Collison at the City Gate

Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2010
Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church
Luke 7:11-17

We are speaking today of a collision . . . two contending processions collide at the gate of Nain.

The first procession is Jesus and a crowd of followers tagging along, entering the town gate at the place called Nain.

This is a procession full of celebration - all these people, following a public preacher, happy to hear his words, eager to hear his words, anxious to see him do something.

Jesus and his procession is coming off a high.

Jesus has just finished what St. Luke calls the “sermon on the plain.” Sort of like the sermon on the mount, but this is – so to speak – on the level.

From there he is off to Capernaum.
A Roman centurion greets Jesus and asks him to heal his servant.
Jesus says he will come.
The centurion protests: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter my house.”
The servant is healed and Jesus praises the faith of a Gentile.

Now Jesus and his procession are entering Nain by the city gate.
Everyone is happy, don’t you suppose?

He has finished delivering the second greatest sermon of his career and he has seen faith among the Gentiles.
This is pretty good stuff.
This is a procession celebrating Jesus.

And it collides head on with a different sort of procession.

Coming out of Nain is a procession of death, a man who had died, being carried out to the tombs.
This is not a procession celebrating anything.
In point of fact, this dead man represented a somber calamity.

Listen how St. Luke describes this:
“He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow.”

This means the woman not only lost her son, but also her only means of support.

Who was there now to care for her in her old age?
She would soon be reduced to seeking alms from the synagogue poor box.
This is not just a description of her condition – her only son, and she a widow – it is also a social commentary.

And it is at the gate of Nain these two processions collide.
One is a victory celebration, traveling the land.
The other is a procession of loss and death and calamitous grief.
Two processions, and which will give way to the other?
Which procession will pass first through the gate?

I have had reason to attend two funerals over the last several weeks. These were funerals for older persons.

The first was for a family friend, age 84. In fact, I dated her daughter in high school a couple times. Our families attended the same church, socialized, did things together.

The other was for my uncle last week, age 88; my father’s younger brother.

One Lutheran, one Presbyterian. These were flat funerals, both of them.

It seems most of the passion at a funeral shows up in family tribute.

The family remarks are way of telling listeners how significant is their loss, and how deep was their love for the deceased.

The family, it seems, must do this because neither sermon I heard ever got around to it.

I wasn't touched by either sermon.

No Gospel; not a word of Jesus' death for us, with us.

Not a word of why Jesus died.

And even less was there anything of resurrection.

There was no word of God snatching us from the folly of our own sin.

No word for us on God rescuing us from the pallid hall, preserving us from the ultimate entropy of death and decay.

What did I hear?
I heard a sort of logical progression on the virtue of being nice.

I heard the dead person was a nice man, a nice woman, and now rewarded with something nicer than this life.

That is not Gospel.

It is crap.

The Gospel says Christ died to conquer sin, death, and every devilish thing that separates you from life with him.

At the city gate the two processions couldn’t be more different.
Death and sorrow were going out.
Life and hope were coming in.
The wages of sin was coming out.
The sacrifice for sin was going in.
Jesus faced down death with compassion.
To the widow, “Do not weep”; and to the dead, “I say to you, rise.”

Things fly apart in a collision.
But not here.

Here the one overcame the other, and the other coalesced with the second.
Death and sorrow were going out of Nain.
Life and hope were going in.
And they collided.
And after the collision victory and celebration went everywhere.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.