TITLE: “Arise”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the raising of the widow of Nain’s son, with focus on the words, He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”

There is a time for everything, as our new hymn today proclaims. There is a time to live and a time to die. And you can tell quite a bit about a culture and about a nation by how the view death. Every culture and time has different practices about death and funerals. In some cultures, the practices around funerals are very ornate. There is a wake. You dress a certain way, sometimes for weeks in a row. Certain music is sung or not sung. It can be a very formal affair. Perhaps you remember when Princess Diana died a few years ago, and the funeral that accompanied it. It can be quite elaborate.

Now in Jesus’ day, the number one custom of the day was that you did not touch the body, or the casket, no matter what. It meant you were ritually unclean, almost like some of the stench of death would rub off on you. It was the one thing that you would never do as a pious Jew. They feared death, anything associated with it. So to touch a coffin would be the ultimate faux paus, the ultimate scandal of the day. But the Lord of Life is Lord over even death itself.

Jesus sees this poor widow coming out of the city. The mourners are with her, crying over her dead son. For with his death, her future was gone as well. In Jewish culture, property could only be held by a either the husband or a son, never by a woman. Her life was hard and bitter as a widow, and the death of her son, well, it meant that all of her possessions, everything she and her husband had worked toward for so many years, that it would all be lost. She grieved for her son. She grieved for herself. It was a sad state of affairs. She was helpless. It was as if she were dead herself.

Then Jesus meets them at the gate of the city. He is moved with compassion for her. His heart bleeds for her, as we would say. He has sympathy for her and her plight. But Jesus’ sympathy goes beyond what you and I can feel. He takes her pain and loss into Himself. And because Jesus’ love for her was so great, He takes her dead son’s death into Himself as well.

Let me explain. Jesus walks up to them and touches the coffin. They are stunned. They are so stunned that the funeral procession grinds to a halt right then and there. No one touches a coffin. No one touches a dead person. It meant that Jesus was unclean. He took on the man’s death, and now everything Jesus would touch would be unclean.

But not so with the Son of God and the Lord of Life. Young man, I say to you, arise. And the one who was dead sat up and began to speak. Jesus had reversed the order of things. Instead of taking on the man’s death and shame, the man takes on Jesus’ life!

In Lutheran theology we call this the Great Exchange. Jesus takes on our death and we take on His life. It is one of the greatest and most comforting messages that God can give to you, for it shows that God is not satisfied to leave you where you are. For you are in the coffin with this young man of Nain. You are dead in trespasses and sins. And like the widow who can only watch with tears as her life is carried out of the city, so also you are helpless to get yourself out of the mess of sin and death that engulfs us all.

What are you to do? Nothing. You are dead. But Jesus reaches Himself down to you and enters into your life by the waters of Holy Baptism. He takes on your death, your pain, your suffering, and sets you up on the throne of heaven itself! But He does this great work for you at a great price. Because He lifted you up out of the grave of death itself, He had to lie down in the grave in your place. That’s right. Because you live and have eternal life as your future, He had to die to pay the price for your sins.

But He was willing to pay the price for your life. You are worth more to Him than life itself, as we heard in our Gospel from last week. He will trade places with you so that you may live. I’m sure that there were many fathers and mothers whose children died in the twin towers last year who would have gladly changed places with their dying children. Well, Jesus did what we can only wish could happen. He took your place so that death for you is not the end, but the beginning of your eternal rest with Him in heaven.

The Great Exchange. What a wonderful message He brings to this poor widow, to the young man, and to you this day! Martin Luther once said that by raising this young man from the dead, Jesus wants to show us that death has no power over us. We have nothing to fear in the future, for Jesus is there with us. When you died in your Baptism, death lost it’s stranglehold on you. It cannot harm you anymore.

Perhaps our hymn today said it best:

Before all time had yet begun,

You, Father, planned to give Your Son;

Lord Jesus Christ, with timeless grace,

You have redeemed our time-bound race;

O Holy Spirit, Paraclete,

Your timely work in us complete;

Blest Trinity, Your praise we sing--

There is a time for ev'rything!

Our times are in God’s hands. When Jesus comes to you by His Word and Spirit, He is raising you from the dead, day after day, week after week. Maybe that’s what the catechism is getting at with baptism when it says that a new man should daily emerge and live before Him in righteousness and purity forever. This is what Jesus does for you every time you come to this place and receive His body and blood. You take on His life, and His timely work of carrying you to heaven is one step closer to completion. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.