Second Sunday after Pentecost

June 6, 2010

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Marcus Pera

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (Luke 7:11-17)

Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people.” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

The Gospel of our Lord.

In the name of Jesus, sisters and brothers, grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Amen.

As some of you undoubtedly know, the church year is divided into the festival half and the non‑festival half. We have just finished the festival half, obviously, the festivals of Christmas, Easter, Epiphany, Pentecost, and, last Sunday, Holy Trinity. And now we begin what’s called “long green season,” the non-festival half, in which we talk about the life and growth of our own individual lives and that of the church.

We had a conversation in our staff meeting two weeks ago about how we identify on the June calendar the Sundays in June, since this was a June communication. The liturgical scholars have varied on how those have been identified. For example, at one point it was the Sundays after Trinity, and then it was the Sundays after Pentecost. And then there is a reference also to ordinary time and Propers, whatever the Sunday is. I think in your service folder today it’s titled the “Time after Pentecost,” and then the Proper Sunday that it is.

But I kind of like ordinary time because that is kind of where we typically live out our life and our existence, and I think we can relate it to our everyday life as well. Most days are ordinary days for us. But we celebrate big events, do we not? There is a 60th wedding anniversary celebration today. We celebrate birthdays; we celebrate reunions; we celebrate graduations, that we recall these days as well. And what do we do at those times? We kind of dress up; we do things that are special.

We do the same thing in the church calendar. We do those special services during that festival half. We have processions; we have extra music, and dress accordingly. We also chant the liturgy. All of these things are ways to lift up these services in a very festive and celebrative manner. But that doesn’t mean that these ordinary ones are not important and are not planned for with excellence. To be sure, they are important, but they’re ordinary to our life and they have a different feeling and not as high perhaps an emotional flavor with them. It is certainly true that the lessons for this day, though, don’t necessarily listen to that fact. For example, the lessons for today are not ordinary at all. They involve two resurrections, two people coming back from the dead. What we want to do this day is to look at that and talk about how God gives our life back to us; God giving our life back to us.

You recall many times, and I have referred to it, it was Karl Barth who said that you should approach a sermon with a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other hand. And this week surely was one of those weeks. In fact, you hardly heard about the Afghan or the Iraqi war because of the other stuff that was going on; one of the big ones, of course, being in the Mid-East and what had happened in the Gaza strip, and all the reaction that was related to that. Not the least of one of them was, here is this perfect game that was pitched, except for the umpire on the last out of the 9th inning. Certainly, there were still reverberations from the North Korean event. But the interesting one happened in and continues with the Gulf Coast, and the statement that was made by the CEO, Tony Hayward, when he said he was looking forward to getting his life back. And people said, “Excuse me?” “Excuse me. Aren’t the fisheries, and the restaurants, and the tourist trade, and the ecosystem, and all of the birds and whatever, aren’t they looking at getting their life back, and maybe that should be first?” Yes, looking to get our life back.

This week, I also had a conversation with a former classmate of mine, who is out in Colorado. And in our conversation, he happened to have a son that has struggled with a disease of alcoholism. And he said he was asked to preach in a place this coming Sunday, the classmate, and talk about how that also connected with and do theologizing about that, especially with the Propers for this day, the raising of the widow’s son at Nain.

And then he made reference to a book by Jim Nelson, who is a prof. at United Seminary, where I had my offices the last two years. And he mentioned the book, and I was sufficiently intrigued by it that I went and checked it out—I still had a library card from there—and looked at it. One of the things that Jim Nelson was doing in there was equating a lot or making at least several references to “resurrection,” as it talked about his experience with now being a recovering alcoholic. And the interesting thing that he pointed to—which undoubtedly we have heard before, but to hear it in that context was important—and that is that resurrection happens in the ordinariness of life; that the post-resurrection experiences of Jesus were on the beach, was around breakfast, were asking people if they were catching any fish, were at a walk out in the desert, and certainly over supper. In all of these resurrection appearing and happenings, people that from dead spots in their life experiencing in the now the resurrection of new life in their being.

And then we ask ourselves the same question, “How does that relate to us?” We look at many situations in our own life where we could have made different decisions or we could have gone in different directions, or we just plain flubbed it. We look at ways in which we have experienced things that are random and how they happen and unfold for our lives, and they create other dud spots within our being. And we look to how we are going to get our life back as well, in the variety of ways that we experience it.

Well, how does life come back? God gives life back, according to these lessons. We look at the first one, and we need some background because the section that was read out of Kings simply is the conclusion of the story. Let me quickly try to refer to the fact that Elijah, the prophet of God, was living and a prophet in the northern kingdom, the northern kingdom of Israel; and there was also a southern kingdom. And at that time King Ahab married someone by the name of Jezebel, whose name I think you have heard before. And Jezebel brought with her worship of Baal and prophets of Baal. And so there was temple prostitution and, not only that, there was much idolatry in the land. And Elijah spoke for God and said there is going to be a drought in the land. And then he himself went off. They were going to go get him. He himself went off and was at this brook of Cherish, where the ravens fed him, and also there was water, but this wadi also dried up. And so then he went on to Zarephath, and there he met this widow with a son. And there he had asked if he could have—she was gathering wood in order to, in effect, prepare the last super for them; that is all the food she had—and he asked if he could be part of that meal. And she, in a remarkable aspect of her generosity of hospitality, responded. And then he said to her that he would make sure that they didn’t run out of food. And so every day the oil and the grain were there for them to be fed.

And it was after some time then that this boy died. And the widow was angry, and she said, “Is that why you came here?” You can’t blame her for being angry. And Elijah was angry. He was angry at God. “What’s the deal?” He went up to the son; he talked with God. He expressed his feelings toward God. He invoked God’s presence to do something about it, laid on the child and, through Elijah, breath came back into the son, and the son was given his life back. And Elijah said, “Here, take your son.”

In the second one, there is the story of Jesus. And this is a crazy story in the sense that, can you imagine going out here on Snelling and there’s a funeral procession, and somebody walks out and stops the procession and stops the hearse, and then goes to the back of it and opens the door and touches the coffin, and then sees the mother in her pity and in her sorrow, and then speaks to her. But not only that, he raises, because of his compassion, the person from its death. He gives life back to the person again.

Now, how does God do this giving of life back? There are interesting aspects to this story. On the one hand, the sense, the notion, the word “compassion” is so important in this. The Greek word, and I say it because the word “onomatopoeic,” it sounds like the way it means, “spagkhnozomai,” “spagkhno,” the gut, the feeling, the seed of emotion. Jesus felt this for the widow. Two other times in Luke the word is used. This is a word used when the Good Samaritan was the one that showed pity on the person on the way to Jericho, the Good Samaritan in that text. And the other incident is with the prodigal son, and the father showing compassion. Now, this woman certainly was in need of compassion. There were three different ways in which she was in a terrible situation. First of all, she was a woman in that culture. A woman in that culture was property and didn’t have a voice. She had her security through her husband, but she was a widow, so she did not have that security. And the third count was, she had a son at least who would be able to finally work and be able to support and care for her. But now the son has died as well. Jesus has compassion, loving compassion, for this widow, and raises the son because of that loving compassion.

The second aspect of his response in this thing was, he gives, in both instances, Elijah to the widow in the Old Testament story, and Jesus giving the child and saying, “Take your child, your son.” Obviously, the people, being dead, did not bring anything to that action of God. It is clearly an action of God’s unconditional love, compassionate love, and grace for God’s people. And God gives them back their life.

When we look at that and say to ourselves, “How do we get back our life? How do we get back our life in order that we experience this resurrected presence of Jesus?” Well, there are several ways that happens. It’s happened in our baptism. We’ll experience that in a little while this day. It certainly happens also every week when we gather around this altar, the resurrected presence of Jesus Christ. “Here I am. Take, eat. I give my life back to you. I raised you once again from the deadness and the dead spots in your life, and I come to you with the promise that that resurrection that is now in the kingdom that is unfolding and is to come will have its fullness.” And now we shape and now we construct and now we live our life in a different way.

Yes, in a few moments, we baptize Estelle. Paul said it in that way, “We are buried with Christ by baptism unto death, but out of that death we are raised again to a newness of life in him; a newness of life.

This may be an ordinary Sunday, but a couple of resurrections aren’t all that ordinary, are they? Not bad for an ordinary Sunday.

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

(This is an unedited transcription of a tape-recorded sermon given by Pastor Pera.)