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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Go ahead and get your laughter out of the way: today’s Third Reading says that Jesus “touched the bier”. His touching the bier (B‑I‑E‑R) sounds like Jesus touched the beer (B‑E‑E‑R), and their similar sound may bring to mind frosty mugs and so almost‑suggest that we should use the text to prove to others here in East Texas that the Bible is okay with moderate use of alcohol. In fact, B‑I‑E‑R is an archaic and even now‑obsolete word that refers to a framework for carrying or “bearing” something—in today’s Third Reading, bearing a man who had died. Jesus’s touching what we might better‑call the “stretcher” and His speaking to the man who had died are important reasons why I have titled this sermon “A Visit from the Compassionate God”.
Today’s Third Reading immediately follows last week’s Gospel Reading in St. Luke’s divinely‑inspired account. Today St. Luke uniquely tells that, soon after Jesus healed the centurion’s servant in Capernaum, He travelled the 20 miles or so southwest to Nain and there again showed Himself to be the compassionate Messiah. With touch and words, He confronted death outside the gate of the town, and, thereby, similar to but greater than the prophet Elijah before Him in our First Reading (1 Kings 17:17-24), Jesus gave alive, to a desperate widowed mother, her only son and so her primary means of care and support. The people there—Jesus’s disciples, the great crowd with them, and the considerable crowd from the town—all realized that Jesus was a great prophet and that they had witnessed “A Visit from the Compassionate God”.
The graduates we will celebrate with at our picnic later may have visitors with them these days. Maybe you and I will be having visitors in the days, weeks, or months ahead this summer, or maybe we ourselves will be doing some visiting. The “visit” mentioned in the Third Reading is a different kind of visit, however. The “visit” mentioned in the Third Reading, like other “visits” in the Bible, is a special kind of visit—a visit of God, drawing near to His faithful people and dealing with them in grace, especially saving them from their sins. The wages of such sins is death. As Jesus drew near to the gate of Nain, a dead man was being carried out. His widowed mother and the considerable crowd of mourners from the town all had to deal with his death. You and I also have to deal with death. We have to deal with the deaths of others, and we have to deal with our own individual death. On account of our original sin and on account of our actual sin, we all deserve death—death in time and for eternity. Already now, apart from God’s grace, we are dead in our sins. By nature, we are as unable to believe in Jesus or to save ourselves as the dead man being carried out of Nain on his own was unable to sit up and to begin to speak.
But, as the Lord saw the widowed mother of the dead man and had compassion on her, so He saw us and had compassion on us—the kind of compassion the Bible ascribes only to God. Everything involved with Jesus’s birth, death, resurrection, and ascension is part of God’s graciously visiting His people to save us from our sins. Even before Jesus was conceived, John the Baptizer’s father Zechariah prophetically sang in the Benedictus of God’s having visited and redeemed His people, and he sang of the Sunrise that would visit them from on high to give light to those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:68-79). God visited His people in the flesh of the man Jesus; Jesus is the Sunrise Who, by His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave, both outside the gates of Jerusalem, brings about peace between God and us sinners. As God in human flesh, Jesus Himself has the authority to say to the young man, “Arise!” And, Jesus has the authority to say to us, “I forgive you.”
When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sins, and want to do better—when we so repent, then God forgives our sin—He forgives our original sin and our actual sin, whatever they might be. He forgives our sin here today as He raised the dead man outside of Nain then: by touching and speaking. His Word—especially His Word combined with things that we can touch, see, and taste—conveys His forgiveness when received in faith. In the dead state of our sins, He touches us with water and speaks “I baptize you”. When sins particularly trouble us, He touches us with His hand and speaks “I absolve you”. When we hunger and thirst for His righteousness, He touches us with bread that is His body and wine that is His blood and speaks “Given for you and shed for you for the forgiveness sins”. In these ways, through His Word and Sacraments, His Means of Grace, God makes us, who were dead in our sins, alive in Christ. Thus like the people of the Third Reading, we also experience “A Visit from the Compassionate God”.
Made alive in Christ—saved from our sins—we, also like the people in the Third Reading, glorify God. Like them, we glorify God with the things we say and do. We praise His Name and confess the truth of His salvation, spreading the report about Him everywhere we can, even as St. Paul in the Second Reading describes preaching the Gospel (Galatians 1:11-24). As Jesus in the First Reading gave the man back to his widowed mother to care for and support her—and as Jesus provided for the care of His own mother before His own death (John 19:26-27)—so we help provide for the care of widows, orphans, and all those physically in need (1 Timothy 5:3-16; James 1:27). God Who visited and redeemed us in the Person of His Son is continually with us, granting that we may rejoice in His gracious presence and giving us to all good works. When we deal with the deaths of other Christians, we thank God for delivering them from evil and are comforted by the eternity we will share in His presence. When we deal with our own individual deaths, we remember that we will die in time but are saved eternally; we reember that how, when, and where we die is up to God; and we remember that on the last day we will be raised as was Jesus—never to die again.
That last day is coming, we can be sure of it. The “Visit from the Compassionate God” in today’s Third Reading, His touching the bier—the stretcher, not the frosty mug—and His speaking to the young man and so raising the son of the widow of Nain, led others to believe in Him and to praise God. The “Visit from the Compassionate God” that we experience through His Word and Sacraments likewise raises us from the death of our sins and leads us to praise Him in word and deed. With repentance and faith, living daily in the forgiveness of sins, we again say with the psalmist what we spoke earlier in today’s Psalm (Psalm 30):
O Lord, … You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing Your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +