The message delivered this Sunday at our church was a very good one, one that really makes you think and wonder. Perry Noble preached from Luke 7, the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son from the dead in the middle of the funeral procession. Verse 11 says:

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him.

The “soon afterward” is referring to Jesus having healed a centurion’s servant without actually going to his house. Notice the last part of verse 11 says as Jesus went to Nain, his disciples and a large crowd followed him. Can you just think about that for a minute. Obviously this is not the only time a large crowd followed Jesus, but I think we sometimes get calloused to these stories. Imagine what the mood was in the large crowd that followed him. Why did they follow Him, walking from town to town? Because they had seen him do miraculous things, and had heard him speak strange exciting things. Can you imagine the anticipation of the crowd as they followed him on foot, from city to city? Just wondering what He’s going to do next. Can you imagine the conversations that may have taken place within the crowd? And then they come up a funeral procession. Even with the large crowd in mourning they met on the road, don’t you imagine that the crowd following Jesus had to be excited about this encounter. They had no idea what was about to happen, but they knew it was something they wanted to see. Can you hear one guy say to another guy…

“ohhhh boy, here we go! Rufus, get up here son!! Check this out… Shhhh! What did He just say? I think He just told the dead guy to get up! No way. Move, I can’t see the coffin. Dude… I think the coffin is open… It’s the dead guy!!! He’s talking to Jesus. I told you, man!!!”

The passage ends by saying, “They were all filled with awe and praised God.” When a large crowd of excitement and anticipation meets a large crowd of death and mourning, and Jesus is in the middle of them, you know something is about to happen that you don’t want to miss. After Jesus gave the boy back to his mother, both crowds were filled with awe and praised God. Now try to picture in your mind what that may have looked like, and sounded like. I’m going to guess that this lasted for a while. They may have even forgotten about how hungry they were from missing lunch on the road. I don’t imagine there were many wimpy, “praise jesus’s”. I think they were probably pretty loud and boisterous… probably more like being in the streets of Boston after the Celtics recently won the NBA championship.

Why don’t we experience that type of excitement and anticipation any more? Have we become so calloused to the miraculous works of Jesus? Why aren’t we eager to go to church on Sunday morning to see what Jesus is going to do today? Do we not really believe Jesus does exciting things anymore? I took my 5 year old son to see Kung Fu Panda last weekend, and we got there about 30 minutes early because I wanted to make sure we got a good seat. We were both very anxious to get there and see the movie. And this is over a stinkin cartoon that will be irrelevant next month. Yet, on Sunday morning, when it’s time to go to church, I can tell you that I can’t remember the last time I got there early in anticipation of what Jesus may do that day. We’re lucky to be on time, and even luckier to have a positive attitude about it.

What’s happened to us? Do we really believe what we say we believe? I wonder. When’s the last time we were excited and in anticipation about seeing what Jesus is going to do in our lives? I’m afraid it’s been a while.