I Kings 17:17-24, Luke 7:11-17
This week I officiated at two burials here—each of a young man who died too early . . Earlier this week when I went into his office to tell Fr. Matt that a parishioner had learned that cancer had returned, he threw his body back in his chair and groaned. We are a people challenged to live with cancer more and more every day. . . . In the middle of the week, a woman in our community talked with me about a her neighbors, both very elderly, one with Alzheimer’s—the other trying to take care of him, and beginning to be physically unable to do so—what to do that would be helpful? . . . Then, on Friday, as has become my custom, I spent time on the computer downloading the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq during the past week. Young men, and sometimes women, in their late teens, twenties and thirties—dead. I pray as I go with that list, and I think of the unnamed who have died by violence there and elsewhere—even those on the streets of our cities. Death is all about us—and within us. I stand with the grieving widow. I weep.
In this morning’s gospel Jesus comes up on a burial procession. And, when I hear of his raising the young man from the dead I can’t help but wish that he’d been here to raise those two young men whose lives we celebrated here. And all the dead in Iraq. I can’t help but wonder if that power of bringing life from death is still with us. I can’t help longing for death to be undone—here right now, in this place at this time. I get stuck there. In my grief about the state of our world and in my longing for new life. This is a faithful place tobe.
Because this story is about God’s power for new life turning up in just that moment of grief and longing--in the most surprising places—and it’s about the compassion of God. I suspect Luke tells the story more to tell us about Jesus’ compassion than about anything else. And it gives us a taste of what is to come in Jesus’ own living and dying and rising to new life, too.
The widow is weeping. Tears of grief, no doubt for her son—his life seemingly cut short—weeping for all the things he never would get to do—weeping for the person he would never have a chance to become—and truth be told she was probably weeping for herself as well. For as a widow with no son, she finds herself in desperate circumstance—no source of support. Her future is bleak. She grieves her losses. She protests.
And Jesus, had compassion for her. He felt her pain deep inside himself. In his guts, really—to the depths of his heart. The word for compassion has its roots in the word “womb.” Inside he feels her pain. And that feeling of compassion drives him to act—to bring new life. And he does this you’ll see with no direct request from her really, no sign of faith on her part. I take comfort in this. He kind of just inserts himself into the scene—tells her “do not keep on weeping. And he crosses a purity boundary by reaching out to touch the bier—telling the young man to rise—(and then, our text harkens back to the story of Elijah)—Jesus gives the son to his mother.
Elijah too had crossed boundaries. Just before this morning’s portion of the story, he’d gone to this foreign widow for food. God had told him to do this, and he went—and the widow having only a handful of meal for herself and her son had shared that with him—and that handful of meal had fed them all for weeks and weeks. A strange little story, stretching our understanding of who our neighbor is—a foreigner who turns out to be the channel of God's provision. And, then later, we read how Elijah’s own compassion moves him to act—he prays to God from the same feelings the widow expresses in her grief—and then he gives her dead son back to her alive. It’s when he does that that she tells him she finally knows he is a man of God—his words match his actions. The word of new life—the word of the Lord in his mouth is the word of truth.
The thing about compassion is that it brings us together. It’s that simple. You can’t have compassion for someone without drawing close to them. Think about it. Compassion opens our hearts to another—it carries us across the boundaries that separate us. It involves us in knowing another—knowing the other. When I am compassionate I stand with. I am present to. My insides are touched. I am no longer detached, analytical, remote. The other person is real. I listen. I receive. You know about this in your own life.
I’ve been carried by compassion into many wonderful relationships. Last year on the retreat for the women of the living room—those of us providing leadership spent hours really at meals listening, sharing, getting to know—our hearts were opened to one another—all of us women, telling our stories, sharing our truth, knowing our compassion for one another. There was new life where there had been none before.
Last Sunday a woman greeted me at the door at the end of the service with tears in her eyes. She told me she weeps every time we read the names of the dead in Iraq. One of the reasons we read the names of the dead soldiers in Iraq is so that we might open our hearts to them—to the reality of all the dead in Iraq—and else where. Perhaps your compassion for them and for their families began when young men from our county began dying there. Maybe from that start, you’ve found your heart gradually opening more and more to the truth of the cost of this war—to the cost of war period. If you are my age, you have perhaps lost loved ones to other wars in our history. Wars cost lives and lives matter. It is right to grieve.
The widow’s grief is so very important. It’s a powerful statement that something is wrong. Things are not as they should be. And crying and being heard are at the heart of our faith. God heard the cry of the people in slavery in Egypt. Their hearts were breaking and so was God’s. Sometimes we are called to stand with the one who cries and accept the gift of their tears—which may be the only gift they have to give. And, what a gift it is. For the gift of new life flows through the tears—the weeping is a protest—death should not have the final say. Our lives so burdened with the fear of death—the threat of death—are meant for more. Our tears open us to receive the gift of new life.
The powers that be prefer that we not have compassion. Prefer that we are detached from the pain of life. Prefer that we live only in young beautiful, usually thin, bodies. Prefer that we live as voyeurs—watching others lives—but not getting involved. Prefer that we are numb to reality. Think of how numb we have become. “Business as usual” prefers that we avoid the reality of death but that we remember always the threat of death—that we live our lives out under a kind of cloud of fear. You know about this—threat of terrorism, threat of gang violence, threat of child predators, threats, threats, threats…. all involving people who are other—different from us.
Grief and compassion undermine this deathly order of life. Grief protests that there is more to life than this—grief expresses God’s own broken heart. Compassion opens us to one another—joins us together in unlikely ways—frees us to cross boundaries and to enter the darkness together. Compassion energizes us to dare to risk the unknown—to make friends with the enemy—to live in the truth of our oneness. This happens in places like our own families, neighborhoods, communities, everywhere we find ourselves.
Jesus’ compassion led him to interrupt what was business as usual—just another man dead, just another woman left alone—to respond to the widow’s tears, reach out and touch the bier, proclaim the word of God—the word of life.
Jesus—God with us—God the compassionate one. Compassion is “to be with.” God’s compassion assures us that we are never alone. We may not know young men raised from the dead in quite this way, but we are a people who need not live in fear of death. It does not have the final word. The gift of new life is always with us—coming to us as we grieve the present reality, as we long for new life. Part of our calling as Christians is to grieve and weep—let our hearts be broken—so that we are made one with others and with God.
Jesus died for us—not I think so much to pay for our sins, but to take death into his own person. His compassion took him across even that boundary. God embraces the death that you and I must die and in so doing frees us from the realm of death. By standing with us Jesus enables us to stand with each other. No matter what. That is the great good news. It is the word of life.
**I am informed in my thinking by the work of Walter Brueggeman who has written about the importance of grief and of the numbness to which the prophets speak . I commend his writings to you.
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