A Resurrection Before The End Of The Story

A Resurrection Before The End of The Story

Luke 7:11-17
June 10, 2007

11Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd
went with him. 12As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was
being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was
a large crowd from the town. 13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her
and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the
bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” 15The dead man sat
up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16Fear seized all of them;
and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has
looked favorably on his people!” 17This word about him spread throughout Judea and
all the surrounding country.

The passage before us today is one of those I’ve never preached on—and, as I’ve said
before, after preaching some 9 or 10 years on a somewhat consistent basis, it
surprised me that I have never chosen this text to explore, and wrestle with. And there
is some stuff to wrestle with here, because this is not your typical healing text—it is not
about someone becoming sick, or being sick most of their life—it is a story of a dead
man who, by the time Jesus is done with him, is a living man, a breathing man once
again. This is not a healing story: no, this is a resurrection story. It is one thing to heal
someone of their pain or illness or sickness—it is quite another thing to have sickness
or pain or illness do its thing with us, and complete its work in us, by killing us, and
THEN having someone reverse the ultimate outcome of all of those things we fear will
come from sickness or pain. It mirrors the story of Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother,
whom Jesus heals in John 11—that is an epic story, really, and one of my favorites.
But this one, this story, it never seemed to catch my eye, for some reason, maybe
because it never has the drama of John’s story of Lazarus’ resurrection, the
complicated plot or hurt feelings or entangled relationships that give it such power. But
there is one aspect of Luke’s resurrection story here that really does connect the two
stories, and that connects us to this story, and every human being to this story and that
is the deep grief on display by the mother in this text. This weeping, weeping that this
woman is told to stop by Jesus, seems to run its thread through the Lazarus story and
this story and even our stories—we know what it means to weep, to mourn, to feel as if
your heart is going to turn to water and melt away, because of the tears we’ve shared
over a person we’ve lost to eternity.

Something recently has brought that truth to mind, the recent re-surfacing of the story
of Daniel Pearl, the reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped in Pakistan,
and eventually beheaded nine days later by terrorists, who actually videotaped the
horrific murder.   There is a new movie coming out that stars Angelina Jolie in the role
of Marian Pearl, Daniel’s wife, and the movie tells the story of her experience during
that time, as well as her romance with her husband.   According to newswire reports,
Jolie was very concerned with getting her portrayal of Marian right, especially that
moment when she actually learned of her husband’s execution, five months into her
pregnancy. Up until that moment, she was a pillar of strength, and even days
afterwards, she was giving interviews that reminded the world that Pakistanis were
suffering as well, especially under the current leadership military rule. However, the
moment when she found out, the moment she learned she was now a widow, is the
moment when the real weeping really began, the deep grief exploded into her bedroom,
that wailing that comes from deep inside, deep inside a place we barely imagine can
exist within us—how could we hold that shadow within us without it eclipsing the light
within us? We all know that place, it is that far country we’ve all traveled to, that far
place that is within us, waiting for the next moment when our loss will feel inconsolable.

That is what this woman in our narrative is feeling today—she is weeping because she
is now a childless mother, and because she is completely alone now, because she is
also a widow. And keep in mind that her weeping is not only for particular loss she has
suffered, but because she will now enter a deep poverty, because neither her son nor
her husband will support her, and there is no going back home to mother and dad.
This is a culture for widows in which you were on your own if no male was willing to
support you—that is why you have such an outcry in the Old Testament to care of the
widows and orphans, because they were seen as the most vulnerable people of their
culture. Not only is she alone in this world, but she now about to become an economic
outsider, and one who will probably spend some of her time begging or working until
they carry her off in her own coffin.

And yet, she doesn’t seek Jesus’ help, because she too is under the impression we all
are when it comes to death and that is there is no coming back from it. What is done is
done now, and there will be no healing—the time for that has long since past. But
Jesus, upon entering this town, he sees the funeral procession, with the coffin and the
mourners, making their way to graveyard, much like we do when we lay our loved ones
to rest—the hearse and cars, with their lights on, and all. And something happens—he
has deep compassion, because he can see her weeping, he can see the wails that
come from deep within her, and he also knows what it means for her, as a woman who
is now alone, who, if she is not already destitute, will soon enough be. The Greek word
Luke uses for compassion here is related to the Greek word for entrails, for the guts of
humans, and so the word compassion here implies that what Jesus felt in this moment
came from deep inside the pit of his stomach, so to speak. Like grief, like deep grief
that comes from that shadowy place inside of us, this compassion that Jesus is
experiencing here also comes from a deep place within him. It’s almost as if his heart
was breaking with hers…and I think it really was.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the great 19th German philosopher, the one noted for noting the
death of the God in his century, though he was really talking about the death of
religiosity as the 20th century was about to begin—Nietzsche once complained that the
problem with Christianity was that it was a religion of pity, a religion that pitied those
who suffered in this world, and in that act of pity, he believed we Christians were
actually trying to feel superior to others, that our pity was our attempt to feel more
powerful and in control of others, as if we were looking down on someone, someone
who was worse off than us. He saw suffering as something to be embraced, as
something that made one stronger, and there is some truth to that—what does not kill
me only makes me stronger—is a quote from Nietzsche’s philosophical works.
However, I think he confused pity and compassion—he may be right about pity, that
sense of detachment some people for those in the midst of suffering, but compassion is
never detached from the one who suffers—compassion suffers with the sufferer, and
that is what Christ is doing in this moment. This woman’s pain, this widow and now
childless woman, has become Jesus’ pain, so much so that it reaches down into him,
into the guts of him, and it is like Marian’s pain, when she finally got word that her
husband had been ultimately killed by his kidnappers. This Christ is one who chooses
the cross, who chooses to be experience death, rather than look down from the
heavens upon the most human and universal of experience, death, that thing that
makes us human, and look on it with divine detachment, maybe even pity. That is not
what God chooses to do, as we will see later in Luke, upon the cross.

And Jesus’ words to this widow, “do not weep,” seem almost ridiculous, if it wasn’t for
what happened next. Christ does the miraculous, he heals this widow’s son from that
human dis-ease that will one day afflict us all, death.   It is the first resurrection he is
reported to have done, and it comes surprisingly, at this moment, when he touches the
funeral bier, and he speaks to the body, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” and unlike
most bodies without life, this one responds by doing just that…rising.   This now living
young man rises and Jesus gives him to his mother, gives a son back to his mother,
something we wish we could all do, in these days of our young men and women dying in
far away countries, and mothers yearning to see their young ones be returned safe
and sound to their arms. But it seems the work of resurrection is God’s work, despite
my wish and our wish that we could do the same, that we could give life where there is
only death, at the moment.

But I do think this story of resurrection, of un-asked for resurrection, should give them,
those in the midst of deep grief for their children, and us, who have, or will soon be
grieving our own losses, it should give us great hope in this life. The one who looks at
us, who sees us in our deep grief, is not one who looks at our deep pain with
detachment, this is not Nietzsche’s version of the Christian God, one who simply gazes
from afar and sadly utters platitudes to us in our pain. This is a God whose guts are
wracked by our pain, whose compassion for us makes the Christ touch the casket of a
dead young man and breath life into his body by the simple command to rise and live.
He does not do this to convince others that he is who he says he is—he does this
because a mother cannot live without her son in that moment, and his compassion
overflows into this moment. Love makes him do such a thing, compassion compels to
give himself for such a reunion, and hope, beautiful hope leaves the story to us, to
history, to the church, so that we can remember Who has fallen in love with us, with
you, with me, with all the world.

I know some folks are tired of hearing New Orleans, and its most recent devastation,
but there are reasons why it remains such an important city in this country. It carries
traditions and ways of being that are unique and particular to it, like the way it does one
of those famous jazz funerals that you often see on TV. Kim Buchanan, a UCC pastor
in Marietta, Georgia, does a wonderful job in describing them, when she reminds us
that it begins with a brass band, some folks in top hats, that makes a solemn
procession to the church. Hymns like Just a Closer Walk With Thee and Free as a
Bird, with no improvisation, with no frills that is so typical of jazz and its free spirit.
“Nothing but sadness blown low and blue to the beat of a muted snare drum” Kim
writes. But once the procession arrives at the cemetery, and final words are said, and
the body is given back to the dust, the mood shifts, and brightly festooned umbrellas
are quickly opened and the snare drummer removes his mute, and the funeral
procession heads back into the town to the raucous strains of Didn’t He Ramble? and
When The Saints Go Marching In. People who heard those somber hymns earlier in
the day wait for the procession to come back the way it came, because, of course, a
celebration is coming, the party is about to begin. In New Orleans, no one wants to
miss a funeral celebration.

There is something powerful in that drama being played on the bruised and battered
streets of New Orleans…grief comes to haunt us in the night, but the possibility of joy
comes in the morning, as one of the Psalmist reminds us. Now, I know how hollow that
sounds to those of us caught between sundown and sun up, but I do believe its true,
that its ultimately true. When Jesus saw that woman, and saw into her and into the
deep well of her grief, I can think he was forever moved, forever changed. It was first
moment, I think, that God, in this Christ, really understood how deep human grief can
go, and that changed God, it moved God to even deeper compassion for God’s
creation, and it sent God to the cross in this Jesus in order to defeat death, to defuse
its power, and to fill in that seemingly endless hole in us that mourns those we have lost
to the next world. As I’ve said a million times, and will say a million times before death
will have its own way with me as well: death, death is not the end of the story—not of
Christ’s story, nor of our own stories. The end of the story is life, both Christ’s story
and each of our stories in this place. I think the moment Christ looked into the deep
grief of that woman the world was never going to be the same again. In the book of
Revelation, one of the Apocalyptic texts of our New Testament, which is a vision of the
2nd century church suffering through some early persecution, there is a line near the
end of the story, a story that is meant to tell us how the end of history will come about,
says this: See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them: they will be
his peoples, and God himself will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things
have passed away. I believe those words, and the church, over the many centuries,
has believed them as well. And I have come to believe them because of stories like
this, stories that remind us of the reason why death has been defeated and that is
because God saw us in our pain, our grief, and got it, and got us, perhaps for the first
time, and from that moment on, the world was given a different ending, and our lives,
each of our lives were destined for new beginnings, a new chapters added to the
stories of our lives. Amen.