I’ve been asked to provide the sermon at the Presbyterian Church this Sunday. I chose to speak on the gospel text for this week from the Lectionary. It is the story of Jesus going to the town of Nain and raising back to life a widow’s son. There are strong connections to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and her son, found in 1 Kings 17. I see (pun intended) also a tangential connection between “Jesus seeing” and Hagar calling God “El Roi” meaning “God of seeing” in Genesis 16. The act of Jesus speaking as the action that works the miracle ties this story to the previous one regarding the Centurion and his sick servant.
The sequence of stories and teachings from Luke 3 through most of Luke 7 appears to be a single unit (bookends are John the Baptist) that explains the nature and mission of Jesus, but I don’t have the time to work through all that in a single sermon, so my focus will be on just this particular story.
Here is how I’ve organized the text to draw out what I think Luke is trying to tell me.
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