Let Life Come In!
I
Kings 17:8-24; Luke 7:11-17
“Then he stretched himself upon the child three
times, and cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come
into him again.’”
When you raise a man from the dead, word about you tends to spread—fast
and far, deep and near, it’s the compassion of the act we hear—and then each of
us will wonder, where, O God, is my miracle?
Surely, the widows in both our passages this morning were wondering
where their miracle was; they surely questioned why God had left them bereft
and without protection from the ways of the world.
To be a widow in biblical times, when the husbands are
gone and then the sons, there is no one to protect the widow from abject
poverty, to love away her loneliness, or to restore her faith after she
abandons her hope.
The widow of
Nain would spend the rest of her days on the ledge of a living death. So when
we read of widows’ tears, we must remember that her sorrow is not just the
despair over a husband’s or child’s death, it is also a fear of the hungry,
roaring lion lurking always at her door.
Picture the Lord as he reaches out his hand to touch
the funeral bier—an act according to the Law that would render him ritually
unclean—but Christ wasn’t thinking about the Law; he was thinking about the
son…and he was empathizing with the woman. “You and I see the suffering of a
widow at the loss of her son. What we do not see is the suffering of a woman
who has lost everything. It is to this deeper suffering that Jesus speaks.”[1]
He was the embodiment of God’s compassion in that
moment—the hands and heart, the legs and feet of a loving God who reached out
to touch her right where it hurts, who walks beside us to share the weight of
the burdens we cannot escape. “Don’t cry,” Jesus whispers; “Believe.” And life
came in; the boy on the bier began to move and to speak. His shroud was shed,
“and Jesus gave him to his mother” (Lk 7:14b).
The power of what faith can do was a normal, regular
thing to Jesus, so in many respects he would not have thought of the raising of
the Widow of Nain’s son as anything as mindboggling as a miracle. The witnesses
in both processions—the ones heading into Nain and the ones heading out—they were
the ones who spread that “m” word, miracle,
all over Israel.
Neither Elijah nor Jesus was wearing one of those sign
boards you once seen on homeless people in the city with words like, “The End
is Near” or “Jesus is Coming.” The women could barely see straight for their
despair; it’s highly unlikely they recognized either man as a miracle worker,
nor as anything other than a regular ol’ Joe, let alone a great prophet of God.
When my step-father, Bob, moved in with us, I did not
recognize who he was—a man sent from God—either. I didn’t really figure it out
until he became sick—mesothelioma. Yet before he got sick, he was so good to
all of us; but, of course, he was especially good, loving and kind to my
mother. He respected her, he loved her. He even bought a big boat and named it
after her! The Marcia Ann. When Bob married my mother, it was the happiest day
of my life!
Bob did so many things for us; he took care of all the
neglect we had experienced before—physically like putting a new roof on the
house, fixing things, fixing us. For the first time in a very long time,
everything worked in the house; everything worked with us as a family. Bob
brought life into our house. He was a miracle to us, a gift of compassion from
a gracious and loving God.
Bob was an Irishman, he did not get angry often, but
when he got did, WOW! Clear the deck! But his anger was a righteous
anger—almost always in defense of my mother. Elijah, I imagine, sounded like my
step-father when he blasted one of us kids about the way we had treated my
mother in some incident.
Elijah was incensed with God for rewarding the widow’s
kindness to Elijah by killing her son. “Have you brought calamity even upon the
widow with whom I am staying?!!! O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into
him again!” (1 Kings 17:21b).
After the diagnosis and learning what mesothelioma is,
I prayed and prayed that God would spare my step-father. I had a dream one
night. I was pushing a wheelbarrow in the dark, and at the end of a long road,
bound on both side by tall evergreens, I went through a stone gate into a
cemetery.
Crooked though they were, each grave had a cross on
it, and all the crosses were gleaming white, so bright against the black,
moonless night. I let go of the wheelbarrow, turned around and walked home, but
the light stayed with me.
I do not have to interpret the dream; I know what it
means. What I did not know at the time was that my prayers would lead me to identify
the everyday miracle, the way God puts people in our lives, grants us
blessings, works in our circumstances to bring life in and keep us going when
we’d rather eat our last meal and die.
The Widow of Zarephath and the Widow of Nain were real
people. Just like them, all of us have suffered losses in our lives that have
near destroyed us…and yet...God provides the miracle by sending the one we need.
Hear God’s compassion for you in your pain: “Don’t cry; believe.”
Jesus is the one whom God gives us that we may learn how
to let life come inside us, where wheelbarrows of our hurts and disappointments
and frustrations are filled to overflowing and weigh us down so grievously.
What’s in your wheelbarrow? Wheel it to God; give it
to God. Take up instead the simple tools of faith, like the widow’s last little
bit of meal and oil, and trust God to feed you with all that you need for each
day. Such shall then be your testimony.
Show others who hunger and are heavy-laden the same
Christ-like compassion you have received. There are many invisible sufferers in
our midst, they still cry to the Lord and weep, Where, O God, is my miracle?
Look in the mirror, brothers and sisters. You, me, we
are their miracle. Raising people from the dead can be an everyday occurrence. Touch
the bier, and those who mourn shall surely feel the hand of God and the compassion
of Christ coming through just regular ol’ you and me. Are you ready for a
miracle? Amen.
June
9, 2013
First
Parish Federated Church of South Berwick, ME
The
Reverend Donna Lee Muise, Pastor
