The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. (Luke 7:15)
I like the sound of that, don’t you? And Jesus gave him to his mother. It’s a happy ending to this selection from the gospel of Luke – a mother, widowed, now grieving the loss of her only child – her only son, especially, has him restored to her.
The stories of Jesus raising the dead have long provided material for discussion from all kinds of people. In the early church, the ability to raise the dead was seen as the sign of highest holiness that a person could attain. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, the movement arose that began to discount everything miraculous that happened in the bible – healings, feedings, exorcisms, but most of all, the raising of the dead. Scholar poured over the texts, and countless other reasons were presented: the people weren’t actually dead; they were sleeping, comatose, pretending. The same claims were extended to the resurrection of Christ, as well, that Jesus wasn’t actually dead when he was carried down from the cross; he had fainted, or was dead, but had a twin brother that no one knew about who then began to act in this place.
The idea, the possibility of the dead being raised is an idea that lingers very closely to all of our hearts. The thought that Jesus really would “give us back” a loved one who has died is sometimes the only hope that can keep us going.
Back a number of years ago, I knew a family, in which the father had taken very ill. Now, this wasn’t a particularly ‘churchy’ family – they didn’t go to church, except Christmas and sometimes Easter – and were not involved in anything that hinted of religion.
But shortly after a very grim prognosis, the father’s illness dissipated, then disappeared entirely. The rest of a family made a very public show – they threw a party – at which they proclaimed the ‘miracle’ of his recovery told anyone who would listen that “they kept the faith, and God healed him.” I remember thinking at the time, but what would have happened if he’d died? That family still didn’t become members of a church community, still didn’t act any differently. But they still talked about the father’s recovery as if they’d done something particularly well, and his recovery had simply been their due.
And I remember also a couple that I met when I was a student in a clinical pastoral education program, basically a student chaplain at a hospital in Saskatoon. Wonderful couple. Tremendous faith – sang hymns together in his room, I came in once or twice and interrupted her reading the bible to him. The bible had been given them on their wedding day, they told me, and they’d read from it nightly since then. 37 years.
He’d been admitted to hospital for a fairly simply surgery – a benign cyst on his neck that needed to be removed. Very simple. Should have been in and out, a couple of days of soreness, and that’s it.
But that wasn’t it. An infection – hospitals, it seems, are very dirty places to be sick – that very quickly went out of control. Isolation ward. Immobility. Intubation. Intensive care. Palliative care. His larynx and part of his throat were removed in hopes of stopping the infection; his once-strong voice was silenced forever.
Throughout all of this, I stopped by about every other day to see how they were. As you would expect, I prayed with them – after all, what else do chaplains do? But I always asked them what they would like to pray for.
At the beginning, it was nothing less than total, complete recovery. They were not going to accept anything else from God. They were faithful. God was good. End of story.
Then, they asked for healing, then for patience. Then for mercy. At last, for peace. Jesus, it seemed, was not inclined to give back a husband.
So what is it with the bible and healing? Why in two stories today do we read and hear about Jesus raising someone’s son from the dead? If this is such a central place in our faith, why don’t we do it all the time?
Like all stories in scripture, though, there is a meaning beneath the obvious of these stories, a meaning that has a great deal to do with how Jesus comes to our lives in general, and doesn’t just raise a few particular people from the dead.
The societies in which Jesus and Elijah lived were very similar. Both were kinship-oriented: your social standing was based on your family; it’s size, it’s influence, in particularly the number of sons that you had. The society was dominated by men; women were at best, property, and at worst, chattel.
For those two widows to lose their sons, meant that they lost their lives, as well. With no male members of their families to provide for them, and no husband, they were now homeless, destitute, and without hope.
When God restored their sons, they received not just their children back – but their whole, entire lives. Their futures, their hope. In a very real, physical way, both women received their salvation from God.
But at the same time, both these stories still sting those people who lost loved ones, especially children, at any time. Suffering and loss remain two irreversible realities in our lives today. Even though we are materially blessed, money doesn’t make the death of someone we love any easier to bear. We want them back, now, and preferably with a signed explanation of why God would choose them.
But sometimes I think that’s a flaw in how we perceive our relationships. We don’t own the people we love – though when they die, we often take it personally, as an affront. But even as Christians, we miss one fairly crucial aspect of our own religious heritage – we are a religion born out of death. We believe – we confess -- that God died. That one particular idea made Christianity the laughingstock of ancient Rome; the idea that God could be frail enough to die, especially on a cross – that was laughable. It was ludicrous
But then why did Christianity keep growing?
In the early years of the church, wild rumours circulated about this strange group of Jews and Gentiles who followed this “Jesus”. People said that the early Christians were cannibals – that they ate the flesh and the blood of someone. But some of the rumours were truly wild: that once someone wanted to be a member of this religion, they were killed, then raised from the dead.
But yet we still do that. God still raises the dead, because every person here who is baptized has been raised. Baptism is not a gentle sprinkling with a few drops of water for a good picture: it is the sacrament by which we are joined with Christ in his death, so that we may share in his resurrection.
In our baptism – in everyone’s baptism, God gives us everything: live, hope, and truth. In the words of our liturgy, “child of God, you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever” – those are not empty promises. They are spoken in truth.
As a parent, I found my children’s baptisms to be surprisingly hard, because they were, to me, stark reminders that I had invited my children into a world of sorrow and suffering, of joy and pain, of sickness and health – but most of all, a world of death. But also a world into which Christ promises us that death is not the final end.
We trust that promise each time we bring our shattered lives, our broken hearts, our anger, our depression, our deepest
hurts to the table of the Lord and hear His sure and certain words: "This is my body and this is my blood given and shed for you!"
We are people made of clay. Life is breathed into us through our relationships – with each other, and with God. God, who promises to sustain us through this life is the same one who will greet us in the life to come – when all things on this world are ended, and we come to experience the kingdom of God that is within all us – formed in our baptism, nurtured through the Lord’s Supper, and sustained in our own Christian community.
Let us pray: Lord Christ, you came into the world as one of us, and suffered as we do. As we go through the trials of life, help us to realize that you are with us at all times and in all things; that we have no secrets from you; and that your loving grace enfolds us for eternity. In the security of your embrace we pray.
Amen.
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