Pentecost 2, 06/06/2010

Sermon on Luke 7:11-17, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

¹¹Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. ¹²As 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. ¹³And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." ¹⁴Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." ¹⁵And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. ¹⁶Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" ¹⁷And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

LIFE WITH JESUS: COMPASSIONATE LORD

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The phone call late Sunday began: "Pastor, my firstborn son died suddenly this afternoon." And then the tears began - hers and mine. Because I have buried so many sons and daughters of others over the years - including four small children - the pathos in each mother's telling of her loss breaks my heart. It is always the raking open of a wound that cannot heal.

Here I am a father, again, strangely in my mid 50s, of an almost three-year-old daughter. Because I know what can happen and because I know how shattering the loss of a child is to others, I am irrational when it comes to the safety of my little one. It is, as I shared with my wife when she was pregnant with this one, that when they come into our lives, our children take us emotionally hostage for life. What hurts them crushes us!

In this day, few of us expect our children will provide for us financially in our old age. Indeed some among us wonder if they will still be taking care of adult children even well into retirement. Sometimes we have loved our children so much and feared for them so much that we have allowed them to keep placing the responsibility for their lives back on us long past age 21. In short, they have figured out that, because we think of them always as our babies, that they can, like Peter Pan, choose never to grow up. It's a heart-wrenching journey this parenting business, because what hurts them always wounds us!

But here in Luke 7, in the city of Nain, this poor widowed mother is in a very different place. Her son is her only means of support. And now, as a widow burying her only son, she draws a crowd. Every parent weeps with her. Every wife and mother looks upon her situation with dread. Every adult child looks at her and thinks about his or her own mother. Every man cannot help but think again about what his own wife would do.

Rabbi Jesus takes it all in with a glance. For the first time, Luke calls Him, "the Lord," as if to make sure that we notice that this is God in human flesh up close and personal with real pain, real loss, and real need. As Calvin Seminary professor Scott Hoezee points out, the Lord Jesus is not like the TV preachers of today who cannot see and know the depth of the misery of those that have tuned in hoping against hope for a miracle (http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php). Marshall McLuhan was so right when he called television a cool medium. Real compassion requires the heat of actually being there bodily, taking it all in, the sights and smells and sounds!

Luke tells us that the Lord Jesus had compassion on the widow of Nain. The word translated as compassion means literally "to be moved as to one's bowels...for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity" (BibleWorks). In our day, we have less delicate (yes, scatological) ways of talking about what it means to care about something or someone. I don't have to fill in the blanks.

Faithful Bible readers can't help but think of the Crucified Jesus, in John's Gospel, using some of His last words to give charge of His mother to John, the Beloved Disciple. Although that scene is not part of Luke's story of Jesus, one cannot help but wonder if seeing the widow of Nain doesn't cause Jesus to think about His own mother and what will become of her after He goes to Jerusalem the city that stones the prophets.

"Do not weep!" the Lord commands. Is this widowed mother shocked that He would talk to her in a way that surely sounds cruel? He doesn't give her time to think. The Lord stops the men carrying the body. He crosses another boundary by having contact with the dead. And Jesus says: "Young man, I say to you arise." And the dead man sat up and began to speak. It is the opposite of John's scene at the cross. For here Jesus says, "Woman, behold your son" and "Son, behold your mother." And it is the gift that His own widowed mother will not receive. Even after the joy of Easter morning, the Lord of Life will not stay around to do the care-taking of His own mother. John will.

Luke ends this story with the response of the people. They are in awe. They think of Jesus as a great prophet. He reminds them of Elijah who raised the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17). They say, "God has visited His people." The story grows legs.

GOING FROM COLD TO HOT

A number of years ago one worship professor made clear why he objected to the use of television screens in worship. Using language borrowed from Marshall McLuhan, he said the Church's liturgy is a hot medium while television is just the opposite.

To make his point, we need to remember that with TV one can always change the channel to get distance from something that is uncomfortable or fearsome. Yes, we may have our emotional strings pulled by watching a story especially if there is background music telling us how we ought to be feeling about what we are seeing. But the truth of the matter is we can always turn it off. And we can keep telling ourselves in the classic words of bad horror movies from the 50s: "It's only a movie! It's only a movie!" But, sometimes, it's not! That's why the TV preachers can't ever get up close and personal with their audience. In the classic words of Professor Marshall McLuhan: "The medium is the message." TV church is not the same as being there. It is not the same as knowing and being known in the hot medium of up close and personal.

Compassion is about feeling down in your guts. And a lot of people, so schooled by the cool medium of TV, just don't want to go there! It's the old Adam and the old Eve who always want to stay cool and detached. In the Garden of Eden, when the Lord God comes looking for them, He's an up close and personal God. "Where are you, Adam?" He asks. But Adam and Eve have covered themselves with leaves, to try to hide. They don't want to be known as they are. Before they even know about electricity, Adam and Eve are so ready for TV...and texting...and all the other cool media we have to give the illusion of being known with very little of the up close and personal.

But that's not the true story for those who have been baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection - for those who have been drawn into life with the Lord Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit. We have an up close and personal God, who becomes human in His Son in order to rescue us who are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

It is not a surprise that liturgical worship is heavily countercultural. We live in a cool media world, but God is an up close and personal God. And liturgical worship is about an encounter with the living God who reaches out and touches the old Adam and Eve in Word and Sacrament. We do well to remember that the writer of Hebrews said: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (10:31).

Liturgical worship is a hot medium in which a down to earth God touches us through Word and Sacraments. Here in God's house, the Spirit of God speaks the Word that exposes us sinners. And we often don't like that soul-searching Word, because we're so used to cool media that can't pull away the fig leaves behind which we try to hide. In Holy Baptism, we die to the old cool life, a life detached from an up close and personal God. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are raised with Jesus to a new life in which we become His body in the world. In Holy Communion, He invades us in bread and wine in order to fill us with the power of His endless life, an awakening to real life!

LIVING WITH JESUS AND OUR MAMA

We began today with the pathos of the widowed mother who has lost her only Son. And we thought about how we are most touched by people that are most like us. But the story is not just that God is a compassionate God who wants to teach us compassion.

Rather, each of us is that body on the bier that needs the living touch of an up close and personal God, a God who feels for us so much that He will suffer and die on the cross in a body like ours. As Martin Luther says, "All this He has done that I may be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness" (Small Catechism, Explanation of the 2^nd article of the Apostles' Creed).

Here in liturgical worship our up close and personal God calls to us, "Child of God, I say to you arise," and He gives us back to our mother the Church. Oh, yes, she needs us! But we need her to keep crying over us and to keep teaching us and to keep washing us and to keep feeding us until, at last, we are completely well and whole.

No matter how old we get, our Mama never stops being our Mama. And she never stops expecting us to be the children of God who have been raised from death to life. She never stops telling us who we are called to be and whose life is now pulsing through us. Children of an up close and personal God feel deeply for those who mourn and those in need whoever and wherever they may be!

Because our Mama the Church is as wide as the world and as deep as time, there is no one anywhere who is beyond God's compassionate reach. And so our Mama is not going to let us be like those who don't give a damn about anyone. Having been raised to life with Jesus, we hear our Mama say: "Feed the hungry and give them something to drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, because once you were dead but now you are alive!"

And, when we ache over those that have left us here to go on ahead of us into eternal life, our Mama says, "I know your pain, and I hurt with you. But do not grieve like those who have no hope! We're are children of the Living God who promises that nothing, including death, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We will all be together again forever!"

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Samuel D. Zumwalt
STS
www.societyholytrinity.org
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina

E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net

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