Good Afternoon. The Gospel Story of Jesus raising the son of the Widow of Nain gives us a glimpse of the broken heart of Jesus as he looks at sin and death. It also gives us a commission to share comfort with those who need comfort.
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Good Morning. We began with Jesus words, I am the resurrection, and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. In our Gospel lesson this morning, I want to walk through how Jesus models for us the compassion we should have for others in pain, as well as where to point them for true hope.
In taking our human nature upon himself, there are things Christ had to give up. Omniscience, meaning being all knowing was one, as all knowledge can’t fit in a human brain. But there are times in the Gospels where Jesus is clearly right where he wants to be, and that it is not a coincidence.
When Jesus met the woman at the well, it’s very clear that Jesus had stopped at that specific well and had waited just for her to come. When Jesus walked through Jericho it’s obvious that He was looking for the tax collector Zacchaeus to be in the crowd. He even called him by name and told the wee little man to come down from the tree, because Jesus was going to his house that day.
But this story about the widow of Nain doesn’t seem to be one of those kinds of stories. It just doesn’t feel deliberate. The phrase Luke uses to describe Jesus’ reaction to this widow’s grief is a phrase showing spontaneous and heart felt emotion. Verse 13 says “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her.” But even that doesn’t quite capture the words meaning. The translation called “The Message” says “When Jesus saw her, his heart broke.”
Jesus literally HURT for this woman’s pain. He was touched in the very depths of his heart by her tears. Why? What about THIS woman that would have moved Jesus in such a powerful way? Here’s some of the clues!
First, she’d just lost her only son. That would be tragedy enough for any woman, but Luke makes a point of telling us this wasn’t her only sadness. Verse 12 tells us a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” She’d had lost both her only son AND her husband.
Important to catch that. Her tears were the tears of woman who’d been surrounded by death. And making matters even worse – in the culture of that day, this woman was destitute. She had no means of support. The breadwinners of her life (husband and son) were both gone, and she was going to be left to fend for herself. BUT there’s one more big clue to the kind of woman this mother was, and why Jesus’ heart broke on seeing her.
Verse 12 tells us that “…a LARGE CROWD from the town was with her.” In that day, it was common for rich people to hire crowds of mourners for a funeral of a loved one. But this woman is not rich.
She can’t afford to hire people to show up for her son’s burial. But a …LARGE… crowd shows up anyway. Why? What’s in it for them? Absolutely nothing… except they clearly care about this woman. They care about her, they don’t like seeing her suffer, and they want to be there for her. Unpaid mourners
This would certainly imply that this widow gave of herself to others in such a powerful way that all the town wanted to be there for her. They wanted to share in her grief. That was all anyone could do, until Jesus showed up. I’m sure they wanted to do more, but their tears were all they could offer.
Sometimes, that’s all we can offer, too. Inside of each one of us - there is the deep seating feeling that death isn’t right. We weren’t made simply to die, and that be the end. We were not created simply inhabit a grave.
And because of this, death creates all kinds of negative emotions, sometimes even anger… an anger toward God. We see that when people leave the church over the death of a loved one. Here, our lesson gives us a chance to examine our own focus when it comes to what we really believe about death and eternal life.
I would love to attend a funeral and touch the dearly departed and say “ARISE,” but I can’t do that! In fact, if it happened, I don’t know what I’d do.
So what should I do now, and where is my hope? (Comfort/Christ) One preacher I read shared a story of little girl who came home from a neighbor’s house where her little friend had died. "Why did you go?" questioned her father.
"To comfort her mother," said the child.
"What could you do to comfort her?"
"I climbed into her lap and cried with her."
When we comfort those who grieve, no, we can’t raise the dead, and since we’re not God, there are questions we can’t answer. But they want us there anyway because our presence comforts them and gives them an opportunity to share their sorrow with someone who cares. And because I know the one who brings me comfort/life, I can share His love and compassion and comfort with others.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, Who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
Jesus did NOT raise EVERY dead person from the grave. But he could have. He could have visited every cemetery in Israel and raised all that had died. But… that wasn’t why Jesus came.
Why would Jesus want to raise people from the dead… only to have them die again? When Jesus brought the widow’s son back to life He did so knowing this boy would eventually die all over again. Same with Lazarus. Jesus was giving this widow a “TEMPORARY” fix to the problem of death.
We’ve probably heard of stories of people who’ve “died” on the operating table, or in their hospital bed. They stopped breathing. They were pronounced dead. Many speak of seeing a great light and feeling the presence of God. And many of them share the same emotion: a deep sense of disappointment on being revived because they didn’t WANT to come back!
Jesus didn’t come to give us a temporary reprieve from death, an extra year. In John 6:40, Jesus said “My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life (not just a few extra years on life), and I will raise him up at the last day."
When Jesus raises us up from the dead, it will not be temporary. When He raises us from the grave – we’re not going back. There will no longer be any death, because we can sing that Death is Dead, because we’ve been granted the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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