Let me point you to what might be considered a really odd place for a Mother's Day sermon, but I believe the event that we're going to look at at the life of Jesus in one way or another redresses a reality for all of us that are gathered here today. Men, women, all of us. Luke chapter 7, verse 11 says, Soon afterward, Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain. And notice this a large crowd followed him. A funeral procession was coming out as he was approaching the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow's only son. Now notice this a large crowd from the village was with her. Two different crowds. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. Don't cry, he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. Young man, he said, I tell you, get up. Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. Now you can't miss the two very different large crowds that intersected with Jesus at this same moment in time. One of these crowds was jubilant and worshipful and salatory. The other crowd was overwhelmed by grief. And I want you to let the scene kind of vividly play out in your head for a moment, like a movie. There are two crowds that aren't aware of each other and they're moving toward each other. One is coming out of the city, one is walking into the city. And in the space between them, on an ordinary road outside a forgotten little town called Nain, something happens that nobody in either one of those crowds could have ever imagined. But before we get to what happens, I want you to sit with the idea that there were two crowds. Because I think those same two crowds are listening to me right now. The first crowd was walking with Jesus. Luke refers to it as a large crowd, and it would have continued to get larger. It would have been a disciples that would have been with him, obviously, and a growing number of people that have seen him go from village to village, teaching with authority, healing the sick, turning water into wine, calming the storms. And in the few verses right before this one, he had healed the servant of a Roman centurion just by speaking the word. And so the crowd just keeps getting larger, following with Jesus. And because of what he just did with the Roman centurion servant, there's an energy in the crowd, there's an expectancy in the crowd. They're seeing things that they can explain and they want more. And if you and I had been in that crowd, we would have felt it too. There was an electricity of being so close to something, so supernatural and so real. And with celebratory in honoring hearts, these people are in that crowd with Jesus. They feel like they are walking towards something. Picture the second crowd. They're coming the opposite direction. They're not going into the city, they're coming out of the city gate, headed to the burial grounds that are outside the city. And this crowd doesn't feel like it's walking toward anything at all. They feel like they're walking away from something. There's a young man on a stretcher being carried to his burial. In the middle of that procession, surrounded by mourners, and in that culture, would have been surrounded by professional wailers and mourners. There is a woman. And the text tells us one devastating sentence about who she was. The young man who had died was a widow's only son. Don't miss the devastation of what that would have meant inside of her cultural context. She has already buried her husband. She is now burying her son, her only son. In this context of her ancient world, that meant she was feeling more than loss and grief. This was the end of her future. It meant economic ruin. There was no social safety net, no pension, no mail covering to care for her as she grew old. So she's not just losing her child. She has lost everything. And there's a large crowd walking with her on the worst day of her life. Two crowds. One marked by hope and one marked by grief. One walking toward a future and one walking toward a grave. I felt led of the Spirit today, and I have for some weeks now to speak to both crowds. Because Mother's Day inevitably draws people from both crowds to intersect like these two at the very same moment. Some of you came in today carrying gratitude. You're thinking about your mom and what she means to you. Maybe she's sitting next to you. Maybe you drove a long way to be with her, and you're feeling the same emotions of the crowd that was following along with Jesus. There is joy and there is celebration and there is honor in your heart today, and there should be, because that's what today is all about. But some of you came in today carrying grief. And for some of you, the grief is so heavy today, you're not here. You're watching online or will watch it later because you're completely avoiding this day because you couldn't make yourself come. And I understand that too. Today is hard. Maybe your mother is gone, maybe you lost a child, maybe you've been trying to have a child for years, and every mother's day feels like that wound gets reopened in public. Maybe your relationship with your mother is complicated in ways that won't fit neatly on a Hallmark card. You're in the second crowd. And when you walked in this morning, it just feels like everybody else but you seems to be in the first crowd. I just want you to know that Jesus was present in Luke 7 with both crowds. And he's present today for both crowds. I want you to notice what scripture says here. It says that the two crowds actually met, they joined up past each other on the road at the city gate, one going in and one was coming out. And Luke tells us exactly what Jesus does when these two crowds collide with each other. Verse 13 says, When the Lord saw her. That's the first thing Luke tells us that Jesus does when the two crowds meet. He saw her. Now I know that sounds like a really insignificant detail, but in a crowd, in the noise of a funeral procession where there are people weeping, and yes, professional mourners, that was culturally a thing at that time. Jesus, in the middle of all that noise, he sees one woman. He doesn't see the spectacle, he doesn't see an event, he sees her. He sees her particular grief on her particular face on this particular day. I don't know what you, I just find this is one of the most comforting facts about him. That you can be standing in the middle of a crowd, surrounded by people, feeling completely invisible in your grief and brokenness, like some of us feel today. But Jesus sees you. This lady was not unknown to him. She did not escape his notice. And you can't miss the way Luke describes what happens to Jesus when he sees this woman in her situation. He says, verse 13, when the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. The Greek word here that Luke originally used to describe the depth of Jesus' compassion is splonchnisomai. It's pronounced splonknisomai. It just simply means to be moved with compassion from the deepest part of one's being. It's an intense gut-level emotional reaction. It's derived from the Greek word splotchna, which means inward parts or bowels. It's considered the seat of deepest human feeling. And Luke choosing this word to describe the level of Jesus' emotion means there was more than sympathy here from a distance. It means something moved him. Something inside him responded to what was happening to her. He didn't just feel her pain in a way that observed it from the outside. He experienced her pain. This is a man that the prophet Isaiah told us would be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He is not unmoved by what he's seeing in her life. He's not unmoved by what he sees in your life. He never is. Now, before we move on, unpacking Luke 7, as we talk about the compassion of Jesus here, I have to take a slight detour for the sole purpose today of honoring women and mothers. I thought about leaving this out, but I want to point it out today because this is something you're probably not going to learn or hear unless you enroll in seminary. But I point it out today to solely honor the women and the mothers in this room. I want you to know how God feels about you. And I hope as you hear this, you see how valued you are by God as a woman and as a mother. Here's what's amazing to me. All through the scripture, when God explains what might be the most defining aspect of his character, his mercy and his compassion, he uses the imagery of motherhood. For example, three times in the book of Isaiah alone, God uses the compassion of mothers to describe the level of his divine compassion. God says in Isaiah 42, verse 14, for a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back, but now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp, and pant. And then a few chapters later, he says in Isaiah 49, can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she is born? But even if that were possible, God says, I would not forget you. And then God says in chapter 66, as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. Throughout the book of Isaiah, there's this beautiful theological arc of God laboring, of God comforting, and God never forgetting. And he chooses maternal qualities of womanhood to reveal the depth of his divine compassion. And ladies, if it's not honoring enough that the creator of the universe picked you as the best example of his divine compassion, here's something even more fascinating. Rakam is the Hebrew word for compassion or mercy, and it functions as the plural form of reckum, which means womb. It connects the deep emotional nurturing love of a mother, the what she has for her child, with divine compassion. And it indicates that true compassion is active, protective, and deeply felt rather than some kind of cold, detached action. Do you realize what that means? Every time the Old Testament says God is compassionate, every time it reaches for a word to try to describe the depth of his mercy, it uses language rooted in the Hebrew word for womb, which can only be possessed by a woman. Ladies, if you and your maternal qualities are what God chooses to describe, his mercy and compassion, there is something incredibly affirming and honoring about that. And I hope you feel that today. If you had no idea who he was or what he was about to do, you'd be furious. Of course you're gonna cry. But there's something in his voice, something in the way he says it that isn't a rebuke. This isn't a get it together or just be strong kind of don't cry. It's more like a promise or a hint of what he was about to do. He was saying, don't cry, not because her grief wasn't real, but because something was about to change and heal her grief. What does Jesus do next? Verse 14, then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearer stopped. You need to be aware that in the religious culture of Jesus, to touch a dead body or anything connected to it would have made you ceremonially unclean, which had a whole list of cumbersome consequences. But Jesus doesn't hesitate. He just walks straight into the funeral, touches the thing that everyone else would have tried to have been ignoring, and he shows up and steps into the middle of her grief. Now that detail matters more than any of us might realize, especially for those of us that are grieving something today, because Jesus is not the kind of Lord who stands at a safe distance from your pain and says kind things. He walks toward it, he touches it, he steps in the middle of it, and he experiences all of that with you. He feels it. And then he speaks. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. That last sentence to me is incredible. And just sit with that for a moment. He gave him back to his mother. He didn't give the boy back to a crowd, he didn't give the boy back to the city, he didn't give the boy back to the family. He turned to the one woman that his heart had broken for, and he placed her son back in her arms. You can tell this is a deeply personal moment for Jesus. The heart of God has been touched, and all the power he's exerted in this moment, raising the dead, the whole miracle, the resurrection, Luke frames this entire resurrection of this young boy as simply God's gift to a mother. And notice something else remarkable here. Nobody asked him to do it. The woman didn't ask for this when the crowds passed by. Nobody came to Jesus on her behalf like they did a few verses earlier for the centurion. They came on the like you gotta help the centurion. They didn't do that. Nobody asked. There's no faith mention, no prayer, no request. He just saw her. And he was moved by her need and he acted. Grace, by definition, is always unsolicited. It's always more than we asked for. This miracle didn't happen because the woman's faith was strong enough, but because Jesus' compassion was. Let me just speak to the two crowds for a moment. If you came in here today to celebrate, to honor, to be grateful, this passage is for you. The women who have carried life, who have stayed up late, who have shown what it was to live hard and still be faithful, who have prayed when no one was watching, they reflect something real to us about the heart of God. Because the compassion that moved Jesus toward that widow, that same impulse lives in every mother who has ever looked at a child in pain and felt it as if it was her own pain. And the mercy of God, you know what it means? It means the mercy of God has this maternal shape to it. So when you honor the women who loved you into becoming who you are today, you are in a real sense honoring the nature of God being revealed by her. The women in my life have definitely revealed to me more of who God is. My mom, my grandmother, my sister interceded for me when I was a young addict. They loved me when I was unlovable, praying for me when I thought they were wasting their time because I wasn't sure there was up there, anybody up there listening to what they were praying. I knew they were praying, I just didn't assume it was gonna make a difference. And yet their compassion and prayer brought the compassion of God into my life, completely rewriting the story of my life. And it's been my wife and daughter whose compassion and grace in the later years of my life have revealed to me the love and the mercy and the compassion of God when often when I'm not showing up as the man that I'm supposed to be, or less of the man that I'm supposed to be. Yes, the mercy of God has a maternal shape to it, and we should forever be grateful for that. If you're in the second crowd today, I need you to hear this. Jesus doesn't stay on his side of the road, he doesn't let the two crowds pass each other and move on. He stops everything, he walks into the grief, he touches the thing everyone else was trying to avoid, and he speaks into the silence. And I don't know what your grief is today. Maybe it's a painful relationship with a mother that nobody's ever willing to talk about on Mother's Day, but it's real. Maybe you're carrying a deep grief because you lost a child. Maybe you're carrying the ache of an empty womb that's haunted you quietly for years, and days like today feel like they were designed to make it worse. I don't want you to just know this. I want you to feel this. He sees you in a room full of the first crowd where people are celebrating. He sees you in the second. He's not confused about which crowd you're in. He's not gonna tell you to pretend you're somewhere you're not. He's walking to you like right now, he's he's approaching you with the comfort of his spirit. And I want you to see how the crowds together responded after the miracle. Verse 16, they were all filled with awe, all of them, both crowds, and they praised God. A great prophet has appeared among us, they said, God has come to help his people. They didn't just say a miracle happened, they said God has come to visit his people. That's what happens when Jesus walks in. It just doesn't fix the person or the situation, it reframes everything. It reminds us that the God who created our world has not abandoned it. He entered it, he walks with us in our joys and in our pains. He walks into our funerals, he touches our grief, he speaks life into the silence of our lives. That's the God that we come to worship on a Mother's Day like this when there are two very different crowds that are gathered in the same place at the same moment. To the crowd walking in joy, celebrate today. Honor women who carried you and continue to sustain you. Let your gratitude be loud and specific. They deserve it. To the crowd walking in grief, you were seen, you were not visible. The same Jesus who turned around on a road in Galilee because he could not pass one grieving woman without stopping, he has stopped to notice you. He's still in the business of walking into the worst moments of people's lives and redeeming their pain and restoring their brokenness. And I debated on whether I should say this or not, but I don't get this opportunity to be this honest. So on this Mother's Day, ladies, I want to say something to you collectively as a group, something that is very personal to me as a man and a pastor at a deeply heart level. I've been leading a lot, reading a lot of research lately about the church engagement trends. There's been some pretty incredible surveys that have recently been done, conducted research, and a lot of it's encouraging. Young people are returning to church and engaging faith at much higher percentages than older people right now. There's a and that's a massive flip from past, and it's a huge sign of spiritual awakening that is happening in the next generations. That's encouraging. There's also incredible data pointing toward the growing spiritual interest of men and their re-engagement in the church, and that too is a reversal of past trends. But there's another reversal of past trends that is deeply concerning. Women are disengaging from the church in alarming numbers, and it grieves me deeply because for so long grandma and mama were the spiritual backbone of the church. It concerns me for future generations. There's some things in the research. That hint to maybe some of the reasons why. I have some of my opinions. And between personal opinion and some of the research, I think there are some pretty clear indications of why women are walking away. Among them, there would be the rampant failures of spiritual leaders, the way the institutional church has mishandled accusations of abuse, and the way many churches continue to limit women's abilities to walk out their calling. And while I can't fix all the systemic issues in the American church, I want to make something very clear to the ladies that are a part of this spiritual family. We want you here. We need you here. I can't imagine this place without you, your insight, your intercession, the sacrifices that you have made for decades and continue to make for this church body. And I can promise you here, we affirm what God has called women to do in the mission of the church. A couple years ago, the Lord challenged me to read more books written by women writers, brilliant women, to open my heart to their perspective. I have. And I've gained perspectives on so many things I would have never seen without learning from a female voice. Matter of fact, I'm in the middle of reading a book right now by a brilliant female theologian. I just picked the book up. I saw her lecture, and I thought, this lady is brilliant. I wonder if she's written anything, and she has written several things, and so I grabbed her book, the most recent one that was released this month, not knowing that the book was written for women. So I'm getting into the book. Like I just went in the wrong bathroom. But it's so good. The insight is so relevant, even though she's directing it to women, I just kept reading it. Just yesterday, as I was reading the book, my heart just was overcome with grief thinking about the future of the church. If women keep disengaging with it at the rate they are, I don't want to imagine that future. Let me say one time to all of you ladies here, not just because it's Mother's Day, but every day, we honor you, we want you, and this spiritual family can't live without you. To close our time together, let me give you a couple key pieces of direction kind of for response. If you're in the celebratory crowd today, I mean go have an incredible time with your family, celebrate, honor. On your way out, there'll be a little extra time today for you to just take advantage of what's in the lobby. Ladies, if you didn't get the coffee that's there for you for free, it's a gift. If you haven't had a chance to have a family moment at one of the photo ops, do that. Hang out, connect, celebrate. But if for some reason you find yourself in the second crowd today and there's grief in your heart for one reason or another, we're doing something unique across all of our campus family. We have a special grief care area that we've set up. And we've done this a few Mother's Days off and on through the years, and it's been really meaningful. Um, we have a cross set up and we want to create a space for the flowering of the cross. If you've never done that, let me just explain to you. I think they have an image they're gonna put up of what the finished product looks like. It doesn't start out that way, it starts out with just a bare cross, but by the end of the day, that's kind of what it looks like. You take a flower, this is spring, it signifies life. You approach the cross, which was a symbol of death and suffering, and you weave the stem of the flower into the cross. And what you're doing is you're saying, God, I invite you into this space, invite you into this space in my life. I invite you into this situation, this thing that I'm carrying today. I'm not gonna ignore it. I'm inviting you into it. And here at the Saxie campus today, um, there is a sign over to my left. You can access the area we have designated for that. You can also access it from the lobby. It's in our multi-purpose or dream team area. We have prayer team members there to serve, like it can be private, just take this moment and invite God into that space. At our other campuses, I think these are at the rear of every one of our campus locations there, for you just to have a moment before you leave. And can I say one more thing? In um 36 years of public preaching ministry this year, probably the number one request I have had of people coming to me in those 36 years is moms and grandmas asking me to pray for their children that are away from God. I have a wall of pictures and names in my office because I've committed to pray for kids that are away from God, whether they're 60-year-old kids or they're 16, and people have given me those photos, they're on my wall. I pray over them all the time, and the majority of those images have been given to me by moms and grandmas because it's what moms want, they want their kids serving Jesus. And so let me just say this today: if you're here honoring mom in church today, and this is normally not a part of your pattern or your routine, if at all her prayers are manifesting in your life and you sense God pursuing her, at least tell her that. The greatest Mother's Day gift you would ever give your mom, your grandma, or a spiritual mother is say, God's dealing with my heart. Don't keep praying, don't quit praying, keep praying for me. But even better thing you could do is pray this prayer. I'm about to pray with you and surrender your heart to Jesus today, and tell her if she's here, text her if she's not. Mom, grandma, I surrendered my heart to Jesus today. Be the greatest Mother's Day gift she's ever received. So, Lord, I pause today. I believe there's been enough of your word preached, enough of your spirit present that you can convict us of our sin. And you can draw us into a saving relationship with Jesus. And I ask right now that you would do what only the Spirit can do, you would draw. And if there's anybody under the sound of my voice today that needs to surrender their heart to you right where they sit, they would say, Jesus, forgive me, cleanse my heart, come into my life. I confess today that I can't make it without you, both now and for eternity. I want you to be my Lord and my Savior. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and I give it all to you in Jesus' name. Lord, I pray that that moment, simple as it is, is a significant moment that starts a new journey in somebody's life. For this whole room today, Lord, I pray you bless them and keep them. That you make your face shine down upon them, that you're gracious to them, that you turn your countenance their direction, and you give them peace. In Jesus' name.

Amen.