Tough Questions

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 17:8-16; Ps. 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7: 11-17

Many, if not most of us, know far too well what it means to lose a loved one. On a personal note, I’m in the middle of two-week period right now in which I remember the deaths—though years a part-- of three of my family members: my mother, my father and my first baby. And like all of you who have suffered losses, I didn’t get to watch any of my loved ones rescued from death or brought back to life right before my eyes like the widows in these stories. So I know that this morning’s readings—first about Elijah and then about Jesus restoring life to the dead—can be difficult, if not downright distressing. Why does God save some but not others? Why are some prayers answered, some not? Why, for heaven’ sake, did Jesus have compassion on the widow in Nain, but not on me?

These are tough questions. And God knows we can’t help but ask them. But I wonder now if they are really the best—or maybe I should say the only questions—that we might ask in response to these stories of miraculous healings? More to the point, I wonder if looking only at these tough questions about why some are saved and some are not might not distract us from noticing other profoundly important things that we are meant to see in these stories.

For instance, as preacher Scott Hoezee reminds us in his commentary on today’s gospel, “…Of all the people who died the same day as the widow of Nain’s son, only the one son was raised. And he died again one day, too.” Hoezee points out that, “For every blind and deaf and lame person who Jesus healed in the course of his ministry, there were probably 100 in the vicinity who received no such healing.” True enough.

Then why have these stories been passed on to us all of these years? Surely it wasn’t to make us feel bad because our loved ones weren’t miraculously resurrected when they died! So why would Jesus intentionally take a story from the 6th century BC about a widow’s dead son being raised to life—with which all Jews were familiar-- and make it his own by raising the widow of Nain’s dead son? Or, if you prefer the literary and metaphorical interpretation, why would Luke the evangelist take a story from the 6th century BC about a widow’s son being raised from the dead --with which all Jews were familiar --and adapt it to the Christian context?

Probably because nearly all of Jesus’ early were, after all, Jews. And Jews in the ancient world could not have missed the connection between the story of Elijah raising the widow of Zarephath’s son, and Jesus raising the widow of Nain’s son. "Now I know that you are a man of God,” says the widow of Zarephath to Elijah, “and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth." For the Hebrew people, Elijah is the great prophet who speaks truth to power, is the first in scripture to give new life to the dead, and thereby witnesses to God’s presence and God’s action in the world—even among non-Jews like the widow of Zarephath.

So Luke’s story about Jesus and the widow of Nain is meant to establish Jesus’ credentials as a great prophet like Elijah. We’re meant to notice and to see--as did our ancient forebears--that Jesus, like Elijah, is indeed a powerful man of God who speaks the true word of God. We’re meant to see that Jesus too speaks truth to power and gives new life to the dead. And as we will soon learn, Jesus not only witnesses to God’s presence in the world, Jesus is God’s presence in the world. In him, God’s Kingdom -power has broken into human history, and while not yet fully realized—through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Kingdom-power has established a foothold. Meanwhile, Luke tells us that awe seizes all those who witness the miraculous resurrection of the widow’s son.

These miracle stories were-- and are—meant to foreshadow what will happen when God’s kingdom comes, and God’s will is done, on earth just as it is in heaven. They are, as Hoezee writes, “arrows pointing in a certain direction, not the destination that was being indicated.”

But what would happen if people like you and I heard this morning’s gospel, and instead of focusing on the unfairness of Jesus saving the widow of Nain’s son and not our loved ones, we focused on the astonishingly good news that God is active in human history, that God’s desire is for all of creation to be raised to new life and to flourish, not just a few—and that some day-- through the power of the risen Christ-- God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and God’s Kingdom will be realized. I wonder if we focused on that, we would ask how we might help make God’s dream a reality?

You know, in the ancient world widows were the most vulnerable, least valued members of society. They were the invisible ones. Their lives were so bleak and their futures so grim, that in both Hebrew and Greek the word for “widow” was used as a metaphor for a desolate and forlorn city—a place abandoned and laid waste. So a widow with no son to care for her was desolate and forlorn indeed. And to add insult to injury, in the thought world of her contemporaries, the widow would have deserved her plight—it would’ve been presumed that this was God’s judgment on some sin of hers.

Yet in all the crowd—and Luke tells us there were large crowds on that day that Jesus healed the widow’s son---in all that crowd, somehow Jesus homes right in and notices the invisible one, the one with no power, the one the rest of us might not even see or might even shun if we did. And Jesus has compassion for her. He has compassion for her and out of that compassion—that suffering with-- Jesus is moved to take action. Healing action.

Now, noticing how Jesus notices the decidedly unnoticeable –and how he responds by suffering with them---which is what “compassion” literally means--suffering with---noticing this catches me up short. I wonder what else I have failed to see in this story, blinded by my own concerns. I wonder who among you here this morning might be hurting, that I haven’t noticed. Who are the invisible people in our over-crowded lives that we aren’t even seeing, much less responding to with compassion?

Implicit in the biblical word for compassion is a physical aching literally in the intestines. When was the last time you had that kind of gut-wrenching reaction to someone else’s suffering? Maybe it was for the people of Haiti, for those killed in the Freedom Flotilla headed for Gaza, for the family who’s 14 year old son was shot to death recently for no reason, or maybe, like me, you have it every time you read or see a story about the catastrophic devastation of wildlife, of natural beauty, and of people’s livelihoods in the Gulf of Mexico. Jesus weeps. And so do we.

But Jesus does more than weep. Jesus’ compassion moves him to respond. He takes action, healing action. Where so many of us become overwhelmed and do nothing, Jesus bears witness to God’s life-giving presence in the world by having compassion on one— just one of many-- socially dead widows, and by taking that one action God’s Kingdom gains a stronger foothold in our world. We might well wonder who was more profoundly resurrected here, the widow or her son. Jesus didn’t let the overwhelming suffering of this world and of those around him numb him into inaction. How might I---how might we—begin to notice the invisible ones in our midst that we might not be noticing? How might we respond with compassion, by suffering with, those who are hurting? And how might we take action, healing action, that bears witness to God’s presence, and proclaims in no uncertain terms that our God is a God who desires wholeness for his people and flourishing for all of creation? What life-giving action might we take in one person’s life, to help God’s Kingdom gain a foothold in this world?

I realize I’m raising more questions than I’m answering here, but I think they’re important questions. I hope and pray we can find ways as a community to think about them together—in Bible study, in outreach, in fellowship and in our homes. Because I don’t know why God saves some but not others, or why some prayers are answered, and some not. I don’t know why Jesus saved the widow of Nain’s son, and not my daughter. But I know now that he noticed me, had compassion on me and suffered with me, when I felt invisible. I know he healed me and resurrected me into an entirely new life. And I know he did it through people just like you, in a church an awful lot like this.

Amen.