Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We’ve seen Christ raised from the dead to life on Easter morning, We’ve seen him taken up into heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father And we’ve heard his promise to send the Holy Spirit And seen that promise fulfilled on Pentecost. Last Sunday, Trinity Sunday, we have seen that God is one deity in three persons, three persons joined in unity, the one who holds us and our future in his hands. And today we begin a new season in the church year – the season of the Sundays after Pentecost, ordinary time in some church calendars, the Green Season for short. It’s a season of growth and exploration, a season of hearing and learning. This year, a season of listening to St. Luke recount the words and deeds of Jesus, How he lived among us in the flesh, walked and talked and ate and loved and healed, How he wasn’t afraid to touch the sick, how he wasn’t put off by social boundaries, How he came to preach good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind. And hearing about what he did, how he lived, how he was unlike anyone that had been known before, helps us to understand who he is – Because even in his own day, Jesus was not understood, even by his own disciples. He was – and is - in a way too much for us to understand – God made flesh, human and divine at the same time – And in a way, he was – and is – so very simple to understand, so simple that children and poor uneducated people and mentally challenged people could grasp his purpose. People in his own time wondered if he was a prophet – another in the long line of prophets that God had sent to Israel - Or was he the Messiah, the one they had waited for – no one was quite sure at the start – even John the Baptizer sent his disciples to ask Jesus “are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And so, when we listen to today’s Gospel, we too can wonder “is he a prophet? Is he the one?”, and try to understand Jesus in the context of the history of God’s relationship with Israel. And we can also listen simply, with the eyes of a child, with the eyes of a grieving mother, with the eyes of a simple faith. Either way, we begin to see today, at the very beginning of the season of Sundays after Pentecost, Jesus revealed to us through his miracles, and his parables, Jesus revealed to us as who he is – Son of God, Savior of all. Because today St. Luke tells us about a miraculous healing – a raising of someone who was dead. And apart from that astounding action – that Jesus has the power to bring the dead to life – we learn much more about who he is by what he did and how he did it and what the history is. The people of Israel were looking, watching, waiting for a prophet, or better yet, the Messiah, God’s chosen one. They were longing to hear God’s voice again, after a long period of silence They were yearning for a sign that God still cared for them, still loved them, and would rescue them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. So, when Jesus appeared, healing the sick, raising the dead – they wondered – is this the one we’ve been waiting for? Is this the prophet that God has sent to speak God’s word? Perhaps, they thought, this is the new Elijah – after all, as we heard in the lesson from 1 Kings, Elijah had been known to pray to God that a dead boy be brought back to life, and God heard his prayers. And yet, this Jesus is different. This Jesus did not have to throw himself on the dead man’s body and cry to God in order for the dead one to have life. All Jesus had to do was touch the bier that the body was on And say, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And the young man sat up and began to speak. Jesus himself raised the boy, by only touching the stretcher and telling the young man to get up – He was clearly someone beyond even Elijah, the great prophet. He was clearly someone extraordinary, someone with power beyond what the people had ever seen before. He was exercising the power of God to bring the dead to life. So, from the point of view of the ones who were looking for a savior, a Messiah, Jesus was in line with their expectations. But, what about when this miracle is seen from a very simple point of view – from the point of view perhaps of one of the children in the village, watching and listening to this Jesus? Then Jesus words and deeds also tell us much about who he is – A widow’s only son had died –And though she was surrounded by a crowd of her neighbors, she wept – because her son was dead, and now she was alone. And when Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her. He cared about her grief and suffering, He told her not to weep, and he brought her son back to life from the dead, and he gave him back to his mother. Here is Christ, compassionate, caring, life-giving, healing, restoring, and reconciling. Here is Christ who doesn’t walk on by on the other side, but when he sees the widow’s suffering, cares, and acts. Here is Christ active in a world of sorrow and death, not aloof, not distant, but there, at the death-bed, beside the weeping. Here is Christ, who touches us on the most basic level with this raising of the young man and the restoration of the young man to his mother. Maybe we see who Christ is most clearly on this level – he’s in the tradition of the great prophets, but has power beyond those of even the greatest – he has the power of God to heal and to raise –But he is also the one who is with those who grieve and suffer, he gives life and wholeness and healing even in the most difficult situations. He is the power of God present among the tears and the wailing of those mourning a lost child. Christ comes to us, too, as the one who is compassionate to the suffering and the grief-stricken. His word comforts us, his body and blood nourish us, and his care extends through us – the members of his body – towards those who are hurting. While we may not have seen someone raised from the dead, as the young man was, we have certainly seen people brought back to life after wandering in their own personal hell by the power of Christ In fact, we are all people brought back to life by him. We were dead and now we are alive because of his awesome love and compassion. And this season, we have the chance to hear about that love and compassion once more and to say “thanks be to God”.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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