Luke 7:11-17
Death is Not the End
Today’s story is a shocker in many ways. If you have ever lost anyone to death—and many of you have—you may experience a little jealousy with today’s story. You may wonder why Jesus didn’t interrupt your loved one’s memorial service. But if you think about the whole of the biblical narrative, we only have three times in scripture where Jesus brought people back from the dead: this story, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and the raising of Lazarus. Verse 22 of today’s chapter implies Jesus may have raised others, but he didn’t bring all the dead back to life. Yet he brought back a few. Why? And what does it mean for us today?
Since Adam and Eve first ate the forbidden fruit, death has been a part of life. Romans 5:12 says, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” When sin entered the world, it brought death. From the moment we are born, we begin to die. Isn’t that a cheerful thought? Remember the old saying? Only two things are certain—death and taxes. Until Jesus comes again, the human condition is 100% fatal, even including the great Mohammad Ali. And there is nothing we can do about it. And it hurts. It hurts to lose someone you love.
Perhaps that’s why Jesus had compassion for this woman. The NIV translation says, “His heart went out to her.” The wording implies great compassion. After all, one of the largest injustices in life is for a parent to have to bury a child. It should be the other way around. Yet, I have seen way too many funerals with a tiny casket up front. It doesn’t seem right. And it’s not. Death is a thief, and it is not part of God’s original design for humanity.
In today’s story, death not only touched this woman’s son; it had earlier come for her husband. In Bible times, this meant she is almost certainly condemned to a life of poverty, living off the charity of others. Perhaps that is why the entire town is walking with her, because her situation is so sad, so bleak, so hopeless.
Jesus’ response is touching and also puzzling. He goes up to her and says, “Don’t cry.” He feels compassion for her. His heart goes out to her. He hurts where she hurts. This tells us our God is compassionate; God cares, God hurts when we hurt, and God hates the sting of death as much if not more than we do.
Yet, Jesus' words are puzzling as well. Why does he say to the woman, “Don’t cry”? Is this not a strange request of a person who has already lost her spouse and now has to bury her only son? Why shouldn’t she cry? What possible reason could there be for not crying under such circumstances?
There is no reason ... by human standards. Tears are appropriate when you have lost everyone dear to you. Yet Jesus is not done yet. He offers more than empty words; he offers action.
The one perfect human to ever walk the earth reaches out and touches the curse of death. The truly clean one—God in the flesh—touches the uncleanness of death. Jesus reaches out and touches the bier, a platform for carrying an open casket. The pallbearers halt immediately. They know no Jew in their right mind would make himself ceremonially unclean by touching a dead person.
But Jesus doesn’t just touch a dead person; he talks to the corpse as if it were alive. In fact, he commands the corpse, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” Can you imagine the thoughts that must have rushed through the minds of the mother, the pallbearers, the crowd? In that brief instant, they must have questioned Jesus’ sanity. I imagine they felt a rush of anger and shock. How dare this man interrupt their carefully planned funeral procession!
Verse 15 is actually humorous in its wording: “The dead man sat up and began to talk.” How do dead people sit up and talk? With God, all things are possible. The author of life is able to return life, to replace death with life, to overcome death for good.
Before you think too much about how Jesus did not do the same for your own loved one’s death, consider this: Jesus did not stop his own death. He could have. He could have avoided arrest, or at least finagled a release by Pontius Pilate, who was looking for a way to let him go. But he didn’t. He prayed for this cup to pass him by, but he ended his prayer with words that we would all do well to adopt: “Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done, Father.” Isn’t that what we pray every week in the Lord’s Prayer? “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus submitted himself to the Father’s will, and even to death itself. Jesus died. Yet death could not contain him. On the third day he arose bodily from the dead. In so doing, Jesus gained the first resurrection body, a body that would never die again. The widow’s son would die again, as would Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus. Yet Jesus' body would never age and never die.
And the scriptures say we will have resurrection bodies ourselves someday. Death is not the end. Cholesterol and high blood pressure will be a thing of the past. There is food in heaven, but no calories. There is fellowship but no sin. We can hunt down this unnamed widow and ask her what went through her mind when Jesus walked up to her son’s coffin. Won’t that be something?
The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus came, “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15). At times we fear death. It seems to rob those closest to us. Yet our fear is born out of doubts that whisper, “This is the end.” Or for our own approach to death, “Is this all there is?” But Jesus has destroyed death once and for all. It is not the end any more. For the believer, it is but the final PCS to a more glorious location and status than we have ever experienced.
As Jesus told Martha at Lazarus’ death, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11:25-26). In Jesus we have life forever. We do not have to fear death. As Paul writes, death has lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15:55).
I love how today’s story ends. Jesus returns the young man to his mother. Certainly the crowd would recall Old Testament stories where both Elijah and Elisha also resurrected young men and returned them to their mothers (1 Kings 17:23; 2 Kings 4:36–37). Yes, Jesus is a great prophet. They have yet to discover that he is so much more.
And the crowd is both awe-struck and full of praise. They tell everyone what they saw. This is the natural reaction when you see Jesus at work, when you discover that death is not the end.
When professional golfer Paul Azinger was 33 years old he had just won a PGA championship and had ten tournament victories to his credit. But he was also diagnosed with cancer. He wrote, “A genuine feeling of fear came over me. I could die from cancer. Then another reality hit me even harder. I’m going to die eventually anyway, whether from cancer or something else. It’s just a question of when. Everything I had accomplished in golf became meaningless to me. All I wanted to do was live.”
Then Larry Moody, who was teaching a Bible study on the tour and was aware of the anxiety Azinger was experiencing, said to him, “Zinger, we’re not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We’re in the land of the dying trying to get to the land of the living.”
That one comment changed Azinger’s attitude toward his cancer. He went through chemotherapy, recovered from his cancer and returned to the PGA tour. Now he’s a TV golf analyst. He’s done pretty well. But that bout with cancer changed him. He wrote, “I’ve made a lot of money since I’ve been on the tour and I’ve won a lot of tournaments, but that happiness is always temporary. The only way you will ever have true contentment is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m not saying that nothing ever bothers me and I don’t have problems but I feel like I’ve found the answer TO THE SIX-FOOT HOLE.” Let us pray.
Father, help us to hold onto that same answer: Jesus Christ our Lord, who has overcome death once and for all. You know how much we miss our loved ones who have gone on ahead of us. Help us to grieve as those with hope, not as those with no hope in the life to come. And as the fear of death creeps into our soul, help us to trust your word, that death is not the end, but only the beginning of eternity with you. In Jesus our Savior we pray, amen.
