Out of Control
Today’s devotion is a sermon that I preached on September 28th, 2022 at the funeral of Steven Wayne Schweizer, my uncle by marriage, who has died in Christ and has joined the saints triumphant awaiting the day of resurrection.
The text is Luke 7:11-17
Nearly all of you have known Steven for longer than I have. Talking with you and hearing you talking about him, I can usually pick out who you are in relation to him based on what you call him. Steven, back home in Nokomis, Steve around here, and of course, Bud Schweizer from his days at Beta Sig. Listening in on these stories and then taking what I know about him – I think it’s safe to say that Steven was a man who liked things a certain way, he liked things just so. Whether it was the name of his daughter, the setup for the multi-faceted joke, the direction his lawn was cut, the color of his shoes, or the angle of his recliner, Steven had an opinion on the matter. He liked things to be organized. Just take a look at his career and you can see his meticulous attention to detail. He wasn’t a controlling person, but he did like to be in control. He liked to have a handle on things. And don’t we all.
There is comfort in control, isn’t there? There is comfort in sorting out the details of business transactions, of developing a career, planning a life, or simply keeping up on the household chores. It is comforting, that in a world besieged by the unknown and gripped by chaotic entropy, we can have a grip on something here and now.
After his diagnosis of cancer two years ago, Steven did not back down from his desire to have a handle on things, did he? Jana, you know that better than anyone. I remember last summer, I was standing outside Lowes and you and Steven pulled into the parking lot. I don’t think you had even put the car in park before Steven was out the door and walking across the parking lot leaving you behind. In one hand he had his cane, in the other, he held a post cap – you know, the fitting that goes on top of a fence or railing post. You see, one of the four screws was missing and he just had to find a replacement. And of course, no trip to Lowes is complete without wandering the aisles and looking for reminders of other things that needed to be fixed. There is comfort in control. Even control over the smallest things like a post cap. Even control over the biggest things, like death.
For us, today, there is comfort in being able to make all of this a manageable and sensible thing – comfort in being able to take control of everything that is going on. There’s some odd sense of comfort in being able to sit down and plan out the whole litany of details that go into funeral arrangements. It’s good to keep the mind occupied with things that you can have a say in – like flower arrangements, or hymn selections, or cemetery plots, or the color of Steven’s tie. Because when you have even a little control, you can keep at bay the gnawing angst and debilitating anguish that overwhelms you when you come face to face with something that you can’t get a handle on no matter how hard you try.
The woman in our Gospel lesson, knew what that’s like. We don’t know her name, only that she had already lost her husband, and now, her son was dead. She had nothing more to lose. All she could control was what came immediately following the death – the funeral. I would bet that she found some comfort in making the arrangements for the mourners, for the tomb, for the flutes and lyres, and the grand procession that lead out of the town to the place where the dead are buried. In her life, that was turned upside down, there was comfort in being able to get a handle on things when it came to the funeral. And in those days, they knew how to throw a funeral.
The imagery of the Gospel lesson is striking. Out of the town pours a vast crowd of mourners, all falling in line, finding their place behind the dead man. The air is filled with the sound of weeping and wailing, with instruments and shouts of anguish, while the woman, numbed by grief, walks as if on autopilot. The only thing keeping her from breaking down in utter resignation is the little bit of control she has over the day’s events and the need to present a brave face to her friends and neighbors.
But over here, coming down the road and heading not away from the town but toward it, is another procession. Like the funeral procession, it is a noisy affair. There are shouts and cries as each member of the procession finds their place and falls in line. Not behind a lifeless body, but behind Jesus.
Inevitably, the two processions meet on the road. And in an act that defies all social decorum, Jesus doesn’t yield to the funeral procession. He doesn’t acquiesce to the dead man that meets him face to face there on the road. The entire funeral procession grinds to a halt and the unamused grumbling get louder and louder as the people of Nain ask themselves who could be so insensitive, so callous, so cruel that he would cause an entire funeral procession to become derailed.
Imagine what it might have been like to be that woman. All efforts that she had put into making this funeral happen just so in an act of defiance against the chaos that threatened to consume her life are suddenly brought to nothing. The procession was thrown into an uproar. The small measure of power that she still maintained over her life was ripped from her grasp as Jesus brings the entire façade of her control down around her simply by being unwilling to step to the side and let death pass unhindered.
And that’s exactly what Jesus does each and every time he comes face to face with death. Jesus does not let death get past him. He does not bend the knee to let death have the right of way. In an act of radical love, he looks at the woman who has lost it all – the woman who has been reduced to nothing by his act of defiance – and he says to her “Don’t cry.” As if there was any doubt, these words make certain a fact that she had been avoiding. She is not in control. Jesus is. And he’s not here to make death into a pretty thing by coating death in a thick layer of whitewash with trite platitudes and empty sentimentality. He’s not here to help her make sense of death. He’s not here to help her live with death. He is here to DO compassion to her. He is here to take that dead man and make him alive again. And that’s what he does. That’s exactly what Jesus does each and every time he comes face to face with death. The Lord of Life never yields to death. The Lord of life takes control and destroys death.
Over the last two years, I watch as Steve slowly lost control. Over the long months, I watched as he slowly lost his grip on life and was forced to deal with his own inability to set things right. Some people, looking in on this happening might be tempted to say that he lost control to cancer. They might say that, in the end, he lost his ability to fight it. That is not what happened. Over the last two years, I watched as Steven gave up control and yielded his life to his Lord. And as steven lost his grip on life, Jesus tightened His hold on him. Jesus never drops one of his little lambs. Not ever. Steven was never in control, that was obvious at the end. Truth is, he was never in control. Jesus was. And the Lord of life does not yield to death. Not ever.
Jana and Kari, Greg, and Jeff – I have news for you. Good news. You – just like your husband, just like dad – you are not in control. None of you are. As comforting as some measure of control might be, it never lasts. Because in the end, each and every one of you will have to give up the grip you have on your life. It’s true. Jana, even the control over the small details of this day will one day be taken from you as well. One day, one day soon, you’ll be just like the widow of Nain who stood before the shambles of the funeral procession that she had so meticulously put together. Because one day Jesus will come and stand in the way of death. And death won’t be able to get past.
One day, one day soon, all the thought and effort that you put in to making this day just so will come to nothing. On that day, it won’t matter what color of tie Steve has on, or whether or not he’s wearing shoes, or what you do with the flowers, or what color of vault you selected, or whether or not you got a good deal on your plot at the cemetery – all of those shadows of control will pass away as Jesus completely undoes what death has done.
You see, none of this works for Jesus. He’s not content with any of it. He can’t abide the tissue boxes in the pews and somber black suits. He doesn’t tolerate death. And so he came, and he died to destroy death forever. And he rose. He rose in order that you might know that death is not in control. He is. And Steven belongs to him. His life is Steven’s life. Steven will live again. And soon, we’ll get to enjoy his sense of humor once more. And that day we will be laughing a great deal, because the greatest joke of all will be the one played on death. It was never in control. Jesus has been all along.
Today there will be a funeral procession. And when you get in line behind death as we work our way over to the cemetery, I want you to remember something. Jesus is coming to meet us. He’s just around the bend. He’s coming. And life forever is coming too. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.