Jesus Leads His Followers to a Funeral

A reading from the Gospel according to Luke.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Chapter 7, verses eleven through 17.

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.

As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, Do not weep.

Then he came up and touched the beer, 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.

Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people.

And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

The gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Jesus is on the move in today's gospel from Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

He's on his way to a town called Nain, and with him is a great crowd of people.

They have been gathering around him, surely, because they have seen and heard of his great deeds.

In fact, we can probably assume that the crowd that he was leading was full of some sense of joy and gladness, maybe even a kind of hum of excitement, because Jesus had been going from place to place in Galilee, healing diseases, and I suppose they were all wondering what they would see Jesus do next.

But then Jesus and his crowd encounter a different group of people, a different crowd with a decidedly different mood and different purpose and different experience.

Luke tells us to pay attention, behold, and see that Jesus encounters a funeral.

It is a funeral carrying a dead young man out to his resting place.

And that dead young man is the only son of a widow.

And so Jesus here had led his followers right into a funeral.

Now those people at the funeral were probably the friends and neighbors of the widow.

People who had perhaps known the widow's husband long before they had known her son, friends that go way back, neighbors that she had lived around for perhaps many, many years.

Indeed, maybe they remembered the time that they had carried her husband out to the family burial plot.

And now they are here to do this again.

Maybe even some of them had carried that man's funeral beer out to that place, and now they are behind another one from the same family.

And memories of that day before were surely hard and dreadful, but I wonder if they're thinking that this day, this second funeral, is even more dreadful.

You see, the widow would not have been able to count on the kind of social safety net that we have come to know and appreciate in our time and place.

A widow without a husband and a son to provide for her would be far more radically dependent on the mercy of others, neighbors, maybe even strangers.

And so while this day was surely quite heavy with grief, added to that was the sense that the future waiting for this widow was even heavier.

And so her friends and neighbors rallied around her on this day.

They came to be with her, they came to weep with her, they came to walk with her, they came to be by her side, and surely we can assume that they also rallied around her in the days to come.

And yet, here as they gathered in this funeral procession, this was good, it was right, it was compassionate, it was what it looks like to love your neighbor.

And yet each of those friends and neighbors was going to face the frustrating limit of what their love and compassion could do.

Yes, they could weep with this widow, but they had no power to take away the cause for the tears.

Yes, they could walk with her out to that grave.

They could carry the dead out to rest, but they were not going to have any capacity to restore and to give a reunion between the widow and her lost loved ones.

They could provide for her needs in the days, weeks, even years to come, but there was little they could do to fully erase the empty place in her life, to fill it back up again, quite the way it was before.

You see, no amount of well-wishing is able to really fully deal with the corruption that is at the heart of every human life, all of our existence, the corruption of death, that death that comes after us again and again, generation after generation, all because we have inherited the sin of Adam.

And that sin carries wages, and the wages of that sin is death, a kind of dreadful enemy whose power we are unable to withstand, and against whom sometimes it seems all of our greatest efforts are merely futile.

But when these two crowds came together, as the crowd following Jesus encountered the crowd following the dead young man, now there is an unexpected guest at this funeral.

Jesus is there.

And here Luke really draws our attention to the power and emotion of the scene.

That Jesus sees this, and yes, he has this joyful crowd with him, and yet here Jesus' heart is moved with compassion for this widow.

He sees her, and his heart goes out to her.

And he says to her, Do not weep.

Which, of course, if you or I said something like that, it would probably ring hollow, like a kind of empty word.

But here, when Jesus says this, there is a power and a promise embedded in it.

And it's a promise that he intends to keep.

And then Luke continues to unfold this dramatic scene.

Jesus approaches, he has this word to the widow.

He reaches up and touches the funeral beer, and everyone just stops and stands still.

And the whole moment is what they sometimes call a pregnant pause, wondering what is going to come from this situation?

Why would this stranger walk in, touch the funeral beer, interrupt the whole thing?

What is he up to?

And then Luke tells us, he said to the dead young man, I say to you, arise.

Now in today's first reading, we heard of another widow's son who was raised to life as Elijah prayed for this restoration as he stretched out on top of the child in this grievous prayer, asking God to restore.

And in that case, God answered, heard the word of the prophet, and answered his prayer.

Here Jesus makes no plea, he simply touches and speaks, and in him is all the power over death that flows from his compassionate heart.

And just as that one widow's son had raised to life again, here also this dead young man sits up and he begins to talk.

Now I figure at this moment all these people who are watching just erupt in a kind of commotion that would be remarkable to see and to hear.

And yet Luke keeps our attention in this text zeroed in at the woman at the center of it all.

He doesn't look, let us see all the commotion, but first he says, look here and see the heart of Jesus and the character of the Lord who came into this scene the way he did.

As Luke says, Jesus gave him, that dead young man raised to life again, gave him back to his mother.

Jesus in his compassion is restoring what was lost to this widow and giving this gracious, joyful reunion even on the other side of death.

And surely this account gives us great testimony to the power of Jesus over death, that Jesus has the ability in himself, with his own word, to speak to the dead and they will rise.

And yet this is also a potent pointer to the heart of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the one who sees death as an enemy, but an enemy that grieves us whom he loves, and that his heart goes out to us who are grieved by death.

And so in his compassion he comes, and it is not empty compassion with empty words, it is compassion full of content with power and purpose and promise, and he is able to deliver from his compassionate heart what you and I need in the face of death.

Now, this Jesus, who on this day led his followers to a funeral, who turned all this wailing into dancer, dancing, would continue on his journey, going from place to place.

And if we trace that throughout the book of Luke, we see that he eventually leads his followers to another kind of death, another kind of funeral.

That the day would come when Jesus would lead those who followed him all the way to Jerusalem, and there events would unfold that Jesus had foretold and had explained what they would mean and what they would do.

That the Son of Man would be lifted up on a cross, handed over to his enemies, and there crucified and died, put to death for the sins of the world, for the inherited sin that we had received from Adam.

And there to pay the wages of sin for us and in our place.

And there events unfolded that they took him from the cross, and because it was before right before the Sabbath, they hastily buried him, knowing they could return.

And then on the dawn of the third day, the few followers Jesus had left by that point came back out to his grave there to complete his funeral, to bring the anointing and the spices, to prepare him for burial, to go to that frustrating boundary where love has its limit, that it can do everything up to a point but no more, that yes, they could clean his body, they could be present with him, they could wrap him and bury him with spices and lay him to rest.

And yet, like that funeral at Nain, those faithful women who went out to complete Jesus' burial found the funeral interrupted again.

For the one they had come to lay to rest for good was now alive forever.

Jesus had stepped out of his tomb, demonstrating that great power over death, that completion of his promised work to restore us and redeem us, to take away our sin and to put us onto a path through death to resurrection, to the life that he has promised to give us since before the foundation of the world.

And now that empty tomb is what Jesus wants you and me to see every time we go to a funeral of our own.

A kind of time when Jesus leads us to funerals in this very day.

When Jesus walked out of that tomb, there was the foundational power and strength that would change every funeral for all of his people.

That because his people belong to him, that they've been bought and redeemed by him, all of our funerals, as it were, have a kind of interruption coming to them.

A kind of presence, a kind of word from Christ, where each one, even when they're complete, is still waiting for the day when Jesus will return and do what he did in Main and say, Arise, arise and live again.

Now that is a kind of power in a word that only Jesus can deliver.

It would be preposterous, cruel even, if any of us try to pull a stunt like that, to go to a funeral and say, hang on, everyone, let me try this out, and to touch things and speak arise.

That power is not in us, it's in Jesus.

And yet there is something that Jesus brought to bear in this funeral that you and I do possess, which is the opportunity and the ability to show compassion on those who grieve, to bring the same compassionate ref compassion reflecting the heart of Jesus to those who are grieving in the face of death.

That is an element of this funeral at Nane that we can continue to be that crowd that rallies around the one who is bereaved.

And so let me encourage you today to pay attention to the opportunities around you, including here at Our Redeemer, to attend the funerals of those who have died in the Lord.

Even those whose names you barely know, or maybe you never really met, because in the body of Christ none of us are really strangers.

And in those times, don't worry and fret about what you might say, for the liturgy gives you the words to say and sing and to pray.

And indeed, sometimes more than a word, what matters is your embodied presence.

Right there, your presence brings a testimony to the compassion of Jesus.

That your presence, to bring yourself from point A to point B, says, I trust that Jesus in his power has great compassion for those who grieve.

And that by standing there alongside those who grieve, you testify to that hope that is yours and mine in Jesus.

Indeed, you may discover that this presence is precisely what matters so much to those who are grieving.

In fact, your presence carries with it, and your words even carry with it something that perhaps that funeral at name the people there didn't have, you know that this Jesus is capable of these things, and that you can hold out for the bereaved that very hope.

And in this you will demonstrate love for neighbor and reflect the compassionate heart of Jesus, bringing the presence of the one who can and does say, Arise.

So I suppose you could say that even today, Jesus leads his followers right into funerals, right there to be that presence of compassion for those who have suffered loss.

And this is a good practice, for it will cause us to remember our own mortality, to remember that this dead young man in the text from Luke chapter 7, that is us.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

For the day is also coming when we will be the guest at our own funeral.

And at that time, people will rally around and come to see and be with us, to be with our loved ones.

And Jesus himself will also come for those who grieve and for the dead.

And Jesus will note where you are laid to rest.

He will note who you have left behind, he will come to them in his compassion, and even where you have been laid, Jesus will remember, because the day is coming when he will come back around and he will say to you, arise.

Such is his compassion for you and for me, that he would not allow death to erase us from memory, to allow us to be erased by death from the future glory that he has planned, that he has bought for us.

Such is his heart for you, that he loves you, watches over you, guards you, and keeps you in life and even in death.

That Jesus would not leave us to be.

But instead will wipe away every tear and the cause for tears, and will one day undo death once for all.

Amen.