Raising Dead
Genesis 18:1-15; Matthew 9:35-10:22

June 12, 2005

We are losing track here in cool Saskatchewan of what “the heat of the day” feels like. Maybe this summer we will feel the heat and rejoice. Or perhaps as the perspiration flows, we will curse. The Biblical cultures knew nothing of our cold and snow, but for much of the year, noon time was not a time to do one’s best thinking or even talking or just doing.

Abraham was sitting in his tent next to the oaks of Mamre, barely able to lift up his head in the heat. Three men were simply there in front of him. It had been too hot to bother looking into the heat-miraged wilderness. No one but mad dogs and Englishmen would have been out there, and England was still an idea not yet thought.

The early Christians writers on the Bible have had a wonderful time with this story. Three of them, the Trinity surely, appeared out of nowhere like good angels should, for angels do not reside normally in human environments. Abraham responded to them not as angels or divine beings, but as human guests by whom he was greatly honoured. He rushed out to greet them, prostrating himself on the ground before them, making himself humble as the dirt.

Near Eastern societies cherish the ideal of hospitality to strangers. Ironically, these societies, often virulent and violent in their tribal identities and rivalries, saw the reception of a visitor or stranger as a sacred duty. Indeed, the visitor is to be treated like an angel. There are still Greek and Syrian bishops who take on the religious name of Philoxenus - “the lover of strangers” - and so, the hospitable one.

Abraham seemed desperate that these visitors not pass him by. He will get more out of their visit than they will. He offers water for drink and washing, food, and a welcome spirit, and rushes to kill the fatted calf, serving it with curds and milk, yogurt maybe - shades to be of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. The father in the parable clearly received his son like an angel, one who was lost but now is found.

The rest, like most visits, is conversation. “Where’s your wife Sarah?” They knew her new name. “In the tent” comes the grunted response. The author of Genesis takes off the literary gloves. The person talking to Abraham is no longer a stranger or visitor, or even a human being. He is openly “the Lord.” (The early Christians exclaimed, “Aha! Three visitors now speaking as One Lord.” The Triune God!) “In the spring when I return, she will have a son,” the Lord observes. At 99 and 89 this is a surprise, a joke, and Sarah does laugh at jokes. I guess there are times when you are not supposed to laugh. The joke, of course, would become reality and their son would be called Isaac, “he laughs.” “God has made laughter for me,” Sarah will say. “Everyone who hears will laugh over me.” Everyone does laugh over 90-year-old first time mothers.

Sarah had assumed her vibrant life was over, that her body was spent and that it was all downhill towards death. The three visitors promised to raise her up from the dead, as ludicrous as it sounds. Which is easier: to rise up from the tomb after one is dead, or to give birth at the age of 90?

The disciples had just seen the chief rabbi’s daughter raised up from death. Now that Matthew had joined the company, Jesus was sending them all out on internships or practicums for the kingdom of heaven. They were being sent out not to speak tame words of moralism and encouragement, but to do the Word by healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons, and raising the dead. There was no gradually progressive apprenticeship here. You don’t heal half a disease, or cleanse just a leper’s arm and leave the legs and face alone, nor do you get an agreement with a demon to vacate at the end of the month. And you don’t raise up someone half-dead or half-alive. It is never easy, and never in half-way measures.

Jesus gives a number of instructions and directions, but there is a point he is trying to make and we should be listening in. It is not you who are healing the sick and lepers, exorcising the demons; it is God who is doing it. Your talents may not hinder God’s actions, but they are not the reasons God is acting through you to minister in the name of the Gospel. Not just the talented do God’s work.

So what appears to be a severely ascetical set of requirements no modern person would contemplate - take no money with you on your journey, no food, no extra clothes, make no reservations for the night - is intended to make clear that it is God who is healing, not your bank account or proper garments or restful accommodations. You cannot buy your ministry for the kingdom. Anyone can do it, and that does not let you off the hook.

And could it be any clearer about the stumbling block of all Jesus’ commissions - to raise the dead? Being wealthy, well-fed and well-rested, even well-trained, does not qualify you to be able to raise anything dead back to life under your own power and talents. Yet the commandment remains in the scriptures and we are only going half-way if we toss it aside.

All right, you and I - as much as we want and no matter how much our faith moves mountains - are not going to be able to venture out purposely to bring someone back from the dead. We are human and that’s that. But God does use human beings to do things even the smartest people cannot imagine. God also uses you and me to raise people back to a fuller life, out of the grasp of a living death.

I know that our Regina Anti-Poverty Ministry (RAPM) has raised people from the dead many a time, helping them wade through the thickets and swamps of poverty and destitution, eviction from home, the vagaries and ambiguities of social services, being stranded in a strange city, struggling for the custody of their children. You know who they are. They look like they have been hit by a train, but they are now on the positive side of life. Our RAPM ministers make it possible for these living dead to see their own worth and understand that they have a God-given right to live. Sometimes with the principalities and powers swarming around you, it takes someone else to cast out the demons and help to restore you to a life full of joy.

I have seen how those AA and GA and other anonymous organizations have taken someone defeated and three-quarters dead by the forces of alcohol, drugs, and gambling, pulling them back up from hell and enabling that anonymous one to be resurrected, determined to live each day free, one day at a time.

When you have had the courage and the patience to stick with someone enmired in divorce, or overwhelmed by the death of a spouse, child or parent, or fired from a job, defeated or rejected from a much desired goal, you are demonstrating that the love of God does not let us go, but calls us back painfully to life.

The moment you decide to live according to the way of Christ, you have become a disciple and God has decided that you shall love other people so that they know that death is not in charge. You actually have no choice, for God will use your love to prove that death and all its allies are not real, that love has no boundaries and can even snatch you out of hell. Raising dead is what we as hearers of the Gospel do.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan