Luke
7:11-17
June
9, 2013
First
Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL
Christina
Berry
Luke 7: 11-17
11 Soon afterwards he went to a
town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As 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. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, "Do not weep." 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and
the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you,
rise!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to
his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A
great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on
his people!" 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country.
I’m so glad to see this scripture
come up in the lectionary, because it has this wonderful Greek verb in it, a
word that has no direct translation in English, but is so descriptive that I
wish we could adopt for our everyday use. The word is splagnizomai, (splang-
nee-tso-my) and it describes how Jesus felt when he saw this woman. Luke
doesn’t use the word very often. He used it in the parable of the Good
Samaritan to describe the feeling that the Samaritan had – when he saw the man
who had been beaten and robbed and left by the side of the road for dead. He
felt this– splagnizomai – and stopped to help the man, to bind his wounds. He
used it when he told another parable, too, the one about the boy who squandered
his inheritance on riotous living, then came dragging up the road to ask if he
could come home. When the father saw him – the father who had been waiting,
watching for him – when the father saw his boy, Jesus said, he felt this
-- “splagnizomai.
It is a powerful word.
It means a deep feeling of
compassion, so deep that your bowels and innards move. It is an intense emotion
– sympathy, and mercy, even pain, on behalf of another who is suffering.
Down South every now and then at
a funeral, an elderly lady will say with tears in her eyes,
“Oh, honey, my heart just hurts
for you.” That’s splagnizomai.
When we saw those Oklahoma
neighborhoods in rubble, and the people racing to that school to see if their
children were alive, -- splagnizomai.
When we saw the faces of those
parents looking for their little ones outside the elementary school at Sandy
Hook, -- splagnizomai.
When the news broke about the
Boston Marathon bombings, and we watched the faces of those who were there, those
who did not know what happened to their loved ones,
-- splagnizomai.
For a man to feel that way in Jesus’
world was a sign of weakness. Men especially, in Roman culture, were supposed
to be invulnerable, impervious to such feelings as mercy and charity and
compassion. A man is strong and powerful not supposed to feel this – not
supposed to be tender hearted. But Jesus did.
He felt it for the mother, not
her dead son, and he felt it because it knew what it meant, that the only son
of a widow had died. It meant that she was at the margins of society, a woman
with virtually nothing left to live for, and nothing left to live on. On top of
the unspeakable grief of her loss, there was the unimaginable sorrow of her
future. Even if she’d had any estate, any personal wealth, it would now belong
to her nearest male relative, not to her. If there was land or money, a house
or livestock, it would go to a brother-in-law, or a cousin, or an uncle of her
husband. Not to her.
Maybe someone would take her in -
- a sister, perhaps, with a generous husband, a brother.
Maybe not.
Jesus, as he passed this
funeral procession, looked at her with great compassion. She didn’t say
anything to him, or ask anything of him. She didn’t need to. He could see her
pain, and he could feel it, too. He could see and feel all that she had lost,
and would lose. “Do not weep,” he said to her. He touched the body, laying
there, touched it and said “Young man, I say to you, rise” And he reached
out and gave her boy back to her.
He was recognized immediately by
the people as a great prophet. After they overcame their shock, they glorified
God. They saw what he had done for the miracle it was, and they understood who
he was and how he had raised the widow’s son through the power of the one true
God.
In fact, that is easier to
imagine than what had come before. Contemplating the crushing grief of the loss
of a child is not a place we can linger for long without some cost. For those
who have lost a child, the place where that sorrow dwells is too tender, no
matter how long it has been.
For those who have a child, of
whatever age, it is a deep and abiding fear. For anyone, to have such a loss,
to have a child taken from you, whether by death or estrangement or addiction
or, God forbid, abduction, such a loss is unimaginable.
Others among us have known other
losses, had things taken from us. That pain is also excruciating. We don’t
carry those losses out into the streets, and no public ritual observance like a
funeral marks the event, invites the sympathy of others, or offers any closure.
The pain stays buried within us, the loss goes disregarded, at least by most
people who know us. We weep privately, if we can even allow ourselves to think
on it.
Perhaps it was a deep
humiliation, a taking of dignity that can’t be restored.
Maybe it was a dream broken,
shattered beyond repair.
Often it is a false sense of the
world, a naïve belief that if we are kind and helpful, others will be kind to
us. Very often, we cling to childish beliefs that being nice and doing good will
result in a life that is nice and good. When trauma or loss or disasters
happen, as they do to everyone in some way, we are shocked, as if we should
somehow have been exempt. Then we wonder, “why did this happen to me?”
In our better
moments, of course, we know that life is not fair, and that bad things happen. In our calmer
moments, we can easily say that we trust in God, and that we know Jesus is with
us, come what may. But when we are suffering, we are not looking in the
direction of the one who has the power to raise us up. Our eyes are downcast,
our thoughts turned inward.
Still, Jesus
comes down the road, sees the funeral procession and sees us,
brokenhearted, faltering,
grieving,
struggling with loss or shame,
weighed down by how we look or
who we are,
by our name or race or class or
station or condition, puzzled by teasing and wounded by words,
abandoned by someone who said they would love us forever,
researching the diagnosis to see
if there could possibly be a cure,
wondering how it happened, that
our lives have come to such a pass.
Jesus sees us, and he feels
compassion – splagnizomai.
And the power of the world to
hurt us does not go away, but somehow, his being there with us, the love in his
eyes, the quiet and knowing presence helps us to persevere. Jesus lifts us up
from the dusty roadside. He takes us by the hand and says, “Do not weep.”
We remember that with him, all
things are possible; with him, the blind can see, and the broken are restored, the
lame walk, and those who were dead find life.
Because of him, we get up, we dry
our tears, we take the hand of the person next to us, and we continue our
journey.
Because of him, we understand
that the kingdoms of this world, even the lives of those we love, may be
temporary, but the kingdom of God is bigger, encompasses more, and lasts
forever.
Because of him, we understand
that the world’s evils, that principalities, that death and disaster and
malignancies may take from us, but that we do not find our meaning in those
losses.
We find our meaning in knowledge
that there is a hope beyond today, that there is something bigger than our
lives, that there is a power greater than all the earthly powers combined.
That hope, that something bigger,
that power, is the eternal, cosmic existence of a love and grace so great, so
all-consuming, so extravagant and forgiving, that there is no person who is out
of its reach.
That power, switched on in us,
gives us the power to walk in Jesus’ footsteps – healing, caring, visiting,
raising up the lowly, and offering comfort to those who suffer.
It’s what he came for, came to that town where that
widow-woman wept on the road to the cemetery, came to make the blind see and
the lame walk and to bind up the broken hearted
and to show us what real power
looks like, and to empower us to make the
power switch in his name, so that we’d do the same, and everyone who sees us would
see him, and say “God
has looked favorably on us!"
That’s why he
came!
Thanks be to
God! Amen.
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