Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, some time ago I had a noteworthy experience. A couple that had been married for sixty-seven years died within eight days of each other. But that wasn't the most remarkable thing: their only child and her husband were in their mid-sixties and told me after the second funeral that they were both overwhelmed by the past two weeks-which wasn't surprising at all, but what was surprising was one of their reasons for being overwhelmed: they said that they had only been to a handful of funerals in their whole lives, and never for anyone close to them. I was astounded to think that anyone could make it to sixty years old and have such limited experience dealing with death.

But the more I thought about it, it is not hard to see why many people today are like this couple, because it is not too hard to go through most of life without having to come face-to-face with death. For one thing, mortality rates have plummeted in the past century; better nutrition and sanitation and vaccinations and medications have made the prospect of a long life something we expect as a matter of course, so death comes as a surprise, even when someone is older, because we assume that the health care system can fix pretty much anything. And then, most families are so much smaller today, with one, two, or three children versus the ten or more that were common 100 years ago, so we have drastically fewer siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins that might die while we are growing up. And on top of all that, death used to almost always occur at home rather than in hospitals or nursing homes, so it was an unavoidable reality for the whole family, even the children. Before the vast expansion of the funeral home industry during the 20th century, families took care of preparing their own loved ones for burial. The visitation would often be right in the family parlor. Dealing with death was simply a part of life.

Of course, I know that death is not hidden from everyone today. I know that many of you have experienced the heartbreaking loss of parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren, and your hearts ache every day as you deal with their death. And there still are some people whose jobs require them to deal with death every day, such as soldiers, peace officers, doctors, nurses, and obviously, funeral home workers-but for most of us, death doesn't touch our lives as often as it once would have. Yet in Psalm 90 we pray, "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (v. 12), and so today more than ever, since death is so often in the back of our minds, we need to know what God teaches in His Word about dealing with death, and how He has dealt with defeating death for us by the blood of Jesus Christ. In today's Old Testament and Gospel readings, we can learn several things about death and dealing with it.

The first thing we learn is that when someone dies, there is only one place for us to go with our complaints, only one place to go for help in dealing with death. After the Lord had provided sustenance for the widow at Zarephath through Elijah, her son fell ill and died. She went to Elijah despondent, and he had compassion and went to the Lord. He prayed in a way that we might not feel comfortable doing. He said, "O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?" It sounds like Elijah was on dangerous ground, accusing God of killing the boy. But listen to what God said about Himself in Deuteronomy 32:39-"There is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal." Or as Hannah prayed, "The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up" Or as Job said after his family died, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord". God alone can give life, and He alone can take it away. Jesus said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father." Life and death are in God's hands.

This may seem unsettling, or even blasphemous, to think that God kills, but it is how He reveals Himself in the Bible and this is actually a comfort to us. Because we are much better off having the merciful, kind, and compassionate one True God being in charge of whether we live or die, rather than some impersonal fate or chance or mother nature or genetics that kills us. There is nothing comforting about the idea of our death being simply a matter of fate or luck, rather than in God's hands. Fate is a terrifying concept because fate is completely indifferent to our plight. That is the horrifying thing about the idea of random evolution with no goal: life is hopeless and pointless when there is no overall Creator from Whom we live and to Whom we must give an account. But for all who are baptized children of God, we can pray the Psalm, "My times are in Your hand" and be confident that our lives are in His loving hands. As St. Paul said, "Whether we live or we die, we are the Lord's". Death has no lasting claim on us, when we belong to God.

And so the first thing we learn today is that when death occurs, God is the One we need to deal with, and He has invited us to call upon Him in every trouble. He invites us to cry out in the same way that Elijah did, lamenting the loss of our loved ones. "Why, O God, why have you taken them away from me?" Read the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, and they are filled with laments that cry out, "Why, O Lord?" That is a perfectly legitimate question when it is asked to God in prayer. In Psalm 10:1 we pray, "Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" God loves to hear us call upon Him, especially in our darkest moments, just like Jesus did on the cross: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" And even in those darkest moments, we have the promise of the Lord from Psalm 30: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning."

Jesus knew that promise while He was suffering on the cross for the sin of the world, and what God reveals to us in the Bible is that not only is He the God who kills, but He also is the One who makes alive. God loves to raise the dead! Through Elijah God raised the widow's son. Then Jesus Himself, who is God the Son, the Lord of all, had compassion on another widow and raised her son. Later Jesus would bring his friend Lazarus out of the grave. And then finally, on Easter morn, we see the resurrection of Jesus Himself from the dead.

So while God kills, He also makes alive. He loves to give life. St. Paul wrote that God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist". But why doesn't He do resurrection miracles like this for us today? Why does God let so many of His Christians die but never seems to raise them up? Why do we continue to stare into one casket after another, weeping and mourning and not seeming to find the help we are looking for? Is St. Paul wrong in the Epistle reading when he says that God "is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think"?

Those questions all miss the point of these resurrection miracles. God wasn't setting a precedent for what sort of miracles He would regularly do in the Church. Rather, through Elijah God raised the widow's son to provide testimony to her that the Lord's Word on the lips of Elijah was true. And Jesus raised the widow's son and Lazarus to show that He is God's final prophet, the Messiah, and that His Word is truth and that as the Son of God He has power even over death in Himself. And all of these temporary resurrections (they were temporary because the boys and Lazarus were sinners and all sinners must eventually stay in the grave), these gave a glimpse of what God was going to do to recreate this dying world and accomplish everlasting life for those dead in sin. The reason God brought those people low in death was to point to His plans for all of us the future, in Jesus.

Jesus has dealt with death once and for all. Elijah and Jesus overcame temporal death in their miracles, but it was Christ's resurrection from the grave on the third day that showed God's victory over the big Death, eternal death in hell. Because the death of our bodies really isn't anything to fear. In fact, we have nothing to fear in this world except for God and His judgment against our guilt, as Jesus said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell". That is the big death, the everlasting death for sin, which is truly terrifying. That is the death we could never deal with on our own. But in Jesus Christ, God has taken care of that death for us and gives everlasting life to you as a free gift.

Since the fall into sin, the devil has held the sinful world in slavery to the fear of death, but God the Son took on our flesh and blood in order to destroy the devil and release us from bondage to sin and death. But He did this in the last way we would expect: He did it by dying! Jesus stepped into our shoes and took all of our guilt upon Himself, and God killed Him for our sake. Yes, it sounds almost blasphemous, but God said through Isaiah the prophet, "It was the will of the LORD to crush [the Messiah]; he has put him to grief". It was God's will that Jesus suffer and die for your sin, as His way of dealing with your guilt. But that was not the end. God kills, but God also makes alive, and so Isaiah goes on to say, "When [the Messiah's] soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand".

God kills, and God makes alive. Jesus willingly took the furious outpouring of God's wrath against our guilt, in order to pay the debt we owed God, but Jesus knew His Father's promise that He would see His offspring and prolong His days and accomplish God's will that everyone who comes to Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life. On Easter morn our victory was made complete when Jesus descended into hell to proclaim victory over the devil, and then burst out of the tomb, never to die again. The difference between Christ's resurrection and all the ones that came before His is that Christ will never die again-death has no dominion over Him.

And when you were baptized, you were given a share in that victory over death. At the font, with God's Word and the water, the Holy Spirit poured the life-giving blood of Jesus over you to wash away your sins and clothe you in Christ's own righteousness. He buried you with Jesus in His death, and raised you up through faith into Christ's resurrected life. And since you have died with Jesus in Baptism, then your death for sin is completed by Christ's own death, and you now have nothing but everlasting life to enjoy now and forever. Of course, your body will die, while your soul lives with the Lord, but the prophecy of Isaiah will later come true for you: "Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead".

And that brings me to the final thing we should learn from the Gospel reading today: for Jesus, our death is just like a light sleep and so for Him to raise us is an easy thing. I stood by the casket of a beloved ninety-year old woman, and her daughter was standing next to me and said, "She looks just like she is sleeping." "Amen!" I thought. One of the helpful things about the modern funeral is that the pains of death are erased from the faces of our loved ones, and they do look just like they're resting in peace, patiently awaiting that "great gettin'-up morning." The Bible often refers to death as sleep; one of Luther's hymns says, "Death is but a slumber." And in a sermon on today's Gospel reading Luther commented that Jesus treats the young man in the coffin as if he were just taking a nap: "Young man, I say to you, arise!" And he pops up as if he had just dozed off for a few minutes.

That illustrates perfectly how our Lord Jesus Christ views the death of our bodies: it will be no challenge for Him to call them forth from decay and death. It will be far easier for Him to call our bodies out of the graves than it is for us now when we try to rouse our spouse or teenager from a deep sleep. Because the promise of our Baptism into Christ holds true: "if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His". The Last Day promises us a glorious resurrection, unto everlasting life, as we confess in the Creeds: "I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." And all of this is possible only because of the precious sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, who answered for our sins on the cross, and poured out His blood to wash us clean and grant us everlasting life.

So whenever we are dealing with death, our own death or the death of our loved ones, remember that Jesus has dealt with death for us, so that even though weeping may tarry for the night, joy comes in the morning: that great Resurrection morning when everything will be made perfect. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.