Homily For The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity 2025
O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church. What words of comfort in need! We are in continual need of God’s cleansing and defending! The joy for us is that Our Lord shows pity to us as his children as those who receive his pity, his care because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Him, we all together as God’s people in His Church are assured of cleansing and defense. His pity is known to us as individuals who have received pity - mercy. His pity is also known to us as a body, as His bride.
Our Old Testament Lesson bears witness to God’s propensity to cleanse and show pity. This song which constitutes our Old Testament Lesson is the concluding chapter of the section from Isaiah 6 to 12. You may recall that Isaiah 6 is that famous commissioning of Isaiah for ministry. There, we have Isaiah called into the presence of God - a moment that caused him to fear because of the holiness of God. He lamented that he was a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips. Woe unto me says Isaiah because he is a sinful individual who is set, who shares in the deadly sins of all the whole Old Testament church. Isaiah, despite his sin, experienced salvation - for God sent an angel to cleanse him from his sin and then commission him to his prophetic office. In the next few chapters, Isaiah proclaims God’s word to Judah and Israel.
In Chapter 7, Isaiah foretells of Emmanuel, God with us, coming to humanity through the Virgin Birth. Chapter 9 continues with a statement that a child would be born who would be the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. This God-man born to the virgin will take his rightful place on the throne of David. Chapter 11 promises the restoration of the created order - a reversal of all the evil and dysfunction brought about through Adam’s sin. The Spirit of the Lord would rest upon Messiah and the lion will lay down with the lamb; a child shall reach into the adder’s nest with no fear. The earth will be full of the knowledge of God. Toward the end of Chapter 11, Isaiah foretells of a return of God’s people from exile in Assyria - the Gentile power that was the instrument of God’s judgment for Israel’s rebellion, their corporate sin.
This brings us to our Lesson from Isaiah 12 where there is a promise of a future day for Israel when Israel will praise God for turning aside his anger, for being rich in mercy and pity toward sinners, indeed in bringing comfort. Notice the first person pronouns - how the individual within this remnant of Israel - declares that God personally is his/her salvation. Salvation leads to trust and drives out all fear. Indeed, those who flee to God Incarnate, foretold in earlier Chapters of Isaiah, will find in him strength for the challenges, the burdens of life and will be fortified with joyful song of God’s deliverance.
It is not only a personal, individual experience but an experience known in and through God’s people as a community. Therefore with joy you - plural - shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.
It has been said about this passage that Isaiah is drawing from the experiences of Israel in the Exodus when each individual had to take shelter under the blood of the Passover Lamb, and when all Israel was provided water at Marah and then at the wells of Elim. Indeed, “the ‘salvation’ granted to the Church shall be as an inexhaustible well, from which all comers may draw continually.” Much like the promise made to the woman at the well by Jesus - but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14).
Isaiah notes again that in that day - meaning in the day of Messiah’s visitation - many will praise the Lord and call upon his name.
Not only is Israel to draw from this well but to proclaim God’s mighty saving acts among all the people by praising the Lord – exalting his name. Name in this content is shorthand for what God has revealed about Himself. What is experienced individually will be proclaimed among all the people. It is here envisioned that God’s people corporately will respond as Isaiah did in his commission - Here am I send me. God’s people will sing unto the Lord - not out of the overflow of some inner emotion but because of their commitment of their minds and wills to ponder and understand God’s work.
So, the Old Testament Lesson of Isaiah 12 envisions a time when individual salvation becomes the testimony and the joy of the whole community of faith.
In Our Gospel, we have the story of Jesus coming to the village of Nain. As he approaches, he sees a funeral procession carrying a young man, the only son of his mother, who happened to be a widow. We see the pity and compassion of our Lord - we read Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. Jesus understood the gravity of her circumstances, she is grieving the loss of her only son. He was to be her support in old age, a source of comfort but now she has been bereaved of her son whom she loved and her support network. Her husband has already died and she is left to fend for herself. Our Lord sees her suffering, he comprehends the realities that face her and it moves him to compassion. Jesus isn’t content to have sentimental thoughts, to emote, but His compassion is the pity of God in action. He gives her an instruction based on faith - Weep not. Don’t cry. He is preparing to convert her suffering to joy.
We read that he stops the procession, and with the same matter of fact declaration of “weep not” he instructs the dead son to rise up. Weep not to the mother – rise up to the young man. True to form for Jesus - the man sits up and is restored to health and the widow stops crying to receive her son back to life.
In his pity, Our Lord saves the woman from destitution and saves the young man from an early death. Salvation, as it were of various sorts according to the need of these individuals, signals to the broader community the works of God in their midst, specifically that Yahweh is intervening in time to bring salvation to all his covenant people.
Our Gospel turns from the mother and son to the crowd of witnesses gathered for the funeral procession. Awe came upon the crowd.
They then glorified God referencing God’s work in the past and connecting it to the present - That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people. It called to mind the works of Elijah and Elisha in raising the dead. Jesus heals with the power of His Word while Elijah and Elisha had to expend more effort in laying on top of the deceased to bring them back to life. It is no mere prophet but a great prophet. This great prophet is the one foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15 - 15 The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;. St. Luke picks up on this Moses imagery in the Book of Acts where Peter identifies Jesus as that prophet foretold by Moses (3:21).
Moreover, the crowds recognized that God had visited them. To visit in this sense can be a reference to God’s presence in judgment or his redemptive acts that bring to mind His deliverance in Exodus.
This language is pregnant with Messianic meaning. Joseph foretold on his deathbed that God would visit Israel and lead them out of Egypt. After 400 years, God called Moses to lead them out of Egypt. For We read in the calling of Moses that God remembered his covenant with Abraham while Israel was in bondage in Egypt. Zechariah uses similar language in the Benedictus in Luke 1 - He has visited and redeemed his people.” He applies the language of the Exodus to Jesus. Through the Messiah, through his miracles of pity and mercy, God is performing a new Exodus of his divine deliverance and works of redemption. Truly, the crowds could see in the pity of this miracle the arrival of a new era of God’s deliverance for Israel.
It is little wonder that the stories of Our Lord’s miracles were told broadly. Hope had come. After 4 centuries of prophetic silence, Jesus had arrived on the scene.
Healing individuals and awakening broader Israel to the fact that God keeps his word and he will accomplish redemption of his people. Their expectations differed from what God wanted to accomplish in Christ’s first coming. He came to deliver Israel from their sins not from their Gentile overlords. As is the case with God, our imaginations are often too small, too narrow or misdirected. Through Jesus, the Gentiles would be brought into the kingdom. God was announcing a greater redemption.
This morning we celebrate the joy of a sinner being redeemed, Isaiah receiving cleansing and declaring the hope of redemption for broader Israel. In the Gospel, it was a mother and son who received the pity of the Son of God - a mother received a son back for her long-term security and the son receiving new life indeed. The miracle wasn’t just for the mother and son though it was primarily focused on their need for pity.
The miracle was for all Israel, the Old Testament Church, so that they might exult in God’s presence and draw together from the well of salvation promised by the Lord.
The lesson here is twofold. Jesus shows pity on individuals who need his healing touch: to those who know that their leprosy is incurable, that they have no power in themselves to help themselves, to those who are enslaved by demonic spirits, and Jesus is the savior of the dead. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into the dead soul beyond feeling, beyond life itself. Each and every one of us needs to turn to Christ in faith and repentance - both which are gifts from God. For the broader Church, we share together in the joy of salvation, that Jesus heals, saves. We together should see the power of God in saving others and know that God is in our midst. That he seeks and saves the lost. He desires to incorporate them in the body of His church.
Let us look out into the world and see his work, acknowledging that He is able to save to the uttermost those who turn to Him in faith and repentance. I believe that we are on the front end of many conversions of those who have no connection with the Church. Let us celebrate God’s power and then look out into the world with eyes of faith, so that we may join with our Lord in the joy of salvation extended to all who turn to Him. Amen.