Sean C. Capparuccia
June 22, 2025
Preached at Trinity (Global) Methodist Church, Magnolia, NC
Third Sunday after Pentecost
I Kings 17:8-16, (17-24); Psa 146; Gal. 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17
In our over-litigious society, we are inundated with warning labels. To tell you the truth, I think that most of us don’t even see them anymore. Like the label that says, “Do not hold wrong end of chainsaw, injury or death may ensue.” Or this one on a life vest of all things, “Do not swallow, may cause fatality.” Which is kind of in the same category as the “may cause serious injury or death” label on your car’s airbag. Even the things designed to save you can kill you. It’s actually quite amazing how many things that we use every day that can cause fatality. Then there’s this pithy saying, “Danger: you are one day closer to death.” Life itself can cause death. It is possible, though highly unlikely, that taxes may go away but death is inevitable to be sure. Everyone will surely die at some point in their lives, usually at the end of it. And we can laugh at these things, or at least chuckle. There is a certain amount of absurdity in the idea of death.
Contrary to what Star Trek says, death is the final frontier, not space. Ever since Adam was warned not to eat of the forbidden tree or else he would die, man has longed to find a way to beat death. But in order to beat it, you must be able to face it – experience it – find out how it works, and learn to control it. It can’t be conquered theoretically, it must be conquered existentially. And no one has done that. Except One.
But as we have been preoccupied with beating death, we are also a society that has in some way lost its reverence for life. There isn’t much that surprises us anymore; nothing shocks us or awes us for more than 10 or 20 seconds at a time. We have, you might say, all seen too much. We’ve been de-sensitized to life so much that death, in some respects, doesn’t garner much attention …. until it’s the death of someone you love. That changes everything. The laughter stops. The grief begins. And with the death of a loved one we certainly feel the weight of death within ourselves as, for lack of a better phrase, “a piece of us dies with them.”
Though the theory of evolution would have us believe that we are just another species of animal, God’s word teaches something quite different. Of all the creatures that He made, only humankind is made in His image. So, in reality, in all of Creation there is human and there is everything else. Only man ponders death.
English historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee wrote, “Man alone… has foreknowledge of his coming death … and, possessing this foreknowledge, has a chance, if he chooses to take it, of pondering over the strangeness of his destiny … [He] has at least a possibility of coping with it, since he is endowed with the capacity to think about it in advance and … to face it and to deal with it in some way that is worthy of human dignity.”[1] This is beautifully articulated by Job when he says, “For I know that You will bring me to death and to the house of meeting for all living” (Job 30:23).
Elijah in Zarephath
But man not only thinks of his own impending death, but about how someone else’s death will affect his own life. In the Old Testament reading we read of the prophet Elijah. This is Elijah’s grand entrance onto the stage of history. The divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah are being ruled by a series of kings who are no less corrupt than any politician we might see today. The scene for Elijah is the reign of Ahab, the king who married the infamous Jezebel. First of all, he should not have married anyone outside the faith, (an injunction that is reiterated even to Christians, by the way.) So, it is no surprise that Ahab – whether out of fear of his wife or love for her, maybe a little of both – led Israel into Baal worship (I Ki 16:31). I Kings 16:33 says that “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” How’s that for a legacy? And so God, provoked as He was, sent a famine on the land. God then sent Elijah to tell Ahab that God would not send dew or rain until He decides to do so. In other words, “Repent or else!”
Well, a king like Ahab doesn’t take too kindly to an ultimatum like that so Elijah had to immediately go into hiding. As the famine worsened, God sent Elijah to Zarephath, a coastal town between Tyre and Sidon. There he is to find a certain widow, a Gentile, that the Lord has laid upon her heart to sustain the prophet. Of course, this widow is no better off than anyone else in the land. Not that the land could even produce much anyway, but she didn’t have a husband who could work the land and plus she had a young son to sustain as well. She was “barely hanging on.” But by the power and compassion of God working through Elijah, the miracle of the never-ending flour and oil took place. So at least she was hanging on a little. Then her son got sick and died.
Isn’t that how it seems to go sometimes? Things are bad, then they start looking up just a little, then another tragedy strikes which makes you feel worse off than you were before. The sorrow, tinged with some bitterness, is seen in her response to Elijah: “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance, and to put my son to death!” (17:18) Funny how we become more aware of our sinfulness when we’re in the presence of people holier than we are. Which is probably why most people don’t like being around pious people. Sinfulness tries to avoid holiness, doesn’t it? So instead of trying to be lifted up out of our sinfulness, we often tend to surround ourselves with others who are less holy than ourselves so that we at least feel better about ourselves. It’s good for our self-esteem to be around heathens, isn’t it? The answer is “no,” it’s good for our pride.
This widow decided that her son’s sickness and death was a punishment from God for her own sin made evident in the light of Elijah’s piety. Though it was faulty thinking on her part, it did, in fact, bring her own sins to mind and work repentance in her. And the Lord, in His abounding compassion, restored her only son’s life.
Jesus in Nain
This, then, sets the stage for the Gospel lesson. In the previous chapter of Luke, Jesus has just healed the servant of a centurion, a Gentile. It is worthy to note that this centurion, who, not being Jewish, had a heart for the Jewish people and was certainly inclined toward their faith. And he knew, in his spirit, that Jesus, by the power of the God of the Jews, could heal his servant. If only he knew at the time that Jesus’ word could not only heal the sick but could create a cosmos. And though he was a man of great worth in the world’s eyes, he said with all humility, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should even come under my roof, but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed” (Lu 7:6-7). Jesus responded, “I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith” (9). Not even among God’s own people is there such faith! Not even among the people chosen for faith, is there such faith. Does that strike you as just a little odd?
Soon afterwards, then, Jesus and His disciples and a large crowd following Him, came to the city of Nain. Nain was a city in Galilee, about 6 miles southwest of Nazareth. Here’s the scene for this act: a large crowd of mourners is following a weeping woman and a funeral bier heading out of the city. (Jews were not buried inside a city but had to be taken outside the gates because dead bodies were “unclean.”) Jesus and a large crowd of followers is heading into the city. The passage says Jesus had a multitude and the woman had a “sizeable crowd.” The same Greek word is used for both – οχλος – a throng, a multitude. We’re talking about a lot of people here meeting head-to-head at the gate. It must have looked like two small armies heading towards each other.
One, a throng of joy and life – Jesus has just healed a dying young man;
The other, a throng of death and despair – a procession carrying a young
man to the grave.
We don’t know how wide this gate or road was, but one of these throngs had to move. Common sense and decency would dictate that Jesus’ crowd must be the one to get out of the way. But Jesus had another idea.
Seeing the weeping mother Jesus knew exactly what was going on. And why shouldn’t she be weeping? Her husband has already been taken by death, and now her only son, the only one who could have worked to keep them from possibly starving. Not that her weeping was out of a selfish motivation, but doggone it, face facts, we can’t help but think of the repercussions of a thing when it happens. I’ll say again, as I said earlier, with the death of a loved one we certainly feel the weight of death within ourselves. That weight is quite often a complete disruption of life as we know it.
A mortgage can no longer be paid; food may be more scarce; a drastic change in our standard of living; we may have to move; or move in with our children. Any number of things can happen at that point. And let me add that, even though it’s not as tragic, a divorce can evoke many of these same feelings. A divorce is a kind of death and grief must surely follow no matter how glad one might be to be divorced.
So, it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know what this poor woman is going through at this moment. I think most of us would probably have just moved out of the way. That’s the safest thing to do. But Jesus, “seeing her,” had compassion on her. Now when Jesus has compassion on you, watch out! Good things are going to happen!
“Do not weep,” the Lord says. “My only son and support just died and you say, ‘Don’t weep?’ What can I do but weep?” “Do not weep.” And then he touched the coffin, or more likely, the stretcher, upon which the dead man lay. This in itself would have aroused sentiments among these Jews because by touching the stretcher Jesus has just made Himself unclean, at least until evening and after He’s washed all of His clothes and His body. There were laws about such things.
“Young man, I say to you, arise!” When the Lord speaks, the atoms obey. 2000 years after the fact and after hearing the story many times in our own lifetimes it may seem a bit “old hat.” We know that Jesus has, and can, raise the dead, sure, though I doubt any of us has ever seen it. Maybe we aren’t even completely shocked and awed by that anymore. But, oh, if we could have been there in Nain. “Young man… young dead man… I say to you, arise!”
“And they were gripped with fear and began glorifying God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen in our midst’ and ‘God has visited His people!” A great prophet. Surely they must have been thinking of Elijah at this very moment; remembering the story of ages past that they had heard many times before and which was etched into the collective memory of the Jews. A great prophet, indeed. And if Jesus said John the Baptist was “much more than a prophet” then what is the Son of God? They were thinking that God had visited His people through the agency of a prophet but failed to see the truth of their own lips: God has truly visited His people.
Miracles?
When studying the Scriptures we should always note the placement of stories because it is often pertinent to the context. This miracle at Nain is only recorded by Luke but is placed just after the miracle of healing in Capernaum of the centurion’s servant. What is God telling us with that?
First of all, we need to see these miracles in a broader context, the context of the New Testament Church, the context of “these last days” in which we are now living. Now I am certainly not a demythologizer, and I despise what the demythologizers have done in the church this past century. And in case you’re wondering what a demythologizer is, he is the theologian who can explain how the miracles in the Bible happened. Usually he – or she – says, the young man wasn’t really dead, they just thought He was dead; Jesus didn’t really die, He went into shock and they thought He was dead; The Israelites didn’t really cross the Red Sea on dry ground, they waded through a channel that was about 10” deep; God didn’t really create the world in six days, it happened over thousands of years, or maybe millions, or maybe billions. This is the kind of theology, then, that lead the Church into believing that not everything in the Bible is true and you must decide what is true or not true for yourself. This, of course, led to people, and even whole denominations, interpreting Scripture through the lens of “what feels good to me.” Call it relativism; call it modernism; call it theological liberalism; call it whatever but in the end, it is just bad theology. In the Old Testament they were called false prophets. Be wary of anyone who teaches by word or letter that miracles did not happen just as they were described as happening in the Word of God. We should always interpret Scripture literally first, unless a literal interpretation contradicts other Scriptures; and we should always interpret Scripture through the lens of God’s total and immovable Sovereignty.
Can God raise the dead? I mean, is it possible that God can raise the dead? Then let Him raise the dead! Is it possible that God could create the universe in six days? Then let Him create the universe in six days! That being said, Scripture tells us that Jesus raised the dead. Scripture tells us that some of the apostles raised the dead. Since that time, we have only heard of rare and scattered stories of the dead being raised, and those may be of dubious account. How can we know? Not that miracles don’t happen – they most certainly do happen. No doubt many of you here have seen a miracle, something that is beyond natural explanation. But we need to see that Jesus and the apostles raised the dead so that the Church of Christ would take root. The last days are an age of faith, not proof, because the proof is in the faith, you see. “Blessed are those who have not seen Me and yet still believe.” In other words, the very fact that you have faith in the first place is proof of that faith. You did not come to faith on your own; it was a gift from God.
The Centurian, then, is significant because he was a “worthy man.” He could have said to Jesus, “Look at me, I am a Centurian; I am worthy; I have accomplished all of these things; I have a respectable amount of power in my own right … heal my servant.” But he also knew, by faith, that whatever power he had, Jesus’ power was greater; he believed Jesus had power over life and death; his own merits in front of Jesus deserved nothing. No, Jesus did not heal the servant because the Centurian was worthy enough to deserve it. He healed the servant because of faith.
The widow of Nain, she obviously had no power in her own right. She was on the cusp of an utterly defeated life. Certainly, Jesus did not resurrect her son based on her merits or her accomplishments. Look again at verse 15, “the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother.” That’s it. “Quit weeping. Here you go.” David Gooding, former professor of Old Testament in Belfast, Ireland writes: “In that wonderful moment, no conditions were laid down, no promises extracted. The awesome gift of new, unexpected life was apparently an unconditional gift, an action of the unqualified grace of God.”[2]
Dead Still Being Raised
Now, when I was remarking on demythologization, what I mean to say is, is that even though we believe these miracles are certainly true, if for no other reason than that they are not beyond the scope of God’s awesome power, they are a type laid down for us as the New Testament Church. God’s purpose in raising the dead is to show us that, in Christ, new life awaits. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 that “you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” He doesn’t say we were dying in our sins; he says we were dead in our sins. This earthen vessel may yet walk and talk but the spirit inside is dead. Until Christ raises it from the dead. Romans 6:23 reads, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” All we have earned in this life is death, but eternal life, to be raised from the dead, is nothing more than God’s free gift.
Martin Luther wrote, “All this [in this passage] has been written to the end that just as here this deed of mercy befell this widow freely and entirely of grace, only because it solicited Christ’s sympathy, so from this we can draw the general rule that applies to all the merciful deeds of God, that they all overtake us without our merits, even before we seek them.”[3]
In other words, it is by grace we are saved. It is nothing but God’s amazing grace that can save a wretch like me, or you, or anyone else. In his famous funeral sermon for George Whitfield, John Wesley said, “We are all helpless, both with regard to the power and to the guilt of sin. ‘For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’ None less than the Almighty. Who can raise those that are dead, spiritually dead in sin? None but He who raised us from the dust of the earth.”[4]
Here, then, is the Good News: if Christ raises you from the dead, then you are undeniably raised from the dead. You aren’t half-raised from the dead; you aren’t partially-raised from the dead awaiting further raising somewhere down the road. What Christ does, He does to the full. Salvation is a miracle. Did you catch that? Jesus continues to raise people from the dead, though not physically – yet. Every person who comes to faith in Christ comes to faith by a miracle – it has no natural explanation, even though there are many who try teach that there is. Some say, “Well, he just made the decision to believe.” Friends, no one can decide to believe that Jesus is the Christ and place their trust in Him. This is an act of God because every atom of our being wants to deny this very fact. When someone says, “I believe that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God” we can say, with Jesus, “Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but our Father which is in heaven.” Faith does not come from yourself, “it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). And when we are saved, we are at that moment saved to eternity. “Nothing,” I say again with some more emphasis, “Nothing (can/shall be able to) separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39). And when this earthly vessel finally gives out, or if we are involved in some tragic accident that destroys the body, what has already been raised will continue to be raised.
Our lives here are but a blip in eternity. Because of the resurrection, God’s people will be forever. The apostle Paul, being a Pharisee, believed this even before coming to Christ, which is partly what he was saying in the Epistle reading this morning. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but they failed in one major point: gratitude.
The problem with a lot of us is that, like the Pharisees, we fail to live lives more full of gratitude. Perhaps we still weep for our former selves, that old self that died to become the new. Maybe we are weeping for the dead man/woman we once were. Quit weeping.
In the same sermon by Martin Luther he says,
“And if it is of grace, then we can say to God: You are a gracious God, You also do good things to them who deserve it not. This seems easy to us, but where are they who mean it with their heart? If we believed that everything comes to us from God’s grace and mercy, we would daily run and rejoice, our hearts would continually rise and dwell in heaven.”[5]
Our hope is nothing else! Not in princes, not in chariots (not in political allies, not in strong armies; not in anyone or anything!) “How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God… the Lord raises up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous; The Lord protects the strangers; He supports the fatherless and the widow; But He thwarts the way of the wicked” (Psalm 146:5, 8-9).
But even Christ comes with a warning label. He promised hardship because of Him; He promised trial and tribulation because of Him. I beg your pardon, but He didn’t promise anyone a rose garden, to quote an old song. Can we be thankful to God even in the midst of grief and suffering? Faith says that we can because our Lord tells us that grief is only for a little while. The way of the wicked will be thwarted; the righteous of God will live forever. Maybe not on this earth as we know it, but most assuredly with Him for eternity.
So let us, with the widow in Zarephath, the Centurion in Capernaum, the widow and her son in Nain, and with the countless host of God’s faithful, praise the Lord. Death has no hold on Christ’s elect. “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (II Cor 4:16-17). If you have faith in Jesus, then you have been raised from the dead! So, then, where, O Death, is your paltry sting? Where is your trivial victory?
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, what else can we give Thee but our life-long gratitude for what You, in Your mercy, have given to all those who believe? Faith itself is your gift, we come with nothing before You. Take our lives, then, and do with them what You will. Take this church, then, and do with it what You will. Only help us to be grateful to You for all that we are and will be some day. For it is in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
[1] Arnold Toynbee, Man’s Concern with Death quoted in Charles Swindoll, Swindoll’s Ultimate Book of Illustrations and Quotes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 138.
[2] David Gooding, According to Luke (Leicester, England: IVP, 1987), 132.
[3] Martin Luther, Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1983), 128-9.
[4] John Wesley, John Wesley’s Fifty-three Semons (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 782 [Sermon LIII: “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitfield].
[5] Luther, 129.
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