This morning at Advent Lutheran Church (ELCA). we continued our Meeting Jesus Again series.
Sermon
My message, “Speaking New Life” is based on the narrative lectionary passage:: Luke 7:1-17.
You can watch the message below or read the manuscript.
Excerpt
Since I’ve officiated a number of funerals over the years, I know what to expect. Also, since I’ve also been in ministry a few decades, I know to expect the unexpected.
Thinking back over the more unusual moments, I came to realize the list is longer than I assumed. I’ll share a couple with you.
There was the time that certain family members refused to be in the same room together but all wanted to be a part of the service. In the end they agreed to take turns, rotating who was in the service and who stepped outside.
And, there was the time I was the only one who showed up. I soon learned the family had changed the location of the service and updated everyone but me. I rerouted and joined them.
Don’t worry, neither of these happened at Advent.
Perhaps you’ve had an unexpected funeral experience. Or, perhaps you’ve been worried someone you love was near death only to experience a miracle that extended their life, delaying the need for funeral planning for years or even decades.
This morning, we encounter two very different stories in the seventh chapter of Luke. In the first, an important man seeks out Jesus the healer because he’s worried that someone near and dear to him is about to die. In the second, a devastated widow – a woman who lost her husband some time ago and who just lost her son – is overwhelmed by her grief as she does what no mother should ever have to do, preparing to bury her child.
These stories and the characters in them could not be more different.
Let’s unpack this a bit. And, as we do, I invite you to remember the realities of the world in the first century of the common era. It was not a good time to be a woman and definitely not a good time to be a woman who was not connected to a man.
- The centurion was a man. The widow was a woman.
- The centurion was powerful. The widow was powerless.
- The centurion was a military leader. The widow was a marginalized mother.
- The centurion was wealthy. The widow, now without a husband or a son, was destined to be destitute.
- The centurion was hopeful. He sought Jesus out believing that Jesus could save the life of his servant. The widow was hopeless because her only son had died earlier that day.
According to this list, it is clear one person had more privilege than the other. And, the world they found themselves in was designed to work well for that man and people like him.
Based on what we’ve learned about Jesus in recent weeks through our study of the first six chapters of Luke’s Gospel, we expect Jesus to show up for the woman. Coming to the aid of this well-resourced man is unexpected.
There is more here than what most people notice with quick reading of the passage. Did you catch that the man was actually the outsider? The centurion was a Gentile. He was an officer in the Roman army and likely, though we don’t know for certain, was ethnically Roman.[1] So, here we have the person we don’t expect to have faith in Jesus, expressing faith in big bold ways . . .
[1] Jeannine K. Brown. Commentary on Luke 7:1-10, June 2, 2013, available from https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-09-3/commentary-on-luke-71-10-2