October 2, 2022 Trinity 16 The Sunday Jesus Raises the Widow’s Son at Nain

Trinity 16
Luke 7:11-17
October 2, 2022

There’s a time to weep and a time to laugh. With Christ, a funeral is time for both.

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

Today Jesus is at a funeral so that’s where we’re going to go. Two weeks ago He was at a leper colony. Last week He was outside with the birds and lilies. Today He’s walking up to the town of Nain and there’s a funeral coming out of town. So we’re going to go to funerals today with Jesus. I’d ask you today to think back to the funerals you’ve been to in your life thus far and we’re going to look back at all of them with Christ there with us. Then I’d ask you to look forward in time to all the funerals coming including our very own and we’re going to take Christ to them with us. We’re going to see every single funeral of our lives with Jesus Christ sitting right beside us.

First I’m going to ask you to remember all the crying of funerals and look ahead to all the crying. And we’re not going to avoid that crying or ignore that weeping or try to stifle it. We’re going to hit it head on and cry our eyes out because God is preaching a very important sermon to us in that crying and weeping. Death is absolutely a time for weeping,

But secondly we’re going to hear another sermon from One who’s stronger than death—who is Life Himself in the flesh, Jesus Christ, the mighty conquering Lion—and He’s going to be at every funeral with us, not just this one funeral in the town of Nain, and He’s going to give us reason to laugh and rejoice. Because with Christ, death is also absolutely a time for rejoicing.

First the crying. Please don’t misunderstand what happens when Jesus goes up to this funeral procession and tells the mother, “Do not weep.” This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be crying. This certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cry at a funeral. That’s not at all the point of Jesus’s words. He only tells her not to cry in this instance because He’s about to raise her son from the dead and we’ll get to that part in a minute. We’ll get to the “not crying” part. But please don’t take this to mean that you shouldn’t cry at a funeral. You should cry at a funeral. And if you need the absolute proof, then look at Jesus Himself in John 11 when His friend Lazarus has died and Jesus weeps.

We should cry because death and funerals are preaching a very hard sermon to us. A sermon that we need to hear. God is speaking to us at every funeral saying, “Look at your sin and where it leads. The wages of sin is death. This is what all this sin in the world and in your heart leads to. This casket. Dust to dust and ash to ashes.” I remember very clearly hearing that sermon from God when I was a kid and was attending the funerals of my grandparents and some other relatives. I can remember very clearly, as I’m sure many of you can, sitting in church pews during visitations and funerals crying because of the horror of it. That they had died and I wouldn’t see them on this earth again. And that sermon stings. It pulls tears out of you. And it should. We shouldn’t avoid it. We should listen to that sermon from God and we should cry and weep.

Now what’s happening today with funerals in our culture is that we’re trying to avoid, as much as possible, listening to that sermon of death. We’re trying to avoid funerals and crying and visitations and gravesides. Now I’m going to talk about something right now that I think is very, very important. We’re starting to go wrong in our society when it comes to funerals. But I was quite nervous to talk about this today because I know some of you will take it to heart so much that you might even think I’m talking about you specifically and some funeral you had a part in and that I’m saying you did wrong. Please let me tell you that I am NOT talking about any one of you in here specifically and how you handled a funeral. I’ve been there with so many of you when you’ve planned funerals for your loved ones. What’s done is done and God knows your heart. If you did something in the past that needs forgiveness, then know that God does forgive you. But I’m not talking about any specific funeral of anyone in this Church.

But I want to speak generally, not specifically. Generally about how we’re all starting to treat funerals. I’ve asked a number of funeral directors about this and they’ve all confirmed it. That today we’re trying to avoid dealing with death. We’re trying to circumvent the weeping of funerals. Either we cremate our loved one and have no services at all of any kind. Just ask some funeral directors about how many cremated remains that are out there in funeral homes or elsewhere. They’re just sitting there waiting because the family doesn’t want to deal with the reality of it.

Or maybe we cremate and say, “Well, we’ll have a service some time down the road when we can get everyone together. When it works for everyone’s schedules.” A funeral director in another state told me about a family who had the ashes of their loved one waiting at the funeral home until a later time when they were planning to rent a big coach bus and drive to Las Vegas for a big gambling trip. And they’d take the ashes along with them. That was how they wanted to deal with death and funeral. Wash the thought away with gambling and drinking.

Or we don’t want to deal with the crying part so we try to make it look like a party instead. We change the name, call it a celebration of life (which in itself the name isn’t the issue). And then we have it somewhere besides a church or funeral home so that it doesn’t feel or look like death or a funeral.

Now we’re shortening up visitations or not having a visitation at all (which, of course, in certain cases I do understand and appreciate but is the overall pattern really a good thing?) Let’s all stop and think what we would lose if we never did visitations again. And then we might even skip the funeral service altogether and only just do a graveside or maybe no service at all.

This general move we’re making with funerals in America isn’t good. Not at all. We’re trying to avoid the crying. The sadness. We’re trying to drown out the preaching God is doing to us that no one is righteous. No, not one. That all of us have fallen short of the glory of God and the wages is death. We’re trying to avoid the hard sadness of visitations and funerals and gravesides and burials. But we shouldn’t. We need that sermon and sadness. We need that time to cry. It’s good for all of us. Remember those funerals where you’ve cried. That was good and right.

Remember this poor woman at the town of Nain, whose husband has died, and now who only son, a young man, has died. Remember her tears. Her loneliness. Her sadness and grief. She didn’t skip the ceremony. She needed the ceremony. She needed to cry.

And then before all go throwing out visitations completely and funerals completely and gravesides completely and try to turn funerals only into parties—let’s all stop and give it due consideration. We need those times. We need to sit in the pews and hear God preaching the sermon of our mortality to us. We need to cry and weep and lament. Death is a time for weeping.

Now, secondly, if we don’t take the time to weep, then we just might not meet Him who comes to wipe the tears from eyes. Now if we don’t take the time to cry at the funeral service, then we just might miss Him who comes there to sit beside us. Now if we don’t stare death right in the face at the cemetery, then we might not hear Him who’s shouting, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Now if we don’t stand over the casket at the graveside we might not hear Him who says, “I am the resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in Me, though He die, yet shall He live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

We’ve got to go the funeral and the visitation and the graveside—because Jesus is there! And besides the sermon of weeping we need to hear the sermon of laughing and rejoicing. We need to hear them both together. We need to stand with St. John in Revelation chapter 5 as he weeps and weeps and then the elder says to him, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered!”

The Lion! If you don’t go to the funeral, you might miss the Lion! And you don’t want to miss the Lion. I know not all of you have read the Chronicles of Narnia books by C. S. Lewis. And that’s okay. But there’s something truly magical about the Lion Aslan who rules over Narnia. That Lion Aslan is Jesus who walks beside the people of Narnia when they’re weeping and crying and lonely. And there’s something powerful when that Lion roars.

If you don’t go to the visitation and funeral and burial, then you might not hear the Lion’s roar. I want you to all to hear the Lion’s roar. When the Lion roars, death is no more.

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When He bares his teeth, winter meets it death,

And we he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

“Aslan stood up and when he opened his mouth to roar…they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind.”

(Both quotes from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

Weep no more; behold, the Lion has conquered! And if you miss the funeral and the weeping, you might miss His roar. He roared at Nain that day when He met this funeral procession and when He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And death and the devil cowered away to the corner before Jesus.

The mighty one roared on Easter morning when He burst forth from death to life. And we go to funeral and visitations so that we, amidst our crying, can hear Him roaring. With tears on our cheeks we see the pastor standing by the casket just as Jesus stood by the casket in Nain and we hear Jesus roaring, “I am the resurrection and the Life!” With tears in our eyes we stand at the graveside and hear Jesus roaring, “O death, where’s your victory?” With sadness and loneliness in our hearts we hear Jesus roaring, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Allelulia!” We sing and laugh and rejoice because the Lion has conquered.

Look at the power and strength of Jesus. Look at Him stop death in its tracks right outside the town of Nain and say, “No! I say to you, ‘Arise!’” Look at Him roar. Don’t skip the funeral and the visitation and the weeping and the crying because Jesus is there. The one who wipes away every tear from your eyes. Mighty as a Lion and yet gentle as a loving cat.

Every funeral, including this own at the town of Nain, is preparing us for that one great and final graveside when the Lion Jesus will stand over our graves once and for all and roar, “Arise!” And then weeping will be gone. Now we weep and we laugh.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.