"The Real Miracle"
Luke 7:11-17
The gospel story we just heard starts out sounding like a
story about bad news. Jesus and his
disciples and the crowd that was following him come to Nain, a Galilean town
not far from Nazareth. As they start to enter the town, they encounter a funeral
procession that’s making its way to a burial place outside the town. A young
man who had died was being carried out.
He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow.
The bad
news begins with the announcement of a death and continues when Luke tells us
that the man was young. If this news
isn’t bad enough, Luke tells us that he was his mother’s only son. For you and me, this would the terrible
tragedy of a parent losing an only child.
But in Jesus’ day, the death of an only son would make the tragedy even greater,
as this son would have taken care of his mother in her old age. She had no retirement fund, no social
security. She had only one son, and now
he was dead, along with her hope for a secure future.
As a widow,
this woman has known tragedy before. She
had buried her husband, and now she was making the same mournful walk to the
cemetery to bury her only son.
There is a
reason why the Law of Moses commanded people to care for the widows and
orphans, because they were among the poorest of the poor and very vulnerable. For this woman, the death of her husband plus
the death of her only son would have added up to a life of poverty, hunger,
disease, and possibly an early death.
The way Luke tells it, when Jesus sees the widow’s
situation, “his heart went out to her.”
He has compassion on her, and he responds to her need. He approaches her son’s body. Jesus commands the young man to rise-- and he
does.
The conclusion
to this healing story is important to Luke’s theological message. First, the crowds are filled with awe and they
praise God, saying, “God has come to help his people.” Jesus’ healing actions point to God’s
restoration, now begun in Jesus.
In Luke 7,
we hear again themes of how God’s prophets—those who bear God’s word into the
world—reach out to heal and save. Now,
the Greek word sozo can be translated
as either “heal” or “save.” Along with the people of Galilee, we see that
God’s purpose continues to be about healing.
Just as God had worked in the prophets Elijah and Elisha, so God works
in Jesus.
In the
gospel according to Luke, Jesus heals a lot of people. In some of the stories, Jesus praises them
and tells them that their faith has made them well. But the woman in today’s story doesn’t ask
Jesus to raise her son. She doesn’t fall
on her knees and beg Jesus to bring her son back to life. All she does is cry.
Luke
doesn’t tell us that either the widow or her son thanks Jesus. So it doesn’t seem that the point of the
story is about faith or gratitude.
I think maybe this story is simply about grace. The widow’s son isn’t raised from the dead
because of his mother’s faith or the son’s worthiness. It happens simply because Jesus has compassion for her.
Luke tells
us that when Jesus approaches and sees the widow’s tears, he comprehends all
the layers of her tragedy, and he is moved deeply. Luke tells us that Jesus responded to her
out of “compassion.” The Greek word we translate as compassion
means, literally, “to be moved to the depths of one’s heart… or bowels.” Jesus
allowed himself to be touched to the very core of his being by this woman’s
pain.
In coming
to live among us, full of grace and truth, part of what Jesus came to reveal to
us is how much God loves us. The
scriptures tell us over and over again that God feels our pain, but a lot of
people have a hard time comprehending that.
Our God is a God who is intimately involved with us and who even weeps
with us.
When the
funeral procession left the widow’s home that day, they weren’t planning for a celebration. They were mourning. When grace comes into our lives, it doesn’t
require anything of us but a choice: to
receive it--or not. Perhaps part of the
point is that we should always pack our party clothes, because, with Jesus, you
never know when you might need them to celebrate some surprising, amazingly
gracious happening.
When Jesus
saw the widow’s grief, he had compassion for her. He didn’t stand at a distance. He came forward and reached out and touched the
funeral bier, even though, according to Jewish purity laws, that would have made him ritually unclean.
Next, he spoke to the corpse. Jesus
speaks to the dead son in this story, as he spoke to Jairus’ dead daughter, and
called Lazarus out of the tomb. Jesus
simply says. “Let there be life.” And there was
life.
When the
young man sat up and started talking,
fear seized all the people, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet
has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people!”
I like the
way Eugene Peterson translates this passage in The Message: “They all
realized they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among
them. They were quietly worshipful—and
then noisily grateful, calling out among themselves, “God is back, looking to
the needs of his people!” The news of
Jesus spread all through the country.”
I believe that God acts in power to
bring new life, even to situations where that seems impossible. In the story we heard today, Jesus uses this
power to raise the widow’s son from death.
Yet the power of God’s resurrection is more than the power of God to
give life after death. God’s
resurrection power spills over into this life so that those who are survivors of
the tragedies of this world can live with our pain and sorrow and can overcome
the deadly despair.
We can know
the power of God’s resurrection as the power God gives us to slowly but surely
pick up the pieces, bind our wounds, and live a new life, as Easter
people. We can embody God’s resurrection
power for others when we reach out to them in compassion and walk with them in their pain.
I think the real miracle in the
story is what happened after Jesus restored the widow’s son to life. Luke tells us that when the people of Nain
saw Jesus restore the widow’s son to life, they shared the good news. The report of what happened spread throughout
all the surrounding regions.
I pray that
we will all come to recognize the holy mystery: that our compassionate God is at work among us. God is indeed with us, looking to the needs
of all the people! God has graciously
raised us from spiritual death and given us a living faith in the message of
forgiveness and abundant, eternal life in Jesus. God calls us to new life.
The
scripture passages we heard today help us to see into God’s heart and help us
to see what God is up to in the world. God
acts with compassion for widows and for all kinds of people who are pushed to
the margins of society…and people who don’t have enough of what they need.
We gather
together every week to listen to God’s word to us, to try to get more in touch
with God’s grace and compassion, and to practice praying together, so that we
can get better in tune with what God is up to.
We gather
to learn together and encourage one another and to teach disciples old and
young what it means to say we follow Jesus.
We come to be reminded of the good news of Jesus: that God is love…that God loves the world
and chooses to create and redeem you and me and each and every person we
encounter. God chose to come in the
person of Jesus, to live among us, full of grace and truth, to embody God’s
love for us and teach us what it means to be beloved children of God.
As followers of Jesus, we are
called to love God and our neighbors, to work for peace and reconciliation and
justice for all, to embody the love of Jesus Christ in all our relationships. As
we grow in faith together, we trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us, to lead us
further into the truth, and to empower us to live into God’s Kingdom.
Maybe a
small church like Littlefield can’t save the world or transform society in big ways. But we can embody God’s compassion for our community.
We can look to the needs of God’s
people. We can witness to God’s love and
justice locally and beyond. In our
witness we can announce that the way things are is not the way things should be, and that God desires
something better for the world. I believe we can change the world in small ways
and perhaps in ways that are bigger and more important than we know.
God’s grace
keeps breaking into our lives, healing and calling us to new life, and promises
to be with us as we live further into the God’s grace and truth.
Thanks be
to God! Amen.
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
June 5, 2016
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