I Say to You, Arise!

Text: Luke 7:11-17
         Usually on Saturday morning I will get up and fix pancakes and bacon for the kids. William loves pancakes but Alice would rather have bacon. I make them from scratch and had been doing this for a year or so all the while perplexed as to why sometimes they would be fluffy and other times be flat. I thought I had figured it out once. I would mix milk, two eggs, and melted butter in a bowl and whip it by hand. I thought that more whipping made them fluffier, but it turned out to be coincidence. So, I went back to rethinking the ratio between the ingredients. Then, one Saturday morning I came down to the kitchen and Dana had usurped my role. I entered the kitchen just at the moment when she had the handmixer out and was whipping the egg whites. I said, “You always do that?” and she said, “Yeah, says it there in the recipe.” Having watched her make pancakes a handful of times, that was the first time I could remember seeing her do that. So, I looked at the recipe which I had actually read several times and right there it said separate out the egg whites and whip them until they are slightly stiff and then as the last step fold them into the batter...fluffy pancakes every time...well, almost every time.
         Separate out the egg whites, whip them full of air, and fold them back in—who would have ever thought there's a sermon in that? Well, I will apologize beforehand for what I am about to do. Friday a week ago, I was reading from a book entitled Movements of Grace: The Dynamic Christo-realism of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and the Torrances by Jeff McSwain, a theology PhD who makes his dime doing youth ministry. At the top of page 52 he delivered a gobsmacker of a summary of what the Trinity has done for us in through and as Jesus Christ. McSwain is wanting us to recall Paul's benediction to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” He will refer to this grace, love, and fellowship as the trinitarian environment where each person has been placed by the Trinity by God the Son becoming Jesus Christ and sharing our humanity. Paul says as much in his sermon to the philosophers in Athens in Acts 17. He speaks of our basic human need to seek God that we might find him for, in Paul's words vv. 27-28 “he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'” We all have our being in the Trinity and are indeed his children as I've said in the last two sermons. The gist of Romans chapter five is that just as Adam's transgression brought sin and death to all people, so the Trinity's righteous act as and through Jesus has brought reconciliation to God for all people. Just as Adam's transgression wrought a fundamental change in human “being” for death so also in, through, and as Jesus Christ the Trinity has wrought a fundamental change in human “being” for life. This is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
         So back to McSwain, he writes: “We must recall that the purpose of the incarnation and the atonement is to fold humanity into the trinitarian relations—sharing by grace in the sonship of the Son, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Paul's benediction cited above is essentially the description of the trinitarian environment, where each person has been placed via the incarnational union and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.” So, by the person and work of Jesus Christ God is folding us (remember the egg whites) back into his very being where we live and move and have our being and are his offspring. This is grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The father who loves us as much as he does the Son sent the Son to become one with us in our humanity and he has not ceased to be human and one with us even though he died, was raised, and now sits at the right hand of the Father. That bonded union between the Trinity and humanity in and as Jesus Christ is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ something which God has wrought and applies to all humans whether we want it or not. Now through the work of the Holy Spirit God is separating some people out this is you and me and is whipping us full of the the air of the Holy Spirit that we might live as the living prove that the Trinity has, is presently, and will ultimately save his entire Creation from the futility of Sin and Death. Here we are talking about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son have sent the Holy Spirit who bonds us to Jesus so that we share and will share in his risen humanity and in his relationship with the Father. We are children of the Trinity and in the Trinity we live and move and have our being so that we, the whipped up egg whites are the living proof of the Trinity's plan for his Creation. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are folding us at present back into the trinitarian environment of their life, their loving and life-giving communion, a life that is indestructible. Death cannot separate us from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we will be raised and now must live as those who have been brought from death back into life. We must now live prayerfully in the name of Jesus working for him and with him in his putting us and the world around us to rights.
         Let me come at this another way, Jesus really was God visiting his people. Every where he went by the things he said and the things he did the life of the trinitarian environment broke through. The Kingdom of God, the end of time reign of God broke forth in earth as it is in heaven speaking a judgement that restores things to rights. You see, Death ain't right. A widow loosing her only son to death ain't right. Back in that day people would have believed that woman was cursed by God because of some hidden sin. They would have believed that God was getting her for that sin first by taking her husband and then by taking her son. Back then women could not live honourably on their own. They had to have a man providing for them whether it be their father, a husband, or a son. Outside of the sheer compassion of another man, kin or stranger, a woman on her own would have been forced to beg or to go into prostitution to live.
         That day it was Jesus who was moved with compassion. God truly had come to town and he was not the judging God who smites the wicked sinner with the life of the cursed. Indeed not. Jesus comforted the woman. Then he stopped the funeral touching the bier incurring the curse of death upon himself. Then he said, “Young man, I say to you, (in the Greek text the emphasis is on the I.)...I say to you, arise.” The young man sat up and began to speak and Jesus, Jesus gave him back to his mother. He put things to right. He judged death. He judged their false ideas about God. In so doing he raised the young man from death and restored his mother to rights. Never would anyone ever say again that she must be cursed by God for her sins for she was obviously blessed. The trinitarian environment had manifested. Jesus came into their lives and they were brought into his. Things were righted.
         Paul says this has happened for each of us at Colossians 1:13-23 writing: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven...”.
         Jesus has come to us each and said “I say to you, arise” and has folded us into the trinitarian environment. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness into his kingdom where we are beloved children, loved by the Father just as much as he is. We are reconciled, by his blood and his cross and folded into the trinitarian environment. For some of us this may have been quite a dramatic event, for others of us its just day to day living and knowing the Lord or a combination of both. I have friends in AA who are seeking a spiritual solution to a physical problem. It is amazing to hear the stories of not only how their compulsion to drink mysteriously got taken away like the dead man rising but how by sticking with the program God puts their lives to rights just like he did for the widow. An integral component of anyone seeking to know God the Trinity in whom we live and move and have our being is daily devotion, seeking the closer walk, simply wanting to live closer to Christ and praying for it. Letting your life find its direction in that desire. I'll bring this to a close by sharing with you an old Gospel song Just a Closer Walk with Thee.

I am weak, but Thou art strong; Jesus, keep me from all wrong;
I’ll be satisfied as long as I walk, dear Lord, close to Thee.
Refrain: Just a closer walk with Thee. Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee. Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
When my feeble life is o’er, Time for me will be no more;
On that bright eternal shore, to Thy shore, I will walk, dear Lord, close to Thee. Refrain.