A Better Comfort
Trinity 16| Luke 7:11-17| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| October 5, 2025
This past week was an exciting week for the Preus family. On Wednesday morning, I had two nephews born a couple hours apart in two different states. So, two cousins will be birthday buddies. As you know, my family loves babies. Not like dog-people or cat-people love dogs and cats, but we believe the words of Scripture, “Children are a heritage from the LORD.” (Psalm 127:3) and we rejoice that these little ones may be brought to Jesus to be heirs with us in eternal life. And I know well what a happy morning it is to relax in a hospital room with my wife beaming with joy, holding our newborn, and giving thanks to God for His goodness.
Yet, as I thought of my brothers and sisters-in-law and shared in their happiness, my heart kept sinking into sadness. Because the night before the birth of these babies, another pastor brother sent out a prayer request to our chat group. A little baby girl in his congregation was found by her parents not breathing and without a pulse. EMT were trying to revive her. I prayed for the life of the little girl and for her parents. And then an hour or two later, my brother reported that she had died of SIDS at just four-months-old. And so, I kept thinking of the morning her father and mother were enduring as the sun came up to reveal that the tragedy of the night before was not a nightmare, but the reality they must live with for the rest of their lives. Why is it that on a day that God grants so much happiness to some of his children, he permits so much sadness to others?
And I was thinking of my brother, the pastor of these grieving parents, who while I was going to bed, left his home to go and offer comfort to the parents. How do you comfort a mom and dad who just lost their baby? If he could do what Jesus did in our Gospel lesson, that would be comforting. Touch the dead child and tell her to wake up, and then return her alive to her parents’ arms. What could possibly more comforting than that?
And yet, that is not what Jesus sent their pastor to do. Rather, before Jesus ascended into heaven, He commanded that the Gospel be preached to the whole creation (Mark 16:15). You children know what the word Gospel means, right? Good News. Well, what good news does Jesus tell His disciples to preach? Jesus fed thousands of people with only a few loaves of bread. Is the good news that Jesus’ ministers have the power to multiply food and end hunger? No. Jesus healed every disease, gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Is the good news that Jesus’ ministers have power to heal every disease, so that we don’t need doctors or hospitals anymore? No. Jesus raised the dead! He returned a little girl alive to her father and mother and as we heard in this text, a young man to his widowed mother. So, is the good news that Jesus’ pastors will raise their parishioners from the dead? No.
Well, what can this good news be? It must be better than feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and raising the dead, otherwise it would not be called Good News, but Disappointing News. How can Jesus call it Good News if the message doesn’t do as much good as He already did for others? How can it be good news that Jesus is going away and won’t be doing these miracles for us anymore? And so, Jesus sent His ministers to proclaim in every nation a message better than all His miracles. And so, when you come to church to hear the Gospel, you are coming to hear a message that does more good for you than a miraculous feeding, or being healed of all your physical ailments, a message that does more good for you than even raising your dead loved ones from the dead! And so, the message of comfort my brother pastor went out to speak to those grieving parents was more comforting than even raising the dead.
How can this be? Because the Good News of the Gospel is not that Jesus feeds you for a day or heals your diseases for a moment, or raises you from the dead just for you to die a few decades later. The Good News of the Gospel is that Jesus conquers death forever, that He erases all our suffering for eternity. The Gospel is the good news that Christ Jesus took upon Himself all our sins, suffered and died for them, and rose from the dead, so that all your sins are washed away in His blood, paid for by His death. The preaching of the Gospel is the proclamation that God forgives all your sins for the sake of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, so that everyone who believes in Jesus may have eternal life. Jesus’ miracles were only a foretaste of the Gospel. They only foreshadowed the great things Jesus would accomplish for our salvation. But the Gospel gives us the fullness of heaven, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life.
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). And so, death is a proclamation of God’s judgment for our sins. And every physical ailment you suffer here on earth is a reminder of your mortality, that you too will die. And so, your illnesses and diseases are a proclamation of God’s judgment against your sin. And so, every miracle Jesus performed, including the raising of the dead, foreshadowed Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and hell. The preaching of the Gospel is more comforting than any of Jesus’ miracles, because it gives more life and gives it more permanently than any of His miracles.
And this also is why the Gospel is worth suffering for. The Gospel is better than having miracles take away temporary suffering, because the Gospel gives eternal glory. St. Paul writes in Romans 8, “I am convinced that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glories that will be revealed to us.” (vs. 18) Again, he writes, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” (vs. 28) And so, those who believe the Gospel do not need miracles. We have a greater miracle, which gives us more comfort, more life, more joy than any miracle could. We have the Gospel. And if suffering will bring us or others closer to the Gospel, then the suffering is worth it.
In our Epistle lesson in Ephesians 3, St. Paul writes, “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” The Ephesian Christians were upset, because St. Paul was accused in Jerusalem of bringing Trophimus, a member of the Ephesian congregation, into the temple (Acts 21:29), and so he was arrested, because it was unlawful to bring a Gentile into the temple. But Paul writes to them from prison saying that this was according to God’s eternal purpose, so that he could preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. Paul was glad to suffer imprisonments, beatings, even death, if it meant he could preach the Gospel and save some. And because the Gospel is worth suffering any loss, there is no gain worth losing the Gospel over.
And so, a pastor can comfort the Christian parents of a baptized child of God, who has died, because God has promised eternal life to that child. Their hope is not in this life, but in the life to come. A mother puts her life on the line for every life she brings into the world, and so you can understand the weeping of the widow in our text and the weeping of every mother who has lost a child. Yet, the Gospel promises eternal life to that child, a life that can never be torn away. So, mothers of Christians confidently lay their children down, knowing they always rest in the arms of Jesus, and so will certainly rise again.
The preaching of the Gospel is greater than Jesus’ miracles, because it gives greater and more permanent comfort. Yet, all of Jesus’ miracles preach the Gospel, if you will pay attention. Jesus’ raising of the widow’s son teaches us the Gospel. Jesus sees a widow weeping at the death of her son. And so, God looks upon the race of man as they lament their mortal state. Jesus has compassion on her, as God has compassion on mankind condemned by their sins to death and hell. Jesus reached out and touched the bier upon which the corpse lay. This would have made Jesus ceremonially unclean according to Levitical law. And so, Jesus takes upon Himself our uncleanness, sin, and death.
And this is an important point to make. Jesus does not simply reverse death. He takes death upon Himself. He does not simply reverse sin. He takes sin upon Himself and bears it. In Matthew chapter 8, after the Evangelist records how Jesus healed the sick, he writes, “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.’” (vs. 17) Now, that is a curious application of Isaiah 53, which we normally apply to Jesus’ passion on the cross, when He took upon Himself our sin. Yet, Matthew understands the text better than we. Jesus did indeed take upon Himself their illnesses and bore their diseases. That is how Jesus healed every illness, by taking it upon Himself, just as He forgives sins by taking the guilt upon Himself and dying for it. And so, Jesus touches the bier, so that He may take for Himself the uncleanness of death, the guilt of death, yes, death itself, so that the boy may live. And so, by touching the bier of the dead lad, Jesus proclaimed the words of St. Paul, “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
In this miracle, Jesus raised just one young man from the dead. Yet, in the Gospel, God raised Jesus from the dead, and in Him, raised humanity from the dead, so that whoever believes in Him may rise to eternal life. Jesus told the widow not to weep, which foreshadows the preaching of the Gospel, which tells those traveling through the valley of the shadow of death that death has already been defeated. And the news of the boy’s resurrection spread throughout Judea and its surrounding regions, just as Jesus commanded the news of His resurrection to be proclaimed to all nations beginning with Jerusalem.
The crowd shouted in holy fear, “A great prophet has risen among us and God has visited His people!” And so, the message of Jesus, our Prophet, Priest, and King is proclaimed in the Church throughout the ages. And we confess that God has indeed visited His people and that He still does visit His people. For Jesus continues to visit us through the preaching of His Gospel and the administration of His Sacraments, which are better than all His miracles, because they give much better benefits. Jesus promises to be with all who gather in His name to hear His preaching. He clothes the baptized with Himself in holy Baptism, and offers His very body and blood to us to eat and to drink in the Sacrament. Jesus is our God and Lord. And today, He visits us His people, and He does for us better things than the miracles He did two thousand years ago. He grants us forgiveness of sins and eternal life. He comforts us with a comfort that no pain or loss can take away. He equips us to do all things and to rejoice in every circumstance, because He has given us a resurrection to eternal life that no sickness, pain, or death can take away. So, take comfort in the message of the Gospel, and do not be ashamed to share this comfort with the world. Amen.