The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, AD 2015
Galatians 5:16-24
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Can you perceive her grief? This widow? She’s walked this path before, however many years ago, when her husband died. Then she had her only son by her side, to comfort her, to remind her of his father, her husband, whose dead body they processed out to the burial place. Did he tell her not to cry then? Did the mourners at her husband’s funeral entreat her to trust in God, that this must be His will? And now she has to do what is the content of the nightmares of mothers. She has to bury her son. Again, she walks in the funeral procession alongside the bier out to the burial place.
Certainly she had prayed for her son to be restored. Doubtless, the crowd of mourners had offered superficial consolations to her this time as others had at the death of her husband. This is God’s will. The Lord will provide. You must endure and accept this. Maybe they even sang the first line of the Hymn of the Day: The will of God is always best. And so they marched out of Jerusalem, away from the living, to the cemetary, the necropolis, the land of the dead. Until, that is, this procession of death was stopped in its tracks by the procession following the Lord of Life. Jesus has nothing to say about the boy being in a better place, about this being God’s mysterious will, about the boy’s deliverance from suffering. This is Jesus, the Incarnate God, God-with-flesh. He is able and willing to do far more abundantly than all you can ask or think.
First a command. Unlike the liturgy of mourning, which would have exhorted the mother, her family, and friends, to weep greatly for death, unlike even His own reaction at the death of His close friend Lazarus, Jesus commanded the mourning, widowed mother of a dead son, “Do not weep.” Then, with a touch, Jesus arrested the whole funeral procession. The pallbearers were dismissed; their task completed. They’d brought the dead boy as far as they would. Touching the bier would have rendered Jesus ceremonially unclean, according to the Levitical law unfit to gather with the people of God until seven days had passed and the rites of purification were performed. Jesus doesn’t care. He is the Rite of Purification. He is here to take every uncleanness, every transgression, every sin, everything that separates men from God onto Himself. And He is able to do far more abundantly that this crowd of mourners can ask or think.
Perhaps you misunderstand Christianity. Perhaps you misunderstand the Church. Perhaps you, following the course of American spirituality, have settled for a god smaller than the true God, the God of the Bible, the God revealed in the person of Jesus. Perhaps your prayers are too small. Perhaps your hope is too small. Perhaps your god is too small.
If you think God exists to make you good, that He wants a world filled with pious, well-behaved boys and girls, that we should hang the Ten Commandments in as many public places as constitutionally allowable so that we would all know what to do, that the biggest problems in the world are all the heathen sinners with their sins, who do sinful things, you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking God is smaller than He is. He’s not a policeman. Morality is not the objective. Your god is too small. Or maybe you think that God is like a doting grandfather, in whose eyes your transgressions are easily overlooked, not as bad as the other children’s, that despite the evidence you know to the contrary, you’re a good enough person and you deserve eternity with Him, you’ve fallen into the same trap of thinking God is smaller than He is. He’s not senile or so overwhelmed with affection for you that He’ll ignore your sins or downplay them. Humanism is not the standard. Your god is too small.
The true, Triune God is bigger than you can imagine. Give up your small god notions, your moralism, your self-righteous humanism, your belief that the Law can help you be good, or your notion that your sins are no big deal. God’s Word is bigger than that. All-encompassing, damning, destroying, crushing, killing. It is no trifling thing. It exposes you as a sinner, a lover of self, a liar, a blasphemer, a false worshiper, a rebel, a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, a hypocrite, a slanderer, an idolater. Your sins are bigger than you can see.
Or maybe you’re weary from your struggle against sin. You know the Law’s fierce accusation, and you know your abject unworthiness, your complete inability to fulfill what the Law requires. You find yourself wrestling with your sinful flesh over and over again, failing more times than you succeed. You’re worn out. Your prayers seem to go unanswered. You feel alone in your struggle against anger, lust, pride, or whatever other sins of the flesh with their power to ensnare you. Still, your god is too small. That you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Your god is too small.
The true, Triune God is still bigger. “Be gracious to me, O Lord,” you prayed in the Introit, “for to You do I cry all the day. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon You.” In the heat of the battle against your sinful flesh, in the thick of the struggle against your sinful desires of your old self, remember Paul’s encouragement: “to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according tot he power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, foever and ever. Amen.” God is bigger than your sin. And He is able to do more than you are able even to ask, to think, to imagine. The true God is bigger than your most hopeful dreams.
Your prayers are too small. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” God is bigger than your sin. And He is able to do far more abundantly than you can ask, think, imagine, desire. He is better than you have hoped.
As He was for this widow in her funeral procession for her son. Sure, she had prayed to have her son back, but she probably thought it was hopeless. Sure, you have prayed to be delivered from your sins that so easily trap you. But you probably thought it was hopeless. Until Jesus touched the dead boy’s bier, it was. To the lifeless, corpse, with dead ears, dead heart, no brain function, wrapped in grave clothes, cold and stiffened with rigor mortis, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” Not because of any latent power in the corpse, not because of some lingering spark which enabled him to will to live again, not because he asked Jesus into his cold, still heart, but purely because of Him who is able to do far more abundantly than corpses and cadavers can ask, think, or desire, the young man sat up and began to speak.
God is bigger than death. Jesus appeared to be a very small God. Especially as the funeral procession carried his dead, lifeless body down from the cross to the borrowed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Was there no one to interrupt this funeral procession as He had done for the widow of Nain? Was there no one to command His widowed mother to cease her tears? In the death of Jesus, the God-man, on the cross, God seemed terribly small, unable to help. But in His death, He is bigger and able to do far more abundantly than all you ask or think. This is no moralism. Your sins were so heinous, so powerful, so worthy of death, that the Son of God endured a real death in your place, on the cross.
For your small prayers, for your meagre hopes, for your settling for mud pies in the slums, God has a bigger, fuller answer: resurrection. The grave guards were rendered as dead and Jesus rose triumphantly from death. The widow’s prayers were answered with more than she could have hoped for. Your prayers likewise are answered with more than you can imagine. When Jesus interrupted the procession of your parents bringing their dead-in-sins child to the baptismal font, He destroyed death’s power over you. Young man, I say to you arise. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Full-bodied resurrection is our hope. Even when we pray for small things like finances, health, safety, temporal blessings, the answer is always bigger: resurrection. And as saints struggling against your old sinful flesh, processing to the Lord’s altar, Jesus meets you. He interrupts the procession of death. Seemingly small, confining His real Body to simple bread and limiting His precious Blood to wine pooled in a chalice, He is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to His power at work in His Word and inside you. He feeds you here with the medicine of immortality, a real Body risen from the dead, for your body seemingly destined to decay and die. Here alone is hope—bigger, more robust, more liberating hope—for your struggle against sin and doubt.
That you would be rooted and grounded in this love Jesus has for you and delivers to you week after week, that in His saving Word and Sacraments, you will have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ that surpasses all your knowledge, that being fed with the Body and Blood of Jesus, you would be filled with all the fullness of God, this is our hope. It is certain. It is real. It is God for you. And He is bigger than you can even hope.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.