Today is the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost. It is
also the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time. We took a big break from
ordinary time on the church calendar during the Easter Cycle which began, as
you know, with Lent. This second period of Ordinary Time began following
Pentecost and continues until Advent.
When we left off
before the Easter Cycle the gospel reading was Luke 5 and Jesus had just called
the first disciples. We were asked in that passage to pay close attention to
the response of those first men; Simon, James, and John. They had fished all
night and caught nothing. Jesus had begun to use their boat as a place from
which he could teach the crowds. Out of the blue, Jesus tells them to put out
into deep waters and “Let down your nets for a catch.”
Their response gives
us a sense of what we might correctly call, the “nature of (an) authentic
response,” that Jesus expects from each of us when he calls. Their authentic
response was to obey Jesus. Simon tells him they had fished all night and
caught nothing, but, “if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
The result is
staggering. Their nets are overfilled with fish. They are flooded with feelings
of amazement at the miracle and fearful at the same time. From where had all
these fish come? Who has the power to make this sort of thing happen?
Realizing the potential
danger their life would be in if they continued to follow someone with such
power, Simon asks Jesus to leave him alone, to go away. Jesus replies, “Do not
be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
These frightened men left
their former lives to follow Jesus. Their authentic response was immediate and
it completely and totally changing them forever. They left it all to follow
Jesus.
Here we realize the cost of an authentic
response to God’s call. How it can be both fearful and amazing at the same
time. Why, following Jesus may even take us all the way to Livingston, Alabama.
We return this morning
to Luke 7. Jesus is teaching in the northern Galilee area beginning in
Capernaum and ending up in Nain. In verses 1-10 Jesus heals a centurion’s
servant.
In that healing we
learn again of the power of Jesus’ ministry and we are given another lesson in
what our authentic response to Jesus’ presence in our life should be. By
telling Jesus he need not go to the place where his slave lay ill, that he need
only speak his healing words, the centurion is repeating the lesson of having
faith and trusting in our Lord.
This morning, Luke’s
story is of Jesus raising a widow’s son from the grip of death. From the first
disciples obedience to Jesus’ call to follow him, to the deep and abiding faith
and trust in Jesus’ presence to heal the sick, Jesus now takes us where no one
has ever gone before, raising the dead.
This new story in Luke
is filled with bad news. It is that dreaded call in the middle of the night.
Someone has died. Once we are shaken awake we realize it is the death of a
young man. To heap more bad news onto bad, he was the only son of his poor
mother. Just when we thought that was enough, we learn this woman was also a
widow.
Towards this woman
Jesus shows the compassion of someone in love. In love with the vulnerability
of human life, in love with all of God’s creation, in love with the love that
God has for each and every person in each and every generation in each and
every circumstance.
For love is at the
core of the essential nature of God, Christ Jesus and our Holy Spirit. Jesus’
human side as well as Jesus’ divine side are driven by his holy love. Love,
especially when bad things happen, and they do happen to us all.
Especially then do we
feel God’s true nature. It is a nature in favor of life. It is a nature that
protects and sustains and nourishes all life.
I was reminded of the
depth of God’s love for us when I thought of a story I have told many times of
the Reverend William Sloan Coffin’s son who was killed in a tragic auto
accident. If you can imagine it, the next Sunday the Reverend Coffin preached
to his church about his grief and God’s grief.
Here is some of what he said: “The one thing
that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” Never
do we know enough to say that. My
consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that
when the waves closed over the sinking car God’s was the first of all our
hearts to break.” God’s was the first of
all our hearts to break.
When we learn about tragic events like this our first
response may be to scream, No! God can do all things! Why did God not
intervene, call 911 or do that God thing that saves folks. God knows how much
Alex was loved. Why did God not do something?
Our only authentic
answer must be, we do not know. As people of faith, we know there are times
when we just do not know why God does what God does. God is God after all and
we are not. But that does not lesson the
pain. Saying we do not know does not give us comfort and rest. It may actually
add to our anguish.
But there are truths
about God we do know. Our God is a God of the resurrection, resurrection to
restoration, restoration to all eternity. Our God has the power to resurrect life, to
restore life and our God always will.
Jesus’ words to the
young man who had died, “I say to you, rise” reverberate with our Gospel hope
in the presence of death.
The angel at Jesus’
tomb was the first to pronounce such hope as Jesus himself had risen. The
disciples later announced, “This Jesus, God raised up, and of that all of us
are witnesses.”
Paul will connect
Jesus’ resurrection with our own hope for life beyond death. He proclaimed, “Christ
has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who died.”
The resurrection of
Jesus, the one who had compassion on a widow in her grief, provides the basis
for the apostle’s confident vision of the end. “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will
be raised imperishable.”
The hope of being
raised imperishable, therefore, is not grounded in the fact that the widow’s
son came back to life but in the fact that the one who had the compassion in
the first place has himself triumphed over death.
God’s covenant power
of restoration to eternal life, that also raised the widow’s son from death, is
even available for each of us. It is the same power that will also raise those
whom we love, those who are no longer with us. Yet, it is even more than this.
The truth of the power
of God’s restoration to eternal life fills us with an eternal hope. For the
widow’s son, for Jesus, and for our loved ones, and ourselves, we have unbridled
hope.
We who know the power
of God’s love have a lasting hope that will comfort us in our sorrow. We who
know Jesus’ love live with a hope that is with us day and night as we struggle
with our own grief and despair.
It is the power of
God’s restoration to life eternal that helps those of us who are left behind to
pick up the pieces of our broken lives and feel God’s loving arms wrapping us
up to help us rise to the new life ahead. It is the power of God’s restoration love
that keeps us alive in the midst of death.
Running through these
thoughts, we see most clearly in Luke’s gospel that Jesus is living the example
for us. He speaks of his own life. He shows us the faithful way through his
destiny with the cross, his triumphant restoration to life, and his glorious ascension
to heaven.
Our hope is mirrored
in our understanding of our own future with death and the miracle of our own restoration
to eternal life, our own ascension to be with God in heaven.
About that time, Jesus
says, we are to rise.
But there is more, our
hope lives for something more. We are to rise from what seems like death even
today, though we are alive. We are to rise from our feelings of death when we
find our lives dry, lost, and without faith. Be it from work, or addiction, or recklessness,
or the sheer weight of life’s unfolding, we will be reunited again and again to
Christ Jesus, because of his love.
To be risen in Christ
is to be risen to life itself. Void of worldly trappings and shackles, we are
called to be risen to God’s Kingdom that has come. Isn’t this what we pray for.
“Thy Kingdom come.” We do not have to
wait for heaven. Jesus has answered our call. The Kingdom of God is with us now,
in our place, right next to us, all around us.
This is God’s
authentic response to our human condition. God’s kingdom is present this moment,
for God is ultimately not interested in death. God is interested in bringing
life, and new life to God’s people. Giving life is the first, mort important
work that God does. It is, as Martin Luther put it, God’s “proper work.” Our
God brings life.
Still searching for an
authentic response to the obvious in life?
As ironic as it may
sound, praise death. Praise the death of our old unworkable ways, praise the
death of unrepentant numbness, praise the death of unforgiving pain and lost
hope.
For with death comes
God’s grace and Christ’s call, restoring us to an eternal life to come. “I say to you, rise.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
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