June 9, 2013  3rd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 7:11-17

  11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don't cry."
    14 Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get up!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
    16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." 17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea[a] and the surrounding country.

“God Has Visited His People”

It is no small thing to say and believe that God has visited his people.  It means God reveals who God is,  as God is, not as we would have God be.  It is no small thing to say Jesus is God.  it is with fear and awe that we say such a thing.

Faith is not a matter of understanding God; it is a matter of recognizing my need for God, and then recognizing the God I need - who has revealed himself in Jesus.  Faith is not a possession; it is a possessor.  It is, as P.T. Forsythe so ably describes it, “A power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of life.”

The secret of resolving the dilemma of death lies in faith;  in daring to believe the message and promise which God has made to us in the face of death - fear not!  The gift of God is life; the enemy of life is death; the gift of God is victory over death through Jesus Christ.

We didn’t invent this truth. We discover it in the mystery of God’s presence in our world in the man Jesus. who performed miracles we will never understand and find hard to believe. For God comes to us in the mystery of revelation, in the mystery of grace present in Word, Sacraments, and people.  And especially present in the mystery of Jesus!

Albert Einstein:  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  ( We can add religion.)  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and be  rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Einstein also said, religion “ consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding can comprehend of reality.”

God’s promise is that He will wait us out, and come to us for the awesome truth is, God cares about us and tries His hardest to intervene in our lives with the miracle of a “love which never dies and a dazzling grace which always is!”  William Sloane Coffin