I'm a pretty light sleeper. A couple times this past week, the cat has come in around 4:00 in the morning, purring. Now, purring, that little motor it sounds like they have running, isn't very loud, but it was loud enough. The first couple times I looked at the clock. The last time I was not going to do that. I have also had an occasional call in the middle of the night and people will ask, "Did I wake you?" It doesn't take more than one ring and I'm up. I try to make it sound like I wasn't sleeping, but it doesn't work too well. My voice gives me away.

That's different from what happens in our text today. The young man Jesus encounters is not merely sleeping. He is dead. But Jesus treats him as though he is just sleeping. And not a deep sleep--a sleep we ought to be in around 3:00 in the morning--but rather more like a catnap. The man, who moments before had been dead, immediately begins to speak.

Now, when I am first wakened, I don't begin to speak unless I need to. If it is in the morning, my voice sounds like I've been chewing gravel, so I try to wait until I've had a chance to really wake up.

This man speaks right after he is raised from the dead. We can only imagine what he had to say. It was probably something very profound since he had just been dead, or maybe it was just simple confusion, as he looked for his mother. Either way, he spoke as though he just woke from a light nap.

Death is frequently compared to sleep. Over and over we read of God's people falling asleep. When David died, I Kings reports that he slept with his fathers. When Stephen was stoned, he said a few words and then Luke tells us "he fell asleep." The phrase "falling asleep," referring to death, becomes more and more common as the Christian church grew. The church in Corinth provides a particularly good example of the use of that phrase. The Christians there had been approaching the New Testament Holy of holies, the very flesh and blood of Christ in His Supper, in a nonchalant sort of way. By their practice they denied this was His body, and the Lord did not take it lightly. Some of those doing this got sick and some had even died. But Paul in his report didn't say they died, rather they had fallen asleep. Paul does it in other places as well.

Perhaps the Biblical writers were inspired to call it sleep because those who died in Christ knew one day they would be wakened from it. They knew death cannot hold its dead when Jesus speaks. Death is merely sleep when Jesus speaks. He is the master. The Creator who had made the world, who called things into being that had not been before, simply by speaking, considers death's hold a mere trifle. We saw it on the first Easter morning. He broke the bonds of death Himself and rose again to never die again.

For us, we are helpless in the face of death. We watch a loved one die and we can do nothing about it-absolutely nothing. And we know it. The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming.

As bad as it may be for us when we see a loved one die, it was doubly worse for this widow, because her son's death meant her own death was right around the corner. She had no way to survive. Her husband was gone and now she had lost her only other means of income. She was as good as dead.

Jesus, who knew He would raise her son, felt deep pity for her. The text says, "had compassion on her," but that doesn't say what He really felt. The pity was so deep it was in His guts, and it went even deeper than that. That's what he felt for he. It says something about how we would react to a person in a helpless situation. These weren't manufactured feelings. He felt genuine pain for this woman. When we feel genuine pain for someone else, we can't stop ourselves; we want to do what we can to help.

But this is beyond any help we could provide. Her son was dead. She was like the widow Elijah was staying with. The future looked horribly dark. But our Lord who calls things into being that, moments before weren't, is not stopped by bleak appearances. He simply goes up to the casket, puts His hand on it and commands the young man inside to come out.

Last week we talked about our God as Father. He knows all we need and promises to provide, but this shows His power; what He is able to do. The point is not lost on the crowds who witnessed the miracle.

"A great prophet has arisen among us. The Lord Himself has visited His people." This is the one who exercises fatherly care for you. God, our Father, who had demonstrated His power over the one thing we feel so helpless against, cares about you. When things feel so out of control; when it feels like it's just not going right, we have the One watching over us who woke a dead man like he was taking a little catnap.

But He is not simply watching over us, He is doing in our hearing the very miracle He did back in 1st-century Palestine. He is raising the dead right now. And in case you were wondering, we are--you and I--that dead. The difference between the man being brought out of Nain and ourselves, though, is that he was already dead. We have to be killed first.

I was talking with someone earlier this week who remarked about how violent the Bible can be. He said that people reject the Bible because it is so violent. He is absolutely right. The Bible is violent. Sin doesn't allow gentleness. Jesus wasn't meek and mild, despite how people want to present Him. They think the scene in the temple as He drove out the money changers was out of his character, but he was always taking on resistance.

He loved, that's true, but it's because He loved that He would not avoid confrontation. The very reason He came to earth was all along to be a horribly violent scene. The Son of Man and the Son of God, perfectly innocent, was practically beat to death and then nailed on a cross. He was serenaded into his death by the mockery of religious leaders.

Yes, if you think God avoids violence, the clear message of the Bible is going to be hard to take. And even after Jesus has died and risen again, the language of violence is not over. The God of life, first has to kill. The King of Israel tore his robes when Naaman came to him to be healed of his leprosy. He cries out, "What? Am I God? Can I kill and bring to life?" Our conversion in baptism is described as being put to death and then brought to life. This is the way of our Lord, and so, great violence is brought upon us. We are killed, and the Lord does that so He can make us alive, alive as different creatures from what we are by nature.

Let the killing begin. He takes aim and fires. But the target we present is as big as the side of a barn. It starts with the very thing we are talking about--our unwillingness to admit He needs to make us alive. It shows in our attitude toward worship. We come here smug and full of ourselves. We think God feels honored that we show up. Worse, we actually act on that ridiculous thought. Because we sincerely believe we are honoring Him, we think we can dictate the terms for our worship. We think we can decide what is best for us and how we are to do it.

Hardly the humble approach. He's got another thing for us. He smacks us down with reminders we are nothing but lousy sinners. We can almost hear Him shouting, "Who do you think you are?"

It's what He had to do with those Corinthian Christians, I told you about earlier. They thought they were it. They treated His flesh and blood as though it were no big deal, that coming into the presence of God was not an honor, but a right they had simply because they claimed it. Yeah, He got their attention--in a dramatic way. Some of them had become sick and some of them had actually died--oh yeah, had fallen asleep. They died Christian deaths, so they were said to have fallen asleep, but they still died because they thought they could come to Him on their own terms.

You don't mess with a holy God. It's a hard lesson to learn. We think He is forgiving and tolerant, but we only think that because we have decided to make Him in our own image. We can do all we want and think all we want, but it won't change what He is or how He is going to relate to us.

Yeah, He puts us in our place in short order. Learning He is holy and we are not, that He is not honored by us showing up for worship, is not just hard; it is fatal. He pops a hole in our bubble and we are killed.

Now, He can do the work He wants to do. He doesn't enjoy killing. Seeing us withered does not bring Him pleasure. But He is not going to bring us to life until we are actually dead. He never could have raised the dead man and given him life unless he was actually dead.

Now the way has been cleared. Now, He lifts us to life. He calls out to us, breaking the chains of pride and setting us free from an attitude that would ultimately destroy us. He gives us Himself, the very Lord of life. He forgives and says, "My death wasn't just a demonstration of my love. It was what you deserved, but I have done it. Now, you live."

Yes, we experience the same kind of resurrection as that man did. He was wrapped up in death and set free. We also were wrapped up in death and He sets us free.

Which is the greater miracle? The resurrection of this man who was physically dead or our resurrection from eternal death this morning? Martin Luther talks about Jesus' conception and in that, helps us find the answer to that question. He says that God could become flesh is a miracle. That Jesus could be born of a woman who was a virgin, with God Himself as the Father was another miracle. But the biggest miracle is that Mary believed what the angel said.

The miracle we witness today is Christ giving Himself, and us receiving it, that is, us hearing Him say His words of life and actually believing it. No, we don't believe it on our own. We are fully incapable of that. Our attitude of smugness should make it clear we could never do it on our own. But the Spirit of Christ speaks to us and we hear Him say, "I died for you. I conquered death for you. Now, no longer does sin hold you captive. No longer do you have to think you need to obey the commandments to be restored. I have kept them for you. I give to you my holiness. And we hear these words being spoken to each of us. This is the miracle of resurrection we experience today, a greater miracle than the one in our text. The people of Nain responded to the miracle outside their city gates by announcing God has visited His people. You can say the same thing. God has visited His people today, and has brought with Him life.

As a result of our own resurrection miracle we will know of another resurrection. One day we will all sleep. As He keeps us in His grace, as He give Himself to us faithfully, and we faithfully receive Him, we will be granted the Christian's sleep of death. It hardly sounds like something we want to hear, but better to be told we will be granted a Christian death than to be given a vague hope we will or even be told we will die without Christ. Because we know one day we will fall asleep, we know one day our Lord will speak again and He will wake us from our sleep. The sleep of our death to Him will be as a sound and as deep as a little catnap. Then we will wake to eternal life and glory. We will see our Lord with our own flesh, with our own eyes, and we will be with Him forever. Like Job said, "How my heart yearns with me."

Until then, we will regularly go through the death and the resurrection we have experienced today.

Because we always revert to our sinful and smug attitude, we will need to go through the death and resurrection we have experienced today--regularly. But our God is gracious and patient. Showing our sinfulness to us, He rejoices to raises us to life again and he will continue to do that until we fall asleep and are raised permanently into eternal life. Until that day, as Job says, "How our hearts yearn within us."

AMEN