Meditation: Trinity 16 - 2021

 

Note: This meditation was read by Deacon Richard Iverson in my absence

19 September 2021

Text: Luke 7:11-17

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

During the course of our Lord’s ministry, He performed many miracles.  He changed water into wine, showing his mastery over nature.  He cured people of diseases, like leprosy and dropsy, showing that He is Lord over the illnesses of the flesh.  He cast out demons, showing His dominion over the spiritual realm.  He restored sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, showing His mastery over bodily disorders.

But His most remarkable miracles – the ones that His enemies were most frightened of – involved raising the dead.  For this shows that Jesus is God, with the power to give life even to the dead.  And since the fall in Eden, death has been our unconquerable enemy.  Death comes to everyone.  Even kings and emperors have no power to stave it off forever.  Doctors and medical researchers, technology and advanced medicine can only temporarily push it back a little.

But Jesus can, and does, actually cure it, roll it back, and defeat it.  Our Lord disarms death, and He conquers death by dying for us, eliminating the cause of death, which is sin.

In the town called Nain, our Lord catches a glimpse of a funeral procession.  The deceased was “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”  Jesus “had compassion on her.”  And with nothing more than His command: “Young man, I say to you, arise,” life is breathed back into the widow’s son.  He sits up, and begins to speak.

This is how Jesus ruins funerals.  This is how our Lord shows contempt for the devil and expresses His mastery over the wreckage of sin, and over all life itself.  And while the witnesses to this miracle were filled with fear, they nevertheless glorify God.  One can only imagine the joy of this mother, thanks to the compassion and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, the victor over death and the grave. 

And this miracle is not just for this young man and his widowed mother.  For the promise is for all of us who believe and are baptized.  The last part of the Creed reads like this: “I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

We can confess this creed, saying, “I believe,” because indeed, “God has visited His people!”

Amen.

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