Tomorrow’s Sermon: Recovering The Stolen Jesus

Luke 7:11-17

Introduction
When I moved to my last appointment, it was a double move. Initially I had to
move into a manse that the circuit was in the process of selling. I lived there
for eleven weeks, living and working out of boxes. I did this until the manse I
was supposed to live in was ready. Somewhere in one of those two house moves, I
lost a prized four-CD box set of Fleetwood Mac, the music on which stretched
back to their earliest days.

I wonder if you’ve ever had anything stolen. Was it a prized
possession?

What if I suggested to you that Jesus had been stolen? You’d
want to track down the thief, wouldn’t you? But what if I said it was the church that had stolen Jesus? Does that
shock you? Yet that was the claim of a great nineteenth century spiritual
writer, Henry Drummond:

In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from
the people; they have made the Son of Man the priest of an order; they have
taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.[1]

I suggest to you that today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus
brings back from the dead the son of the widow at Nain, is one such case where
we imprison Jesus in the church, rather than setting him among the people. He performs
this miracle not in the synagogue, but in the town. This is not Jesus
buttressing the faith of the faithful but Jesus on mission in the world. Therefore,
as we look at the qualities displayed by Jesus in this story, I’d like us to
see them in missional terms.

1. Compassion
It all starts when Jesus witnesses a grieving widow, who has lost her son:

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, ‘Do not weep.’ (verse 13)

Compassion for the widow is where it begins for Jesus. She has
lost her only son. We too might have compassion for her. As a minister, I have
had to take funerals where parents have lost a child. Even if that child has
grown to adulthood, it is common to say, ‘No parent should have to bury their
own son or daughter.’

However, Jesus’ compassion here is not simply grief at a
life cut short. It is grief for the widow.
She has no husband to provide for her, and now she has no son to do the same. His
compassion is not only about the bereavement, but also about the economically
devastating effects on the widow through losing her son. She will be destitute,
and the healing miracle Jesus performs here is to save a widow from desperate
poverty in a culture that had no welfare state. That is why when the dead man
gets up and begins to speak, Jesus restores him to his mother (verse 15). Therefore
this healing is not only a physical miracle, it is an economic one, too. It reminds
us not to channel our compassion narrowly.

Not only is it broader than physical healing, it is broader
in terms of who we pray for. The compassion that leads us to pray is one we
exercise not only in the church but also among our friends and family members
who do not share our faith. The late John Wimber, who – whether you agree with
him on every point or not – did so much to encourage Christians to pray for
healing, emphasised that such spiritual gifts were as much for use in the world
as they were in the church.

I am not suggesting that we don’t care for our friends who
are in desperate straits, be it due to bereavement, major illness, family
troubles, job losses or other crises. But what I do wonder is this: if a
Christian friend hits trouble, we have no difficulty in saying to them, ‘I’ll
pray for you.’ We know they will usually appreciate such an offer. However, we
tend to hesitate with non-Christian friends and loved ones. We’re more likely
to be nervous about how an offer to pray might be received. Will they reject
us? Will they laugh at us? On the other hand, if they welcome our offer to pray,
what happens if we do pray and then the desired blessing doesn’t materialise?

If that is how you feel, let me venture that we are like
young eagles, and the Holy Spirit is like the mother eagle, pushing us out of
the safety of the nest. We find ourselves in mid-air – but it is the only way
to learn how to fly. We find ourselves on the brink of the nest when we know it
would be good to offer prayer for someone. As we wobble, the Holy Spirit says, ‘Fly!’
For we were never promised the security of the nest and the possibility of
remaining spiritual eaglets all our lives; God called us to spiritual maturity
and that requires daring, risk-taking faith.

So, why not keep alert this new week for friends in real
need? Will you let your natural compassion move you to pray for them? And will
you be daring enough to offer prayer or tell them you are praying? You may feel
like you are falling off the precipice, but you may actually be beginning a new
chapter in an exciting and fruitful life of faith in Christ.

2. Authority
There is a tangible note of divine authority about Jesus in this story. Luke
calls him ‘the Lord’ (verse 13), and then, when he takes action, we hear him
speaking with authority: ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ (verse 14). Perhaps
we think we wouldn’t have the nerve to speak like that, especially as we aren’t
divine like Jesus. It seems a long way from what we feel capable of saying.

In fact, we see Jesus’ authority in more than his words. Even
before he speaks with authority, he acts with authority. He comes forward and
touches the bier (verse 14). That is shocking for a Jew who was not supposed to
touch dead bodies, for fear of becoming ritually unclean. However, that doesn’t
worry Jesus. He has authority over death. Ritual uncleanness is inferior to who
he is. So he is not intimidated by death or by religious regulations. He is ‘the
Lord’, and he knows these ritual laws are meant to be servants, not masters. So
he takes authority over them for the sake of the situation when he touches the
bier.

And remember, he surely didn’t need to touch the bier to
perform the miracle, but he did. He makes his authority clear before he speaks
with that authority.

So where might this connect with us? Surely, none of us can
speak and act as Jesus did here? None of us owns the title ‘the Lord’: we do
not have his divine status. That may be true, but that is no reason for us to
hide away from the challenge to prayer and action when faced with something
terrible in the world. For one thing, remember this verse from 1 John:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater
than the one who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4)

We are not impotent: God is with us! The Lord is here, and
his Spirit is with us. When others are suffering, we do not come against them
alone, but with the power of God’s Spirit. Do you not feel braver to act when
you know you are not alone? If someone is standing alongside you, it makes all
the difference. Moses asked that his brother Aaron could come with him to
Pharaoh – and even do the speaking for him! We have the Holy Spirit with us. He
is the one called in various translations the comforter, counsellor, advocate
or helper. It’s a word that means ‘one called alongside.’ The Holy Spirit is
the ‘one called alongside’ us when we need to speak and act with authority.

Alternatively, put it this way: there is a strange and difficult
statement of Jesus in John 14:14, where he says, ‘You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.’ It’s the ‘in
my name’ bit that interests me at this point. When we act in someone’s name, we
act with their authority. Years ago when I worked in the Civil Service I daily
signed letters with my signature, ‘pp’ (per pro) my manager. I signed in my
manager’s name. That is, I signed with my manager’s authority. To ask the
Father in Jesus’ name is to ask with his authority. It is to say, ‘Heavenly
Father, your Son has given me the authority to ask for this.’

Now my feeling about this kind of authoritative praying is
that it is one to be used only when we have concluded we are certain of God’s
will for a person, group or situation. However, if we are certain, then it is a
daring prayer that we may pray with the full permission and blessing of Jesus. Imagine
how much good we could bring to the world by carefully seeking God’s will and
then praying this way. However, I think we should use it with some caution, and
not throw it around willy-nilly, like a TV evangelist spraying around false
promises. And nor is ‘in your name’ a liturgical formula to provide a neat
ending to prayer: it is something dynamic and powerful, and therefore to be
used with considerable care.

But we always have the authority of the Holy Spirit within
us and alongside us. As Graham Kendrick once commented, ‘When the odds get too
great I just remember that Jesus plus me equals an invincible minority.’ God
calls his invincible minority into action out of love for the world.

3. Favour
Note the reaction of the crowd:

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A
great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his
people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country. (verses 16-17)

I think I’d have a good dose of fear if I’d just witnessed
someone being raised from the dead! But in the wake of it, there is a deep
sense of wonder – it’s that kind of fear. Luke records the testimony of the
onlookers: ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ To Luke Jesus was much more
than a prophet, but in his generous attitude he notes that here at least is the
start of a positive response to him. It’s an attitude well worth bearing in
mind when we are in conversation with those who are missing from the love of
God: we bless the positive response, even if it is not all we hope it to be. We
see it as something to build on, rather than something to tear down.

Then there is the other response: ‘God has looked favourably
on his people!’ That’s a big one for mission. Isn’t it often the case that the
impression Christians give the world is that God looks unfavourably on them? But the mission of Jesus is the sure sign
that God looks favourably on people. Not in some ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’ badge
kind of way, but more that God is so full of love for his broken world that he
didn’t even spare his own Son.

This is not to minimise the seriousness of sin, which often
leads to the ‘God looks unfavourably’ approach; rather, it is to say that
despite all the sin that shatters the connection between God and humans, that
God is still so full of love he reaches out in love. Supremely he does that in
the coming of Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection. However, Jesus
witnessed to it before the Cross, and he did so by bestowing favour on the
broken, just as he did for the widow at Nain. It’s no good having a message of
God’s favour for people unless that favour is going to put on legs and walk.

And that’s what Jesus does in the miracle here. He doesn’t
preach a sermon about how God is gracious to the undeserving and merciful to
sinners, he gets on and dishes out the favour of God. The explanations can come
later. The other night, Jane, Joanna and I heard a lecture by Andy Griffiths,
the vicar of St Michael’s Galleywood,
in which he spoke about the importance of ‘values’ for mission. One that his
church has adopted is that of ‘showing before telling’: they show the love of
God first, and then they tell it. I think Jesus does something similar here. He
shows the favour of God: any telling comes later. That isn’t to excuse us from
talking about our faith, but it is to say that it must be credible first. Where
this week can I show the favour of God to those who might not think they have
it?

Conclusion
I guess that word ‘values’ is what runs like a thread through this sermon. It
is Jesus putting into practice the divine values of compassion, authority and
favour that we see in this story. Our call to mission requires something
similar: a broad compassion that encompasses all people and a wide range of
needs; a wise exercise of divine authority, especially because as Christians we
never act alone; and a commitment to demonstrate God’s outrageous favour to broken,
needy and sinful people – a favour we pray we shall then have an opportunity to
talk about. Where can we start getting on with the job?

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