Why did Jesus come? He came from Glory … pure, perfect, and beautiful. He entered into an incarnate world that often is corrupted, broken, and ugly. Why? He must have known the prevailing darkness. By the time of his birth in Bethlehem there had been ten thousand generations, at least, of human deceit, rebellion, and betrayal against God in whose image they were created and had their being.
When the Spirit of God the Father first brooded over the universe, He looked upon all He had created, “and behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) It didn’t stay that way
long! Adam and Eve begot Cain and Abel. The first human family … the one from whom all family trees descend … was dysfunctional. Cain kills Abel, his brother, in a jealous rage. The rest, as they say, is our history. We are all descendants of Cain.
At one point, apparently, God decided to start over with Noah and his family after the Great Flood. But that didn’t seem to work out so well either. There followed the likes of Pharaoh, Ahab and his bloodthirsty wife Jezebel, the Greek defiler Antiochus Epiphanes, King Herod the killer of babes, Pontius Pilate who couldn’t recognize the Truth in front of him … and the list of infamy goes on growing to our day.
Clearly the image of God in man was broken, and the creature was not up to the task of re-establishing his Creator’s founding vision. What was it? Jesus said it best:
“I came so that they (mankind) may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
But Jesus wasn’t talking about mere existence. He was proposing “abundant life,”
that only grows and is sustained by love, forgiveness, and compassion … a life that looks beyond self interest and “respects the dignity of every human being.”
Only sacrificial love overcomes the darkness of despair and doubt. In the Prologue to the Gospel of John it is written: “The light (of Christ) shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:5f) Christ bears the scars of that sacrifice … not for His glory but for our salvation.
He came to fulfill the loving purpose of his Father in heaven that we are unable or unwilling to fulfill … to love one another as we have been first loved and conceived.
Today’s readings from First Kings and Luke both recount deeds of the raising of the dead. Both are about widows, and each has suffered the death of an only son. Their love could not overcome death … but God’s love can … and does!
In ancient Israel, women whose husbands had died had no inheritance rights. They were dependent upon family or public charity for their survival, and the survival of their children. Even with that slender support, life was precarious for both … and promised only poverty of body and spirit.
The Lord sent Elijah to the Phoenician city of Zarephath along the coast, for his own protection against King Ahab and Jezebel. He is to contact there a widow who will feed and sustain him. She barely can feed herself and her son, but the Lord provides for the three of them. The young son becomes mortally ill “and there was no breath left in him” Then God’s prophet lays the small boy on his bed. “And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord, O Lord my God let this child’s soul come into him again.
“And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.” Being in harmony with God’s will is an essential part of healing. Elijah prayed. The will of God and his prophet were as one. Life revived … for the boy and his widowed mother. Three is a number in Holy Scripture often associated with divine presence and subsequent wholeness.
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts,” cry the seraphim before the throne of God in the year that the prophet Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.” (Isaiah 6:1f)
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples accompanied by a great crowd went to a city in Galilee called Nain, which is mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament. Approaching the town, they come upon a funeral procession. On the funeral bier lies the body of a man, the only son of a widow. In addition to her grief, she is now destitute.
Jesus can ignore the elements and walk across water, but the tears of a widow melts his heart. The woman did not need to cry out. Her tears were enough. Jesus’ action was spontaneous. “Do not weep.” In violation of Jewish purity laws, Jesus touched the funeral bier and said: “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man got up and began to speak.
Perhaps Jesus did not know that she was a widow, or that the dead man was her only son. A weeping mother was enough to stir his compassion. Without asking questions, he ignored the cortege about him and uttered words of life: “Young man,
I say to you, arise.”
As in Nain, Jesus would again acknowledge the tears of a mother for her only son, on a faraway hill outside the walls of imperial Jerusalem … his mother, Mary. Despite his dying agony on a cross, “when Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son! Then he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” (John 19:26-27)
Raising people from the dead is called a miracle, in every time and generation. Yet such accounts are found in both Hebrew Scripture (Elijah and Elisha in First Kings) and in all four Christian Gospels. It remains mind-numbing to our finite understanding.
Resurrection is essential to Christian belief. You cannot claim to be a disciple of Christ without embracing … not just the possibility, but the certainty … of life after death. It is God’s intention that His grand experiment … a loving creature of free will … will be immortal, and designed to shake off the mortal coils of this world to touch the face of God.
Each of us has heard stories of people like Lazarus, and the widows’ sons in today’s lessons, who have come back from the dead in this lifetime. And I, for one, am convinced when God created the heavens and earth and saw that they were “very good,” He poured upon all his creatures a loving grace … forging an eternal relationship. His son came to affirm that reality … for us and our salvation.
The eternal purpose of our loving Father is to heal all his creatures through the redemptive life of his Son as revealed by the Holy Spirit in all truth. Our dysfunctional family is restored. We are made adoptive sons and daughters of the Most High. “With you I am well pleased.”
Arise, says Jesus. “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” We are often like the dead sons. But wherever faith is born anew, Jesus is saying, “Arise.” Arise from the drowning waters of baptism to a new life where you have been “sealed, as Christ’s own forever.” Arise to a new life where forgiveness heals guilt and hope conquers despair. Arise and become part of a life that will not cease when your heart stops beating, but will continue on into God’s eternity.
Faith in Jesus won’t solve all your troubles. But it will solve the biggest one of all.
When he tells our faithful heart, “Arise,” Jesus lifts us from our isolation from God and one another … set free by his resurrection. We are family.
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the later day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. (BCP, p. 469)
He is holding out his hand … to you and me. “Arise!”