Proper 5, Year C
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
Emmanuel, Houston
1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17
What happens when we die? Why did Jesus heal the boy in this story? Was he showing compassion to a widow? Was he showing us his divine nature? Why don’t we still see healings like this in our world today? These are all questions that were raised for me in reading our Gospel story today. Looking first at the question about Jesus’ divine nature, then we look at the story, and if we believe Jesus was God, then his raising the boy to life in the story we heard today was in some ways no big deal. Jesus was God, of course he could raise this kid from the dead. At the time, of course, people didn’t believe Jesus was God. When he raised the boy, the people didn’t say, “look, there’s God.” They said, a “a mighty prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!”.
I’ve often heard folks comment on the people’s lack of understanding as to who Jesus was. “How could they not know Jesus was God? Look at what he did; he raised this boy from the dead.” Jesus’ miracles were the power of God being shown forth, but they were not obvious statements of Jesus’ divinity. The people’s belief that Jesus was a prophet, and not God was not because they were dim witted or unfaithful. Even after seeing him raise the widow’s son from the dead, the people had no reason to believe Jesus was God. Both Elijah and Elisha raised people from the dead. They were both mighty prophets, and they both showed God’s favor to his people. So, the people’s response to Jesus raising the widow’s son from the dead was totally appropriate.
I find rather interesting the paradox, that the people, seeing Jesus raise the boy from the dead, were amazed and yet didn’t think Jesus was God. We, on the other hand because of our belief that Jesus was God, might find ourselves no longer amazed. This thought led me to one of my other questions, “why not now?” Why don’t we still see Jesus’ power to raise folks from the dead and to heal disease demonstrated in the world today, in the church? Didn’t Jesus give that power to the apostles? Shouldn’t it still be among us? Shouldn’t we be able to go to the healers whenever we’re sick and be healed just as readily and as surely as the boy in the story today?
If we look at the history of the prophets, and Jesus was a prophet, we find that God would show up occasionally with great power through a prophet. This was often done with the purpose of delivering his people from oppression or in order to call the people back to God. Why did the power of God manifest in the prophet not continue? Why did the miracles of Jesus not continue in an obvious way for all of his followers? Why do we still die and get sick? Why are we left feeling so powerless for so much of the time? Perhaps the power of God is a power too great for us to wield.
Imagine 12 people who were given God’s power to heal and to raise the dead. Those 12 would pass the power on, and pass it on, and pass it on. So there was always, throughout history, this group of people who had the power of God to perform miracles, to heal and raise the dead. Suppose people came to them to be healed and to raise the dead. If they said yes to everyone, then all they would do would be to heal and raise. People would clamor continuously for the miracles.
People might come to expect the miracles or demand them as a right. What if one of the healers ever refused? I can see that one being killed for the refusal. I can also see these healers being elevated as gods over the rest of us. Perhaps they would never be corrupted by this power, but we’ve seen far too many with far less power become corrupted far too often to believe that 12 people perpetually given the power of God would remain uncorrupted forever.
Further, when would the healing and life giving end? When people reached 120 years? 200? 900? Would people ever accept death as the natural end of life? Would we ever let go of life and trust in God?
Would these healers become those who determine when people live and when people die? You I’ll heal; you I won’t. You’ve lived long enough; you can keep going for a while. Might we end up hating the healers and God along with them because they didn’t bow to our every wish?
Perhaps, again, the power of God is too great a power for any human to wield for more than a very short time. We tend to want what we can’t have, dislike those who won’t give it to us, and all of this, largely due to our fear death and loss. Having healers like Jesus with us continually would not allay our fear of death and loss. It would simply put those fears off and possibly increase them over time.
Why, then, did Jesus exhibit his power over disease and death? I believe he did so, as did the prophets before him, to call the people back to God and to show the people who God is. Consider the words of today’s psalm:
“Praise the Lord…I will praise the Lord as long as I live”, and why did the psalmist want to praise the Lord? The Lord made heaven and earth. He executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the strangers, upholds the orphan and the widow, and the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. (Psalm 146)
By exhibiting his powers over disease and death, Jesus was telling the people that the words of the psalmist are true. Jesus was showing that the words of the prophets are true. Jesus took care of a widow. He raised the widow’s son, but the widow was the person who truly benefited from the miracle. Trusting in God, we believe the son was just fine. He was somehow, someway being cared for by God. The widow, on the other hand had no one left to care for her. By bringing her son back, Jesus was showing that the words of the psalmist were true.
God is the one in whom we can put our trust, because he is powerful and because he is good. God does not care only for the powerful on earth, those who rule over others. God cares for the lowliest among us as well. God is also the one in whom we can trust because God has power over our greatest fears, death and loss. This brings me to my last question: what happens when we die? Paul has a few things to say about this in his first letter to the Thessalonians:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)What exactly happens when we die? We don’t know. There are conflicting accounts even in scripture. Perhaps we’re asleep, dead until the final resurrection. Perhaps we are instantly with God. Perhaps something else. The constant in the varying scriptural accounts of death is what happens when we die. The constant in the scriptural accounts of death is that God is more powerful than death, and that whatever happens when we die, we are in God’s care. When we die, we are in the care of the one who is not only powerful, but also good. When we die, we are in the care of the God praised in the psalms. When we die we are in the care of the God who was and is Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.
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