Last week, we focused on Jesus’ healing and compassionate hand. Even though Jesus didn’t need to touch the leper, He did so out of compassion for him. Anyone who touched someone who was unclean also became unclean. Yet, when the Lord reached down and touched the leper, He didn’t become unclean. Instead, Jesus healed the man, making him clean. Jesus has authority to heal the sick and make clean, but what can He do for those who have already died? 

Two separate processions are happening in this evening’s Gospel Reading. One procession features the Lord heading toward the town of Nain, followed by a great crowd. Jesus’ fame is spreading all around. His mighty hand casts out demons by His authority. He teaches with authority. He heals people of their diseases. So, many people are naturally attracted to Him and begin to follow Him. Great crowds are all wanting to touch Jesus. They are all wanting to hear and see Him at work. The buzz and excitement around Jesus is a procession of life! 

Coming the opposite direction, just outside of the city gates, is a different procession. People weep, wail, and mourn. This procession is led by the hand of death, which touched a young man. He’s now being carried to his grave. A widow—the young man’s mother—has lost her only son. She knows the grief of the woman in the Old Testament Reading we heard tonight. After her son’s death, she likely would have no other option but to lead the life of a beggar with outstretched, empty hands pleading just to receive the necessities of life. She’s now completely left on her own to live in this valley of sorrow, overshadowed by the hand of death that has touched her life by first taking her husband and now her only son.

What happens when the procession led by the hand of life meets the procession led by the hand of death? What happens when life and death meet each other? Sadly, we know well what happens in this world. We’ve seen it repeatedly. We know from experience that when life touches death, death seems to snatch life away. It doesn’t matter how old or how young, when death touches life, death seems to win. For those who are still living, the touch of death can have a long-lasting impact. Death was first brought into this world through the grasping hands of Adam and Eve. We all have produced death by the work of our hands, earning the wages of our sin. And death has had a grasp on us ever since. But now, the Lord of life, followed by His entourage, is coming to meet death and its mourners. 

As the two processions collide, Jesus is filled with compassion. The Greek word used by Luke is almost always used in reference to Jesus’ kind of compassion. You can feel it when you say it. It’s a gut-wrenching compassion. Jesus isn’t unconcerned about the touch of death upon people. He sees the sorrow as they carry away the young man, and He has deep compassion.

Now, what does He do with His hand? Just like last week’s Gospel about the healing of the leper, there’s the concern that a person becomes unclean by touching a dead body. But Jesus reaches out and touches the bier, and the pall bearers stop. Jesus’ hand brings the procession of death to an immediate halt. He says, “Do not weep. . . . Young man, I say to you, arise.” No longer a corpse, the young man sits up speaking—very much alive!

The people at last know that Jesus has come with prophetic power. Like Elijah and Elisha before Him, Jesus raises a woman’s only son and gives him back to his mother. But Jesus is even more than the greatest prophets. Elijah and Elisha relied on the hand of the Lord to act. Jesus is the “Hand of the Lord.” He acts of His own power and authority. When the Hand of the Lord touches death, He gives life. When Jesus touches this procession of death, He transforms it into a procession of life. There are so many more examples of the Lord bringing life out of death—the kinds of things that only God can do. The Lord raised Jairus’s daughter. He took her by the hand, and she sat up. When the Lord touches death, He brings life. 

The prophets foreshadowed the life Jesus brings. After Elisha’s death and burial, another man was being buried. He was thrown into the grave of Elisha. As soon as that man touched the bones of Elisha, he stood up, alive! God even turned touching the bones of Elisha into something that was life-giving.

How much more the life-giving power and authority of Jesus’ hand! He raised the widow’s son, Jairus’s daughter (taking her by the hand), and Lazarus (by calling him out of the grave)—those examples were simply a foreshadowing of what Jesus was about to bring out of His own death. All people that Jesus raised from the dead prior to the cross died again.

But our Lord is even more than a prophet. He has fully taken on human flesh. Jesus isn’t merely human. He’s also fully God. So, what will happen when Jesus touches death in His own body? That is just what He did through His suffering and death. He, too, was led on a procession of death, forced to carry the wooden means of His death. He took with Him the just penalty for our sin, even though He committed no sin. He willingly came into contact with death. He died and was buried. However, when the Lord Jesus touched death, He brought life. On the third day, He rose from the dead, never to die again. He defeated death once for all time. Jesus broke death’s grip on our lives. If God can use Elisha’s bones to bring life, resurrection life is so much more in Christ because Christ is alive yesterday, today, and forever! If we are thrown into the grave with Him in His death, it means only life because He lives today!

That is just what Baptism has brought to you. Baptism has buried you with Christ and raised you with Christ. “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” When Christ touches you through His Word and Sacrament, death is stopped in its tracks. Your sins are forgiven so that now death doesn’t have the final hold over you. Even though you suffer the effects of sin in this life (which brings about physical death), you are now among the spiritually living because you are united to Jesus.

So, when Christ returns in glory, our bodies will be raised on the Last Day. Because when Jesus’ life touches death, death is ended by the “Hand of the Lord.” Amen.