Sermon manuscript:
Probably none of you have seen someone resurrected from the
dead. Sometimes you hear unusual stories about people’s hearts stopping for a
period of time, and then they are revived. I’ve never heard of someone being
revived after they are placed into the morgue or in a coffin.
That’s what happened one day, though, on the outskirts of a
town called Nain. A sad scene was unfolding there. A young man had died. He was
his mother’s only child. She was a widow. A lonely future was in store for her.
But Jesus saw her miserable plight and had compassion on
her. He was going to help her in an unheard of way. Just as we are unfamiliar
with any resuscitation of someone long dead, so it was then too. Jesus used the
authority that he had as God’s Son. He restarted the young man’s heart so that
it began to pump life-giving blood again. He healed all those cells and tissues
that had been damaged or destroyed by natural processes of death and
decomposition. The gray sunken cheeks of the dead turned pink and lively. The
boy sat up in the coffin and began to speak. Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Luke does not tell us anything about the mother’s reaction. That
had to be quite something. The death of a child is so painful. We can hardly
bear it. It would be cruel to prolong that pain by hoping for a resurrection in
this life. Only a tiny handful of people have been resurrected in this life
such as we hear about in this case and a few others from the Bible. So she had
to have been beyond surprised. I’m kind of amazed that she didn’t have a heart
attack and die. It must have been so shocking.
We like shocking and unusual things. They are able to hold
our interest. Many people at Jesus’s time liked to see the unusual things he
did. The people at Nain enjoyed seeing the man raised to life. The people who
were fed with the five loaves and two fishes followed him around, waiting for
him to do another miracle. The Pharisees were always wanting Jesus to do signs
to confirm his teachings, which they found strange. Herod was glad to see Jesus
on the day Jesus died because he was hoping to see him do something unusual.
But people are fickle. If they are not constantly
entertained with new and interesting things they go in search of other things
to do. This is what seems to have happened also with Jesus. After Jesus
ascended into heaven, but before Pentecost, the believers gathered together. It
says in Acts that there were about 120 of them. 120! Where were the 5,000 from
the feeding of the 5,000? Where were the 4,000 from the feeding of the 4,000?
Where were the people from Nain? Where were the crowds who were singing Hosanna
not too many weeks before that on Palm Sunday? People are fickle.
So it is to this day. Grander things than what took place at
Nain happen in the midst of this congregation, but few believe it. Few
appreciate it. The young man who was raised from the dead was resurrected
physically and temporarily. He went back to being the young man that he was
before. In that way it is similar to those Emergency Room resuscitations. He
was returned to the life that he had been living.
I say that there are grander things that take place among
us. The cure that Jesus works among us is deeper and gets down to the very
foundations. There is a death and a resurrection that already happens in our
midst with Baptism. Paul says, “Do you not know that when you were baptized,
you were baptized into the death of Christ?” He flatly states in another
place: “You have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” This
death, however, is not just any ordinary death. It is the saving, atoning death
of Jesus—that is the death that we have died in with our baptism. Jesus’s death
is the death that brought an end to death. And, again, as Paul says, if we have
been united with him in his death, then we are certainly united with him for
the resurrection.
Here with baptism we are not just dealing with superficial, physical
dying and rising. We are dealing with the soul and spirit. The cure reaches
deeper. We are not just brought back to life so that we can continue to enjoy
the created things of this world. We are brought back to life in order to enjoy
life with the Creator himself. That’s what God’s Word says.
Let me finish one of the quotations I started just a moment
ago. Paul says, “You have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in
God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him
in glory.” Paul is talking about the new heavens and the new earth. The
glory that he speaks of is God’s own glory—the glory that the Bible says no man
may see and live. This is something far more profound and long-lasting and
unexpected than what happens at Nain. The resurrection of Baptism allows
someone who is otherwise a sinner to see God, and enjoy seeing God. But people
are fickle.
Suppose we did an experiment. On the one hand we could offer
the spectacle of Baptism. We would baptize someone and that person would be
killed and resurrected spiritually and made a partaker of everlasting life.
That’s the one option we could offer. What if, on the other hand, we offered to
raise somebody from the dead physically? We would make a cold, stiff corpse sit
up and begin to speak. For which of these shows do you think we could sell more
tickets? You already know the answer. Baptisms are a dime a dozen. They don’t
even cost any money. Bringing back somebody from the dead, however, is rare. It
must be much more valuable.
We could apply this same reasoning to many things that take
place within the Christian Church. I’ve met a Pentecostal or two who have told
me that if I really wanted to be effective I should try speaking in tongues.
Perhaps you’ve seen some preachers on TV who lay hands on the sick and they
shake convulsively and roll around on the ground. These kinds of things are
unusual. Thus they can hold the interest of fickle people—at least for a while.
But can these things hold a candle to God’s Work in Baptism or in the Lord’s
Supper? These are the deep and everlasting cures for sinners.
Allow me to make one more application along these lines. It’s
a little more subtle, so bear with me. We know that when we have died and been
raised with Christ we have been set free from the devil and the lusts of our
flesh. We are to make progress in crucifying our old Adam and doing the good
works that God has prepared for us to walk in.
But all too often we find that Christians don’t live up to
that. Sinners in the Christian Church
are a dime a dozen. Saints, on the
other hand, are rare. And so it is only natural for our reason to go after
these rare saints. They must be really something. They are rare. We want to be
rare and unusual. So which would you rather be: The successful Christian who
has smacked down one sin after another and shown the world who’s boss, or the
frustrated Christian who’s always needing to be forgiven?
Martin Luther was very fond of saying that our reason is
totally blind when it comes to spiritual matters. He was totally right! What we
think is not what God thinks. What we think will work is not what God does.
What God actually does we think is not that good of an idea. Haven’t you
thought, at one time or another, that we could do things better for growing the
church than baptism or the Lord’s Supper? Haven’t you occasionally thought (and
be honest!) that some things that the Bible teaches are really off-putting, and
we shouldn’t talk about them if we hope to have the church grow?
But think of Jesus. What more could possibly have done to
grow the church? He did all kinds of unusual, interesting things. He cast out
demons. He healed the sick. He performed one miracle after another. But after
his ascension into heaven and before Pentecost ten days later there were only
about 120 who were congregated to hear Peter preach. Where were the 5,000?
Where were the 4,000? Where were the people from the town of Nain?
This shows that faith is not a matter of impressing people’s
reason. It’s not a matter of putting on a show or winning debates. Faith is
created by the Holy Spirit when and where he chooses among those who hear the
Gospel. It is not a matter of our striving, of our figuring out the right
methods. It is a matter of God’s choosing. God chooses those whom he will save.
To those whom he has chosen he will preach the Gospel. He baptizes. He
distributes Holy Communion. Those whom God has chosen will believe it. Those
who have been blinded by the god of this world will follow their preferences
for something else.
So do not be led astray into believing that what is common
and offered to all is ineffectual because we get bored by things that are
common. There’s nothing more common in the Christian Church than baptism. We’ve
all been baptized. There’s nothing more common than the Lord’s Supper. We have
it almost every week. But what matters is not what we might think about these
things, but rather what God does through them. He kills our old Adam and
resurrects us with Jesus in Baptism. He gives us the salutary, that is,
beneficial, gift of Christ’s body and blood that forgives our sins and increases
our faith towards him and our fervent love towards one another. Whether Jesus
should do these things many times or only a few times doesn’t change what is
actually going on. What’s actually going on is up to him, regardless of how we
might feel about it.
Consider the way that Jesus raises this young man from the
dead. Everybody was astounded by it because it was so unusual. What if the
people didn’t have that reaction? What if they were totally bored? Would that
in any way change what Jesus did by raising the dead man? If Jesus wants to
raise the dead man, then the dead man is going to be raised. Whether a person
is impressed by that or not doesn’t change what he does.
The same thing is true with what we have been talking about
today. I’ve told you that something deeper and more fundamental takes place in
our midst than what took place at Nain. I’ve not said this because I’ve been
trying to impress you. I’ve said this to you simply because it is the truth. It
is what Jesus and his apostles teach. Whether you are impressed or excited is
beside the point. What matters is that Jesus does what Jesus does. If he wants
to heal you through baptism so that you can happily live together with God in
his glory, then that is just what he will do. How you feel about that doesn’t
undo what Jesus does. Jesus does what he wants.
But the devil most certainly does not want us to believe in
Jesus, in the Gospel, or in the Holy Sacraments. He wants us to believe in
things that won’t work—things that can’t deliver salvation. And if he can make
us believe in churchy kinds of things, then that’s all the better for him,
because it puts a veneer of piety on those things that cannot save sinners.
Don’t be fooled by him into believing in things that don’t
work. God has told you what works. Believe in those things. The fact that they
are a dime a dozen shouldn’t deter you. If anything, the way that they are so
common, points to the fact that they are genuine. After all, isn’t God’s grace
such that he gives it out unbelievably liberally? Doesn’t he cause the rain to
fall on both the just and the unjust? Doesn’t he open his hand and satisfy the
desires of every living thing? It is no surprise, therefore, that we should find
our God busily ruling in his spiritual kingdom, bringing about resurrection and
everlasting life here, there, and everywhere, by forgiving sinners for Jesus’s
sake.
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