Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

When you see the word, “behold,” in a biblical text, it means that something important or something unusual is taking place. The Holy Spirit is telling you to take note. We find this word once in our Gospel text. Without looking, I’d like you to try to remember which part of the story is prefaced by “behold.” Jesus approaches the city of Nain. A dead man is being carried out for burial, the only son of a widow. A large crowd is with her. Jesus tells her, “Stop crying.” He touches the coffin and bids the young man arise. The dead man sits up and begins speaking. Jesus gives him back to his mother, and the crowd rejoices. Which of these statements begins with the command, “behold”? Which of these is so shocking, so unusual, that we are instructed to pay attention and carefully consider what is taking place?

Perhaps you would expect it to be, “and, behold, the dead man sat up and began to speak!” Wow! Incredible! Amazing! A miracle! But this is not where the word is found. Go ahead at look at your bulletin now. At that time: Jesus went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out (Lk 7:11–12).

What is so striking about a dead man being carried out? Funerals happen all the time. Death is all around us. People often say that death is part of life. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s part of the circle of life, right? Wrong. Death is a most evil, most terrible, most unnatural intrusion into the order of God’s perfect creation. Death is the violent rending of body from soul. There is a reason we are so unsettled by seeing a corpse or human skeleton. We were not created for this. It was never God’s intention. It was not supposed to be this way. There should have been no such thing as a widow. A mother should never have had to bury her child. In fact, children were not supposed to bury their parents or grandparents. According to God’s original design, every one of your ancestors should still be alive on earth at this moment, all the way back to Adam and Eve. Imagine that!

We have become so accustomed to living in the horror that we have created, surrounded by death on every side, that the Holy Spirit must go out of His way to remind us that this is not normal. Behold, a dead man was being carried out! Pay attention, sit up and take notice, listen carefully. Behold, things are not the way God intended them to be!

If you think that you hate death, consider how much more God must hate it—so much so that He entered His own creation as a man in order to slay death. Consider what you would willingly and gladly suffer for the sake of your children or grandchildren. Would you go without food if it meant that they would not be hungry? Would you give every earthly possession in necessary for your child’s sake? Would you give up your own life if it meant that your granddaughter would live? Of course, you would. And if you being evil desire to give good gifts to your children, how much more does your heavenly Father desire to give good gifts to you? This is the desire that motivated God to send His only Son into our world, to suffer death in order that we might live eternally.

Jesus saw the woman who should never have been a widow on her way to bury her only son, and His heart was moved with compassion. The Greek word for compassion here calls to mind that visceral, gut-churning, sinking emotion where it seems as though your insides are all tied in knots. This is the compassion that Jesus felt when he saw this woman. And it’s not just this poor widow and her dead son that Jesus saw. In them He saw every member of the human race: poor, miserable sinners that we are, lost and condemned creatures, suffering the just wages of sin, as sheep without a shepherd, justly consigned to death from the moment of birth. He saw you, and he saw me, and His heart churned within him, moved with compassion. He saw all the horror of sorrow and sickness, death and disease, wrapped up into this one moment that should never have been. Behold, a dead man was being carried out!

And moved with compassion, Jesus touched the open coffin…and He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother (Lk 7:14–15). This is the part of the story where we would have expected to find the incredulous language. Behold! The dead man sat up! Amazing! Incredible! A miracle! But no—the Holy Spirit relates this portion in a deliberately understated way. No surprises here. No exclamation points. No exhortations to pay attention to what happens next. Jesus simply tells the dead man to get up, and he does. Of course, the dead man sits up. It’s the most natural thing in the world. What else could he do at the voice of Jesus?

Jesus said, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live” (Jn 5:25). Dead people don’t have the ability to do anything. It’s one of the problems with being dead. But there is one thing dead people can do. It’s a passive ability, to be sure, but it is an ability: dead people can hear the voice of the Son of God. When He speaks the dead arise, just as surely as the sun rises in the east and day follows night. Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak.

In this moment we see a glimpse of the future that awaits every one of us, should our Lord tarry. Yes, one day your family and friends will place you in a casket, and they will carry your body out to be placed in its grave. But that will not be the end, because the day is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. At your death your spirit will immediately be with Christ, but your body will lie in slumber awaiting His voice. And at the moment of His coming, the most natural thing in the world will happen: you will hear, and you will rise. The raising of the widow’s son was an anticipation of the day of the resurrection of all flesh. But that coming day will be far, far greater. The widow’s son was raised and given back to his mother. But he had been returned back into this sinful, broken world, where he would suffer and grow old and feeble and be returned once more to his grave. But on the glorious day that is coming, you and every other believer in Christ will be raised incorruptible, raised never to die again, raised with a glorified and perfected body like unto our Lord Jesus.

When the widow’s son was raised, death still had dominion. It still held all humanity enthralled in its iron grip. Our Lord’s work upon this broken world was not yet accomplished. But soon He would speak the words from His cross that marked the end of death’s cruel reign: “It is finished!” Even so, another widow would soon be weeping at the death of her son: Mary, the mother of God, standing at the foot of the cross, following along as they carried her Son to His grave. But death, that unnatural intrusion into God’s redeemed creation, could not contain Jesus. The grave could not hold Him. Christ is risen, and at the sound of His voice, we too shall be raised. As surely as Jesus walked out of His tomb, so we who have heard His voice in life shall hear His voice in death, and follow His footsteps out of our graves and into eternal life. And even though this will be the most natural thing in the new heaven and new earth, it will still be a sight to behold. Amen.