffer when mom and dad fight, when they separate, when dad is a deadbeat and when mom complains about him.  But let us stop and consider that the greatest of all our sins with which we inflict our children is the very sinful nature that they inherit from us.  We call this original sin.  The very root of all the sin that I just preached against is passed down from generation to generation – from you to your own children.  As the hymn puts it:

All mankind fell in Adam’s fall,
One common sin infects them all;
From sire to son the bane descends,
And over all the curse impends.

The root of all sin is unbelief.  This is to say that we reject God by rejecting what He tells us.  Consider what the devil said to Eve when our first parents were tempted in Paradise.  “Did God really say…?”  Well, yes, devil.  God did say.  “But you will not surely die,” the devil assured.  But he was wrong.  God was right.  Adam and Eve, and all their children since, exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and what has befallen us?  We die.  Sure it wasn’t until much later that their flesh followed suit, but the moment Adam and Eve dismissed God’s word, they died a spiritual death much worse than what eyes can see.  That is, they lost the image of God in which they were first created.  They no longer feared Him, loved Him, or trusted Him as they ought.  And neither do we. 

And our sin – not just what we do, but what we are – affects our children. 

Through all man’s powers corruption creeps
And him in dreadful bondage keeps;
In guilt he draws his infant breath
And reaps its fruits of woe and death.

Consider with me please this morning the women in our Old Testament and Gospel readings.  Their husbands were dead.  And now their sons died too.  Death was real.  Death is sad.  Not only did it leave these women destitute, but more fundamentally, death brought to reality the wages of sin.  Death reveals in a physical form our own accountability to God.  This is not pleasant to hear.  It is hard.  Especially for so long — I know.  I haven’t spoken a word of Gospel yet and I’ve been preaching for 10 minutes.  But what comfort is there supposed to be in death.  Consider Elijah, and the earful that he got when he had no word of comfort to say.  “What have you against me, O man of God?” the broken woman cried, “You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!” That’s what the law does.  That’s what death reveals.  Everything that God had done for her through this holy prophet meant nothing now that death had visited her.  When death confronts us, the knowledge of our sin confronts us. 

But God confronts both.  God gave Elijah a word of comfort to speak to this poor woman.  It was God’s word.  God had compassion.  He brought her son back to life.  “See, your son lives,” Elijah had the great pleasure to say.  And the woman responded: “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”  —“Now I know”— God confirmed His own word to her by revealing the power of His word to give life. 

And so He does for us.  God has compassion.  He sees death and the sadness it brings.  He gives life instead.  He confronts death by confronting our sin.  He gives life by forgiving our sin. 

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus had compassion.  He saw a woman in a very similar situation as the widow in Elijah’s day.  Sadness surrounded her.  Her only begotten son was dead.  She had nothing.  But Jesus had compassion.  The word compassion literally means to suffer with.  When we have compassion, we mean to say that we feel a certain pain or empathy to see another person’s hurt.  Now, as comforting as someone’s compassion might feel, especially at the death of a loved one, ultimately our compassion has only as much power as we do.  Our compassion might help someone cope with what she cannot change, but it cannot take away the cause and source of pain itself. 

When Jesus has compassion, though, it is not a helpless sentiment.  It is a powerful deed.  Jesus does not express compassion in order to help us through the grief and set us on a higher road.  No, Jesus’ compassion actually contains power to change and correct the situation, and to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.  Because Jesus’ compassion is not a rhetorical suffering.  No, it is a literal suffering. 

When Jesus beholds us in our misery, He sees beyond the tears, He sees deeper than the outward composure, He sees the guilt, He sees the sin in the heart, He sees the source of all our pain and misery to begin with.  And He takes it all upon Himself.  Jesus’ compassion is grounded in the fact that He confronted death for the whole world on the cross, and conquered it.  He became even more acquainted with our sorrow and pain than we are ourselves, because He became so thoroughly acquainted with our sin even more than we are.  In fact, as the Apostle says, He became sin itself in our place.  He became the sole target of the Father’s anger on the cross, so that the death He died, He died for all, the punishment He paid, He paid for us all.  On the cross the only begotten Son of God suffered real pain for real sins, and endured the throes and terror of real death in order that death might become for us an empty shell.  That is compassion.

As by one man all mankind fell
And, born in sin, was doomed to hell,
So by one Man, who took our place,
We all received the gift of grace.

The law demanded that we die by bringing our sin to remembrance.  But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. 

Now, returning to our Gospel lesson, Jesus told the woman not to weep.  “Stop crying,” He said.  When we show compassion in the face of death, this is like the only thing that we for sure cannot say—can you imagine!?  There is no comfort in these words because they have no power to take away the reason for crying.  But when Jesus says it, it is different.  Jesus says not to weep, but He doesn’t tell her to look deep inside for some reason not to cry.  No. He restores for her the life of the one whose death made her so sad.  “Young man, I say to you arise.” 

Our words are cheap.  Our words are weak.  We say things and they don’t happen.  We make promises and we break them.  We vow to be faithful unto death, and we sin against the ones we love.  Just consider your marriage.  But the word of God is not cheap; it is not weak.  What God says happens, and the promises He makes, He cannot break.  The vows He pledges, He must keep.  He who takes death and overcomes it faces our death squarely – He faces our spiritual death – and He speaks.  He speaks to death; He speaks to deafness.  He requires nothing of us – no more natural power than He required of the dead boy, the son of the widow.  But by speaking His word, by forgiving us our sins, He gives us everything.  He gives us the power to become the children of God.  What is this power?  It is nothing more than faith.  Faith born from hearing the word.  Faith that clings to the words Jesus speaks in life and in death. 

They say that death is part of life.  Is this true?  No.  Of course not.  Our death is the end of life.  But look.  Christ’s death is the source of life, because His death is the end of our sin.  He says so.  Life is good.  Death is bad. And that is why Christ takes us through death and into life by the power of our Baptism.  Here, not by the power of the water, but by the power of His word in the water, we are buried with Christ, and raised with Him too.  His death is ours and His resurrection is ours as well. 

What power was in this little boy, Hunter, to receive what he received from God today?  What power is in you to believe what I speak right now and to make life your own?  But dear Christians, this is the point.  The power is in God’s word alone.  And so this is where we return.  We don’t return to our fickle commitment, but to God’s certain promise, where He commits Himself to us.  That’s what our Baptism is.  We return to where Jesus has true compassion on us, not only as we sin against husband and wife, as we fail our children, and neglect our duties to one another and to God.  But Jesus has true compassion on the very source of our weakness.  He takes our flesh and blood upon Himself in order to redeem us from our corrupt human nature and everything that we suffer because of it. 

Including our death.  We still die.  We do.  And it is still sad.  It is.  But for a Christian, death is nothing more than the final performance that God has been practicing in us since the moment we were Baptized into the death of His Son our Savior.  And by the power given through the promise there, we return throughout all our days in repentance and faith to reclaim the life that Christ has won. 

Let us pray:

We thank Thee, Christ; new life is ours,
New light, new hope, new strength, new powers:
May grace our every way attend
Until we reach our journey's end!    Amen.