Loving God, thank you for revealing your love and compassion through your Son, Jesus.  Just as he touched your people and healed them and brought them new life, may he also reach out and touch us today by the power of your Holy Spirit; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    A movie tag line from 2009 proclaims: “He was dead.... but he got better.”  One could almost believe that it was a movie made about today’s gospel – but of course, it wasn’t.  When people come back to life in the movies, it is usually entirely fictional and mostly unbelievable.  In fact, unless we’ve seen it happen right before our eyes, it’s probably hard for us to believe, too.  Yet, twice in today’s readings, we hear about children who are raised from the dead.  One is described as a young man, and the other is still a boy.  In both cases, they are raised to life through the power of God at work.

    When you think about it, our faith as Christians is in the God who has the power to raise the dead and to give life.  That power was shown through Jesus, that power was shown through other people of faith, and that same power raised Jesus from the dead.  The God who is revealed in the Scriptures is entirely capable of giving life or of taking it away.  Our God has power over life and death.

    Yet, as any of us could attest, this is not something that happens every day.  We can wish with all our heart that somebody who has died would be given back to us again, but that doesn’t mean that it will happen – at least, not in this world.  Sometimes God has a purpose in bringing somebody back, and sometimes it is simply that person’s time to move on.

    And so, for both today’s gospel and our first reading, we can ask the questions as to what brings about the movement from death to life and also what purpose is served.  In the case of Elijah and the widow’s son, it is simply the prayer of a faithful person that unleashes God’s power to bring life.  As James writes later, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (Jas. 5:16).  God hears Elijah’s prayer, and gives the child back to his mother.  In this case, the purpose is to strengthen the faith of this widow, and also to reveal that Elijah really was speaking God’s word to her.

    In the case of today’s gospel, the purpose is more about revealing who Jesus is and revealing that he both speaks and acts with the power of God working through him.  As far as we are told, Jesus has not met this widow or the others who are with her.  In fact, they don’t even ask Jesus for help, and probably have no idea who he is.  And so why does Jesus act? ... He has compassion for her.  It is Jesus who takes the initiative and acts because of his compassion for her.

    Doesn’t that sound kind of like what Jesus did for us?  I can’t help but thinking of that verse from Romans 5: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (5:8).  With us, too, Jesus takes the initiative, because of his love and compassion for us.  Jesus does not ask us first to prove ourselves or pass an entrance exam or show that we are worthy.  Instead, he has already given his life for us and waits for our response.

    And so, in effect, Jesus has already initiated our movement from death to life.  Now, we might not literally be dead, but there can be any number of things that sure make us feel as if we are.  In some cases, people are weighed down by grief.  Others are consumed by anger or by guilt or by fear.  Some have quite literally enslaved themselves to things or to people that are not capable of giving life.  Some are weighed down by depression or anxiety.  Some have cut themselves off from God, and thus also from the source of all life.  And some are quite simply “stuck” – living destructive patterns over and over again and seemingly unable to move on.

    The truth is that no matter what it is that might be weighing us down, God absolutely has power over it.  The challenge for us is to allow God to come in and to heal us.  One of the best illustrations I’ve seen of how this might happen is in the book The Shack (by Wm. Paul Young).  The main character, Mack, is angry at God and filled with grief and has been withdrawing emotionally from his wife and his children and his friends.  He is engulfed by what he refers to as “the great sadness,” mourning the loss of his daughter.

    In the story, there are basically three things that Mack seems to need in order to find healing.  The first is quite simply encountering God.  Whether Mack has a dream or a vision or a real experience is hard to tell, but the result is that Mack encounters God and experiences the depth of God’s love for him and God’s knowledge of him.

    The second thing that Mack needs in order to find healing is to be able to see things from God’s perspective.  While Mack is aware only of his own pain and the wrongs that have been done to him, God looks at the world differently.  God’s love and care is for all people, even for the ones who have hurt Mack deeply.  Only when seeing things from God’s perspective can Mack even begin to give and to receive forgiveness.

    Finally, the third thing that Mack needs is to trust God enough to allow God to heal him.  In order for Mack to move from death to life, he needs to open up his heart and mind to God.  Mack had kept himself closed up tight, for he did not trust God to love him or to heal him.  It is only when Mack trusts God enough to open up that true healing takes place.

    While The Shack is a work of fiction, the things that Mack needed are pretty much the same for us.  We, too, need to encounter God – to truly get to know God through Jesus.  Whether it is through the Scriptures, or through the witness of others, or through Word and Sacrament, or through dreams and visions, we need to encounter God and to know the depth of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ.  This is the beginning of any movement from death to life.

    Then, having encountered God, we too need to look at the world (and ourselves) from God’s perspective.  There may be people who have really hurt us, and we’re angry at them.  However, it really changes our hearts when we realize that God loves those people, too, and that we are sinners just as much as anybody else, and that God forgives us for all of the hurt that we have caused him.  Seeing the world from God’s perspective is a very different thing, and moves us along the road from death to life.

    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to trust God enough to allow him into our hearts and into our lives.  It is when our hearts and our minds are truly open to God’s presence and power that we can move from death to life.  Yet, do not despair if you have tried but cannot do this on your own.  As Luther’s Small Catechism proclaims, it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to believe and to trust in Jesus Christ.  Even there, though, we need to be open enough to say, “Yes!  Come Holy Spirit!”  We do, after all, have the capacity to say no.

    The movie tag line said, “He was dead... but he got better.”  May we, too, move from death to life, from mourning to dancing, and from weeping to joy.  For it is not at all beyond God’s power to come to us and to heal us.  Amen.

Lectionary 10(C)                                Luke 7:11-17
June 6, 2010                                1 Kings 17:17-24
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church                        Psalm 30
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2010 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved