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Text: Luke
7:11-17 (1 Kings 17:17-24)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
When Jesus raised the son of the widow at Nain, “fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited His people!’”
Of course, raising the dead is a far greater miracle than turning water into wine, feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread, and even greater than curing leprosy, making the deaf hear, and giving sight to the blind. Scripture has recorded Jesus raising the dead three times. And in this case, the mother of the deceased son was a widow. She was left with nobody to take care of her. Jesus didn’t see her and say, “Here’s a real ministry opportunity to make a name for myself and grow the church.” Rather, “He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’”
Our Lord’s motivation here is to show compassion to a mourning widow. And that He did! Jesus delivered joy to a woman who was in the very worst of sadness. If anyone had the right to be without hope and angry at God, it would be this widow on her way to bury her son.
The result of our Lord’s Word – the same Word that created the universe from nothing, that Word commanding, “Young man, I say to you, arise,” – was that “the dead man sat up and began to speak” and “Jesus gave him to His mother.” Jesus fixed what was broken, and what seemed to be permanently destroyed. Jesus restored hope to the most hopeless situation of all. Jesus made one mourning woman happy again.
But the result of this miracle did teach us about Jesus.
When a man appears in history, works miracles, raises the dead, is executed as a criminal, but rises from the dead Himself, sends eleven men out into the world, and from this small group, believers in Jesus are soon in every country in the world – there’s going to be a discussion about who Jesus is.
Jews can point to Jesus being called “Rabbi,” and they can say that this is what Jesus is: a teacher and a preacher. They’re not wrong. Muslims can point to this confession of who Jesus is, “A great prophet has arisen among us,” and say that this is what Jesus is: a prophet. They’re also not wrong. But where they are both wrong is in saying that Jesus is only a teacher, only a preacher, or only a prophet. For there is certainly more to Jesus. It is also not wrong to say that Jesus is a man, or that the Bible is comprised of humanly-authored books, or that the Eucharist is bread and wine. But it is wrong to stop there, dear friends. For there is indeed certainly more.
For our God is compassionate. Our God has come to raise the dead. Our God has come to destroy death, to reverse its effects, and to restore what we broke at the fall in the Garden of Eden. Jesus is a prophet, but He is also God who has “visited His people.” Jesus is a prophet, and a priest, and a king. But there is certainly more to Jesus. He is the Prophet, the Priest, and the King. He doesn’t merely serve God in these offices. He is the God who created these offices. Jesus takes on these offices Himself in order to show compassion upon us and raise the dead.
And just as Jesus takes on all of these offices Himself, as a man, and as God, Jesus will also die Himself, becoming also the sacrificial Lamb – the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.” And like the widow of Nain, He indeed has “mercy upon us.” And not only does He give us God’s mercy, He answers our prayer and confession granting us His peace.”
When people saw Jesus raise the widow’s son, they immediately thought of the great prophet Elijah. This was no accident. Almost nine hundred years before Jesus was born, Elijah raised the dead son of a widow. For “a great prophet had arisen” among the people. But Elijah was not God. The great prophet Elijah prayed that God would raise the widow’s son. And God had compassion upon that widow in that day, and through the great prophet’s prayer, God raised this young man from the dead. Elijah “delivered him to his mother” and said, “See, your son lives.” The joyful mother said, “Now I know that you are a man of God.”
When Jesus raised another widow’s son more than nine hundred years later, we do not hear a confession that Jesus is a man of God (which would not be untrue). For there is certainly more to Jesus. He is the man who is God. He is the God who has compassion. And He is the one true God who has visited His people in the form of a man.
And this confession of Jesus, that a “great prophet has arisen among us” takes on a different meaning for us after our Lord’s own resurrection. For this word “arisen” is the very same Greek word that the angel spoke to the Marys at the tomb. St. Luke, who recorded our Gospel for today, wrote that the angel said, “He is not here, but has risen.” Upon hearing this, “they remembered His Words.”
We too remember His Words, dear friends. Jesus’ words are not simply little nuggets of wisdom from a nice man who has compassion (as the unbelieving world says). For there is certainly more to Jesus. Jesus is not simply a teacher of one of many spiritual truths which are all pathways to God (as the pope has recently said). Jesus is not simply a rabbi (as the Jews say, at best). Jesus is not simply a preacher proclaiming God (as many who call themselves Christians seem to believe). Jesus is not simply a prophet (as the Muslims proclaim). For there is certainly more to Jesus.
Jesus has compassion upon those who have suffered the effects of death, for death is the final crushing result of sin and the ongoing destructive work of the devil. God has compassion upon all of us who have suffered death. We are all the widow of Nain, and God has visited us, dear friends. God has arisen among us. For God in the flesh was crucified as the sacrifice that we could never pay. He died, and rose again for our justification.
And God is still visiting His people.
He visits us when He baptizes us, with His own words, making us His disciples “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He visits us when and where His Word is proclaimed. He visits us when His forgiveness is given by virtue of the office that He has established to speak in His name. He visits us when He offers us His true body and blood, given and shed for you, “for the forgiveness of sins.” And He will visit us again in the future, when He returns in glory. It will be at a time when it will look to all the world that there is no hope. He will have compassion upon us, and He will come again, establishing His kingdom among us in fulfillment of all of the words and deeds of the great prophets.
For there is certainly more to Jesus that what the devil, the world, the Jews, the Muslims, and even the pope want us to believe. No, not all religions are equal. If they were, God would have no compassion upon us, for that would mean that He is a God of confusion and contradiction, that He is a God who leaves us wondering what the truth is, or if there even is a truth at all. But God has visited us, and He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And Jesus added, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”
This Jesus who is the Prophet and God who has both “arisen among us” and “visited His people,” who has come to have compassion upon us by raising the dead and restoring the world to its created glory, this Priest who is also the Sacrifice, this God who is also man, is coming again in glory. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And this confession is, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, both “the Christian truth” and “the catholic religion.” It is all about Jesus, dear friends. Nobody else.
The reality that God has visited His people is good news for the world. Our job is to confess it, proclaim it, preach it, and not compromise it. For Jesus has compassion. “A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited His people!”
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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