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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.
As many of you know, last Sunday evening the earthly life ended for Joan Wageman, the wife of Pilgrim’s longest-serving pastor, who served for more than 20 years, almost one-third of Pilgrim’s history. Yesterday her earthly remains were laid to rest in Kilgore, and a number of us attended her Memorial Service that followed in Tyler. A medieval hymn says well that “In the midst of life we are in death”. Such has been true since humankind’s fall into sin, and we grow somewhat desensitized to what we might think of as the normal order of things. A death of a child in our time seems abnormal, and some of you know all too well the grief of losing a child before, during, or after birth. If we imagine our provision and protection depending on our only child who died, we perhaps can best relate to the widow of Nain in today’s Gospel Reading. As we heard, at the gates of that town, death met life, and so, as we today consider that Gospel Reading, we do so under the theme “Death meets Life”.
Soon after Jesus in Capernaum healed a highly-valued servant who was at the point of death for a centurion (Luke 7:1-10), Jesus went the 20 to 25 miles southwest to a town called Nain and there raised from the dead the more-valuable only son of a widowed mother. The dead one, who was being carried out of the town for burial, followed by his mother and a considerable crowd from the town, met coming in Jesus and His disciples and a great crowd with Him. The meeting at Nain’s gate seems coincidental, but it is providential; it seems too late, but it is just in time.
By Divine Inspiration, the evangelist St. Luke does not tell us too much about the son and his mother, but St. Luke tells us just enough. For example, we do not know how old the son was; we do not know whether he was a good son or a bad son, and we do not know whether or not he and his mother had heard of Jesus before or even were faithful Jews waiting for the long‑promised Messiah. But, none of those things matter in the context of the Gospel Reading. St. Luke tells us that the son was dead, and that is really all that matters about him. He had probably died earlier that same day and, without any embalming, he was being carried in an open box or on a stretcher for burial outside of the town, where, sunk in the rocks, are today known to exist tombs possibly dating back to the time of Christ.
As the death of her son in today’s Old Testament Reading reminded the widow of Zarephath of her sin (1 Kings 17:17-24), so any death should remind each of us of our own sin. Whether or not we are good or bad children, whether or not we value God’s gift of life, whether or not we live chaste and decent lives, whether or not we respect our neighbor’s possessions and reputation, and whether or not we are content with our circumstances in life, we do not value God’s Word as we should, we do not keep His Name holy among us, and we do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Because we are sinful by nature, we actually sin in countless ways, and so, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we deserve physical death now and physical torment for eternity.
Yet, from our spiritual death in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), using the same all‑powerful Word that raised the widow’s son at the gate of Nain, God calls and so enables us to repent and believe—to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent and believe, then God forgives our sin—not because we repent and believe but because of His great compassion on us for the sake of His only‑begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
When the Lord of Life saw the widow with death at the gate of Nain, He had compassion on her. Jesus may well have seen in her His own widowed mother who later would weep over her only Son, but, more than that, He was moved with the compassion of God in human flesh as the long-promised Messiah, the Christ—God Who visited His faithful people to redeem and so save them, by His dying on the cross and Himself rising from the grave. Prior prophets, such as Elijah in today’s Old Testament Reading, as well as Elisha (2 Kings 4:32-37), had raised the dead, and so would later apostles such as Peter (Acts 9:40) and Paul (Acts 20:9) raise the dead, but no one else in the same way is the Resurrection and the Life as Jesus is: whoever believes in Him and dies before the Last Day on the Last Day nevertheless will live, and whoever believes in Him and is alive on the Last Day shall never die (John 11:25-26).
The gates of hell do not prevail against Christ’s Church. In fact, hell, death, and sin are all defeated by Christ, and so in His Church He forgives sin, grants life, and opens the way to heaven. At the Baptismal Font, death meets life, as the water and the Word of Holy Baptism work the forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, and give eternal salvation to all who believe. In individual Holy Absolution, death meets life, as we privately confess the sins that trouble us most and the pastor, as a called and ordained servant of Christ, forgives them with Christ’s authority. At this Altar and its Rail, death meets life, as we receive Christ’s Body in, with, and under bread and Christ’s Blood in, with, and under wine, which give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Outside of the Church there is no salvation, but inside the Church God is surpassingly rich in His grace and helps us against sin in more than one way (Smalcald Articles III:iv). Here His Word and Sacraments work miracles far greater than the raising of the son of the widow of Nain: His Word and Sacraments raise us from the death of our sin and give us eternal life by grace through faith in Him.
Strikingly, Jesus tells the widow of Nain not to weep before Jesus raises her son. Unlike ordinary human comforters, Jesus’s Word to her is usually thought actually to give her the power not to weep, at least to not weep as those who lack the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body and the blessed reunion in heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:13). In this lifetime, we experience death, and we can mourn rightly our losses of loved ones from this world. We rejoice even as we experience death and other afflictions, including the kind of persecution for being Christians that St. Paul had inflicted on the Church before his conversion, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 1:11-24). And, like St. Paul, we glorify God in the various callings of life that God has placed us.
Death met life in the Gospel Reading as the widow’s dead son was raised. Death meets life here as God’s Word and Sacraments raise us from the death of our sin and give us eternal life by grace through faith in Him. Death meets life in some ways every day. (Tomorrow I am scheduled to officiate at a Committal in Corsicana for a man I had the privilege of comforting with God’s Gospel for the last six months or so before he died last Thursday.) The outcome of these meetings is certain: death is defeated by life and we are just waiting for the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. With the today’s psalmist we always can say that the Lord has turned our mourning into dancing, that He has loosed our sackcloth and clothed us with gladness, that our glory may sing His praises and not be silent, that we will give thanks to the Lord our God forever (Psalm 30).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +