“New Life”

Sermon delivered June 6^th, 2010 at Belleville Presbyterian Church. Scriptural basis: Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-17

We’ve talked a lot about new over the course of the last four months. Much of that has had to do with the season of the church year: Lent was about preparing for the renewal of our faith lives on Easter, Easter is by its very nature about God doing something new and bold, Pentecost was about the establishment of a new community of faith that we know as the church. Trinity Sunday had us taking a look at a new way of understanding the Godhead. We’ve talked about new commandments, new beginnings, all new. The Scriptures each week have seemed to push my thoughts in the direction of new. The word new and variations thereof occur in the Bible over one hundred and fifty times, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that I feel some pull in that direction. I suppose a big part of what’s behind what might appear to be an obsession with new is the fact that I’m new. Well, sort of new at this point. I think we’re getting pretty comfortable with each other... Today we’ll be a part of something new in our community, the Blessing of the Fleet. We’re at the beginning of a new season of the church year, known as ordinary time – I’m not a big fan of the term “ordinary time,” since I just don’t think there’s anything at all ordinary in living the Christian life but it is true that there are no major feasts or festivals for the next several months so I suppose it’s OK to call it ordinary time.  In a little while we’ll come to the table and renew our commitment to our Lord and Savior. And once again, the Scriptures today are all about new, this time new life.

If I knew nothing more about the Apostle Paul than the part of his letter to the churches of Galatia that we heard this morning, I’d think he was an arrogant, self-centered, self-aggrandizing jerk. Yes, an arrogant, self-centered and self-aggrandizing jerk who was called by God to spread the gospel message to the Gentiles, one who received the gospel directly from Jesus Christ, one who is writing to refute Jewish Christians’ demands that Gentile Christians in Galatia live by Jewish law and tradition but an arrogant, self-centered and self-aggrandizing jerk nonetheless. Our twenty-first century sensibilities are offended by Paul’s blatant chest-thumping about what a great man he is. Taking a step back, however, and looking at the historical context that Paul was writing in gives us a different perspective. The writing style employed by Paul and Paul’s followers was common in the Hellenistic world, and was designed to raise questions and then answer them for the reader (or hearer) in such a way that no counter-arguments could be made. If we can set style aside for a moment and look at what Paul has written as a set of facts, they’re actually pretty compelling. Some of it we know by tradition: Paul was a Jew’s Jew, zealous in his defense of what he considered the true faith and merciless in his persecution of the early church. Some historical records suggest that Paul advanced as a Pharisee much more quickly than others of his age, so he was not only zealous but fairly bright given the rigorous education required of Pharisees. He got his gospel directly from the source, not filtered through the original apostles and early adopters of Christianity in and around Jerusalem. In his travels, in this case during his first missionary journey to Asia Minor he made no effort to identify himself as Paul, formerly Saul tormentor of the church and now its leading evangelist but let others glorify God because of his conversion. That Paul was made a new person as a result of his encounter with Jesus is indisputable, and while we might have preferred a somewhat more humble expression of Paul’s qualifications to argue against the Jewish Christians in Galatia, known as Judaizers who were demanding that Gentile Christians comply with Jewish law and tradition, including the circumcision of men, it’s hard to dispute his credentials as he has laid them out. New life for Paul came as a result of God’s grace in the revelation of Jesus to him, as a consequence of his accepting the call to proclaim Christ to the Gentiles. Nothing more, nothing less.

Had we read the Hebrew Scripture for today, we would have seen that the new life Jesus gave the widow’s son in Nain is highly reminiscent of the account of Elijah raising a widow’s son from the dead in 1 Kings, although Jesus approached his task in a much quieter and far less dramatic way. In both instances, new life was given through the power of God acting through an earthly intermediary, in both instances the end result was a young man restored to his widowed mother, and most importantly in both instances the glory went to God.

In Biblical times, a widow’s life was perilous at best. Without a husband to provide an income, she would have been dependent on her husband’s family, more specifically the male members of the family. By tradition, the brother or other relative of the deceased husband would have taken on the responsibility for the widow by marrying her, so we can infer that neither widow had been afforded this opportunity. Without a male heir, all personal property went to the husband’s family after his death, so the widow would have been essentially homeless and hopeless. It is hard to overstate the desperate situation these two women faced.  The converse is also true, that it is hard to overstate the significance of having their sons returned to them. There are actually four new lives given in these passages, not two. The widows are reborn as well, reborn as viable members of their society.

While the stories from 1 Kings and the gospel according to Luke are similar, and in fact Luke quotes Kings when he says “he gave him to his mother,” there are two very critical differences. In the story in 1 Kings, the son dies after Elijah has arrived in town and the widow begs Elijah for help. In the gospel, the son has died some time before Jesus arrives on the scene and Jesus acts out of pure compassion. Nothing but love motivates Jesus to act. In order for him to raise the son, he has to touch the stretcher the body is on which makes him ritually unclean, something very, very few rabbis would have done. Jesus ignores his status as a religious leader to reach out in love and compassion to one who had virtually no status and through his actions restores her to a place of security and honor. He gives new life to the son and to the widow, because he loves them. He also gives us a preview of what will happen at the crucifixion, when he gives his mother a new son, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Another difference between these two resurrection stories. Elijah acts in private, Jesus in public. The people who witnessed Jesus’ reviving the widow’s son in Nain were seized with fear before they began to praise God. They witnessed the awesome power of divine presence and froze. I wonder what we’d do?

Have you ever witnessed a miracle? I bet you have, several times. Many of you are parents; you think a baby isn’t a miracle? Did you freeze the first time you held that new life in your arms? Probably not. Why? Because babies are born every day, we’re sort of used to it. It’s almost common. Dead people being revived are pretty darned unusual. Or not, spend some time in a hospital or more specifically an emergency room or trauma center. Miracles happen there every day; lives are restored almost as a matter of routine and those who witness it don’t freeze up. They very often praise God, and do so loudly which in my book is the right response. My point is that we are surrounded by miracles that we tend to write off as routine events, miracles of new life that I think we’d recognize as such if we’d just stop for a minute and think about it.

Every day when you wake up from a deep sleep, you are given new life. Every day is a chance to start over, to be made new and fresh. Every day is an opportunity to show love and compassion to another. To be honest, it’s not likely that your new life will come in the form of a resurrection event, it’s far more likely that your new life will come as it did to Paul, as the result of God’s grace in the revelation of Jesus Christ to you and as a consequence of accepting the call to proclaim him as your Lord and Savior. Celebrate your new life every day; give thanks to God for the fresh start the morning gives you. In a few minutes, when we come to the table to share the Lord’s Supper, give thanks for the renewal of your commitment to God and Christ and for the opportunity to share that commitment with the great cloud of witnesses around the world. It’s a new and wonderful life we’re given every day. Embrace it, enjoy it and give thanks for it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.