We Are Weak, But He Is Strong

Luke 7:11-17

Third Sunday after Pentecost  -  5 June 2016

Rev. John Derme

“Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong; They are weak, but he is strong.” This song has been around for 150 years, and it remains a favorite among Christian parents and children today. And what a fitting song it is for children to hear! No matter how many times my three-year-old says, “Lemme do it!” small children can’t do everything by themselves. They need help. Yes, they are weak.

The song is just talking about small children though, right? You older kids are getting to be a lot more independent. You don’t need anyone to feed you or get you dressed. Many of you teens already have jobs, and if you’re not already driving yourself, it won’t be long. Adults, you’ve probably already proved that you can handle life on your own. Parents, not only can you provide for yourselves, but you can care for children, too. There’s hardly a greater insult than being called “weak,” and nobody is going to say that about you!

You are strong! You can take care of yourself. You can handle any issue that comes your way. Whenever trouble rises up in your life, you always fix it. Like when people you know are sick. You can make them better. When illness strikes you, all you have to do is put your mind to it, and your problem is gone in no time!

Isn’t that how it works for you? That’s not how it works for me, either. When somebody in my family is sick, I can try and treat the condition. I can work to make him or her more comfortable. But ultimately I am going to have to wait for the person to recover. And when I am sick, I can try to nourish my body well and get the rest I need. Finally, though, I have to admit that getting better is out of my control. I’d like to think that I’m strong enough to handle my sickness, but the very fact that we get sick in the first place is proof that we are weak. If we were truly strong, we’d never get ill, because we’d fight it off. And even if you are the type of person who never gets sick, don’t count on always being that way. As you get older, your weakness may become very obvious.

Sickness often leads to another proof of human weakness. Even if you can avoid sickness for the rest of your life, you won’t be strong enough to avoid death. When you sit at the deathbed of another person, you may want nothing more than to use your strength to make everything better. But as you sit and wait, there is nothing that you can do. And when the last ounce of strength leaves the body in front of you, you are being warned that death is coming for you. You can try with all your strength to stop it, but you can’t.

Why are we so weak? Why do we get sick and die? Truth be told, our physical weakness is only a symptom of our spiritual condition. We are spiritually weak, because we are sinners. You can try with all your might to fix your problem; you can put all your strength into keeping yourself from sinning anymore. But you won’t be strong enough. I’ve tried, and I’ve been too weak every time.

Just as physical sickness often leads to physical death, where do you think human spiritual sickness leads? And if we’re not strong enough to keep from sinning, do we have the strength to keep ourselves from spiritual death, when a person is separated from God’s blessings forever in hell? There is nothing that you or I can do to keep it from happening us. We are not just spiritually weak. We human beings are helpless.

Human weakness was on display for all to see one day as Jesus approached a city called Nain. Suddenly a funeral procession came out from the city gate. A dead man was being carried in his casket. His mother was there, as was a large crowd from the city. It was a sad, sad scene. The woman’s husband was already dead, and she had just lost her only son. She was helpless to do anything about his condition or her own. He was dead and she was now alone, with nobody left to support her. In a time before life insurance and working outside the home, this woman would be left to spend the rest of her life begging on the streets for food. The crowd couldn’t do anything to help her either; all they could do was mourn over the young man and his mother. The weakness was overwhelming.

When Jesus saw this three-fold display of weakness from the young man, his mother, and the crowd, his heart went out to them in compassion. Since nobody else had the power to fix any of this, he wanted to help. He spoke to the mother: “Don’t go on crying.” He touched the casket and the pallbearers stopped. Then he spoke to the dead man: “Young man, I say to you, wake up!” And the dead man obeyed. He sat up and began to talk. In the midst of all this weakness, Jesus showed his strength to the dead man by raising him to life. Then he showed his strength to the mother by giving the son back to her. He showed his strength to the crowd by helping when they couldn’t. And they saw it. They praised God and were filled with awe.

Are you filled with awe at Jesus’ power? Perhaps you have already heard this account from Jesus’ life. Maybe you already knew how it was going to end before it was read, so you tuned it out a little. Or you listened, but didn’t let this familiar story impact you like it should have. If that’s true, picture yourself in that funeral crowd. You are so sad for the woman whose son has died, but you’re powerless to help. Or picture yourself as the mother. You’re destitute and maybe even on the edge of despair, because your life depended on your son, and now you are wondering how many days it will be until your casket is carried out of the city.

As you are mourning, a man comes out of nowhere and does something completely unexpected. He steps up and interrupts the procession by touching the casket. Of course, you don’t know what to say, because not only is he doing something that seems incredibly rude, but his action is surprising because he is making contact with a dead body which will cause him to be ceremonially unclean. But he is not being rude to you; he is showing you his love. And he is not making contact with a dead person, because he brings your son back to life!

What does this miracle tell you? You’ve read in the Old Testament about God using his prophets to raise people from the dead, like when Elijah raised the widow’s son. But you’ve never seen it, because it hasn’t happened in about 900 years! You knew that the Messiah was supposed to be coming soon, but as badly as things are going in the world and in your life, God obviously isn’t helping his people right now. Then this miracle happens. What does it tell you? God has come to help his people! God has sent this man to help you. But this is no merely human prophet, like Elijah who raised the dead before him. He is wielding God’s power, so you’re going to listen to his words. He claims to be God himself. Yes, God almighty has come to use his strength to raise his people out of their weakness.

The crowd who witnessed the miracle that day didn’t understand all of those things about Jesus. It was obvious to them that he was a prophet from God, and they spread that message in every direction. But because you have witnessed his strength through the words recorded for you in the Bible today, and you have observed the ways that he uses his strength in your life, you know exactly who he is. You know his strength, because when you and I are weak, Jesus has compassion on us.

It is Jesus who heals us when we are sick. We may take the medication or do the nursing, but if he doesn’t bless our efforts, all the treatment in the world won’t do any good. This is shown by the fact that sometimes people receive the best treatment for their ills, and still don’t recover. It is shown even more starkly by the by the fact that world-class medical treatment can’t keep a person from eventually dying. Jesus, in his compassion, doesn’t always grant quick relief. But although he doesn’t cure every physical weakness right now and doesn’t keep us from dying, he has cured our spiritual death and raised us to eternal spiritual life.

When Jesus raised the dead young man to life, he showed that he is our strong substitute who lived the life that we in our weakness never could. He showed his strength when he carried the sins that we had committed and died the death that we never could. Through faith in this good news, he has raised us to spiritual life that will never end in death, because his strong Word is strengthening our faith every time we listen to it. He gives you strength when he gives you himself – his body and blood – to make your trust ever firmer.

Jesus has cured your spiritual death by raising you to spiritual life with him. He hasn’t cured your physical death yet, but he’s planning to do that, too. When he comes back to earth on the Last Day, revealing his almighty strength for all to see, he will raise the bodies of all who have died. No longer will there be any weakness in me or in you. It will be gone. Perfect strength will be his gift to us.

But we aren’t there yet, and until that day we are going to prove our weakness again and again. And because we are weak, bad things like sickness and pain are going to happen to us. No matter what may come in our lives, Jesus will be with us, and he will use his strength to help us through these times, and he will use every one of them for our good. Of course, it is hard for us to see how something bad can be used for our good, but it is true. If Jesus could take a young man’s death and a woman’s helplessness and a crowd’s powerlessness and use them for their good so that all who were present saw his strength and knew that God had come to help them and listened to his words, then he can take our sicknesses and the death that we witness and bless us through those troubles as well. He uses for our good even the worst thing that happens to us – our death. When we take our last breath, our weakness will be clear to all as every last bit of strength leaves our body. But even in that weakness, his strength is revealed, because he will use that tragedy to bring us to heaven.

There is absolutely no way around it. We are weak. It’s not an insult; it’s the truth. And it is good for us to realize this. Our weakness would ruin us if we didn’t have someone strong to help us. We have a helper who is not only strong, but who is also compassionate and loves us. His strength does what ours could never do even if we had some. He used his strength to die and rise for us, so that we will be strong forever and ever. We are weak, but he is strong.