June 9, 2013
From the words of the Gospel: "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, Do not weep."
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On Easter this year, everyone at Church of Reconciliation turned one question they would like to ask God, which I said I would use for my homilies.
Here are a couple of questions that seem relevant to the Gospel Reading for today:
- Why do people suffer?
- Why is the process to Christhood so hard to achieve - if we ever get to Christhood?
We just heard the story about the the widow from Nain and her son, about how Jesus had compassion on her and raised her son back to life. So, let’s enjoy the opportunity to explore this story and see if you can make any connections to the questions: "Why do people suffer?" and "Why is the process to Christhood so hard to achieve - if we ever get to Christhood?"
First, let’s try to hear the story the way Luke intended his readers to hear it. Nowadays, when we hear a miracle story, especially a story about a miracle like this one - the raising of someone from the dead - what do we usually hear as the point of that story?
Mostly we’ve been conditioned to hear the miracle stories of Jesus as what? As proof of Jesus’ divinity, or proof of Jesus’ identity. (Right?)
But when we pay attention to the overall context of Luke, one thing that becomes clear is that this story isn’t about the power of Jesus to do miracles. It isn’t a story about Jesus’ power as much as it is a story about Jesus’ compassion.
For Luke, the healing power of Jesus doesn’t prove anything. Luke knew about lots of healers. Luke himself was a doctor. He is well aware of people who had healing powers, and who had different motives for using them. Luke’s story even has ties to the story of some of the healing stories of Elijah and Elisha, especially the story of Elijah bringing a widow’s son back to life again that we heard from the Hebrew Reading this morning.
The point of this story isn’t so much about Jesus’ unique power as a healer, as it is about Jesus’ unique compassion. This story isn’t so much about a boy who died, as it is about a widow who’s life has ended. With no husband, her son is her last connection to society. She is now a non-person.
She buried her husband, and now her son. As a woman in a world run by men, she now has no power, and no social standing. No one to represent her legally. No one to defend her or to protect her, legally, or socially. Without a man, she is not considered to be fully human. She is alone and totally vulnerable.
The recurring theme in the Gospel of Luke is the compassion of Jesus, the compassion that changes the world, the compassion that brings not just a dead boy back to life, but a widow back from death to life. And Luke has two favorite groups who are the targets of Jesus’ compassion, the poor and women.
For each story about a man, Luke tells a story about a woman. The story Luke just finished telling was about how Jesus raised the son of a Roman Centurion back to life. So now he tells a story, we don’t know where he found, of Jesus raising the son of a widow.
At first glance, we might indeed be inclined to hear this story as a miracle story that proves Jesus’ divinity or his identity. But for Luke, remember, this is a story about compassion. Compassion that is greater than conventional, human compassion, which doesn’t even see women, or children, or the poor as fully human.
For Luke, this is a story about Divine compassion breaking in through Jesus. This is right in line with the agenda set by Luke at the beginning of his Gospel, where he tells a story about Jesus preaching, “The Spirit of God is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”
Remember that? That’s Jesus’ agenda in Luke. And that’s the point of stories like the raising of the widow’s son at Nain. That’s how Luke intended his readers to hear his story.
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If we could go back to the time of Jesus himself, wonder what would we notice? Wonder what have been on the mind and heart of Jesus himself when he raised this boy to life? In a way, that’s difficult to know, but in another way it’s not.
This story is written in a format that was well known in the first century, the kind of story that was used to make a point about someone, whether it really happened or not. And Luke, who wrote many decades and generations after Jesus, is the only one who told it.
It doesn’t have any of the mark’s of an actual historical event. And that’s what makes it difficult to know what might have been on the mind and heart of the historical Jesus.
On the other hand, what we do know about the historical Jesus is that everything he taught, through parables and healings, was about the Kingdom of God.
“The Kingdom is like this.”
“The Kingdom is like that.”
“The Kingdom is at hand.”
“The Kingdom is within you.”
He never pointed to himself as something special, he alway pointed to the Kingdom of God. If he did anything at all that resembled the Gospel story for today, what would have been on his mind and heart? He would have had one thing on his mind and heart.
“The Kingdom of God is like this.” The God of the universe is especially interested in widows and orphans, and the poor and marginalized. Compassion for a widow, a non-person, and restoring her back to life by raising her son back to life - “The Kingdom of God is like this.” That’s what would have been on Jesus’ mind and heart.
So now we know more about what Luke intended for us to hear when we read this story - that this is a miracle of divine compassion more than a demonstration of divine power. And we have remembered what was on Jesus’ mind and heart in his own time.
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So what can we do with the questions:
- Why do people suffer?
- Why is the process to Christhood so hard to achieve - if we ever get to Christhood?
If we are all called to be see Christ in, be Christ to, and receive Christ from everyone we meet, what makes that so hard? What does it cost? How does it challenge us personally? How does it challenge us politically? What DOES make it so hard to achieve, in a world that is still divided in more ways than ever: by religion, by ethnicity, by nation, by age, by the kind of music we like, by wealth and poverty, and yes, even by gender and sexual orientation?
[DISCUSS]
And why DO people suffer? Yes, there are terrible tragedies in this world - in Turkey, in Oklahoma, in Corpus Christi. Sometime we suffer just because there is freedom in the universe for things to go terribly wrong. But much of our suffering isn’t what the insurance company calls an “act of God.”
Why DO people suffer? How much suffering is out of our control? How much IS in our control? How much is suffering is related to our capacity, or our lack of capacity to see Christ in, be Christ to, receive Christ from every person we meet?
[DISCUSS]
So now what? We started out by questioning God and scripture, and we ended up being questioned.
What do we do? I would think that we practice the spiritual discipline daily of looking for Christ in, being Christ to, and receiving Christ from every person we meet.
I think we are called to do that on a personal level, by the way we live mindfully every day, and I think we are called to do that on a political level, by the way we vote, and write letters to our politicians, and make our voices heard, and participate in the political system.
And I think we pray. I think we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
As we kneel at the altar today, God help us to receive the grace and the courage we need to see Christ in, be Christ to, and receive Christ from everyone we meet.
Unto God be worship and praise, dominion and splendor, forever and ever. Amen.
