And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still.
This is the first of four accounts of the resuscitation of a dead person that Luke has preserved – two in his Gospel and two in his Acts of the Apostles. It is worth recalling that Luke made the point up front in his preface to the Gospel that he was not an eyewitness to the events, but that he diligently followed the best practices of the historiographers of his day in order to present a verified and organized account of all that Jesus Christ said and did up to and including his resurrection from the dead. This is the way he put it:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account…
As you can see, an important principles of the historiography in Luke’s day was the word of eyewitnesses. Luke’s stated intention was to “write an orderly account” of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ; one that would answer important questions like, “Who was Jesus and what does it mean to follow him?” Luke locked onto the narratives and reports from eyewitnesses that go to the core of who Jesus is and what he wants from us.
He did the same in gathering material for his second volume – The Acts of the Apostles – albeit a huge chunk of Acts is Luke’s own first person account of St. Paul’s ministry. The point I want you to take away is that Luke intelligently, intentionally, studiously selected four accounts of resuscitations, from all the material he had, to include in his two-volume history that we call The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.
Immediately following this first account we have the disciples of John the Baptist coming to Jesus on John’s behalf inquiring about his ministry. When our Lord answered John’s questions, by alluding to fact that the dead are being raised, he is referring back to what has just happened with the widow’s son. The next resuscitation in the Gospel is the raising of Jairus’ daughter.
In the Acts, Luke preserves two accounts of the Apostles Peter and Paul raising a dead person to life. Luke’s point in Acts is that apostolic authority and power come from the resurrected Christ. In the first account Peter raises from the dead a Christian woman named Tabitha. In the second account, St. Paul raises a young man from the dead. This account of St. Paul is written in the first-person because Luke was there. He and Paul and others traveled to Troas on a mission and they were there for about a week. On Sunday, the day before they left, they came together with the Church for the Eucharist and Paul preached a long sermon. In fact, St. Luke says he preached until mid-night! That does not mean that they were there all day since Sunday was simply another day of work under the Romans or the Jews. They probably didn’t meet until the workday was over. They were meeting in an upper room, three flights up — a room, Luke recalls, filled with lights. There was a young man named Eutychus and was sitting in the big open window. It was probably hot that night and the boy may have been trying to catch a cool breeze or maybe he was a look out. Paul kept on preaching and sometime after midnight, Eutychus fell into a deep sleep and then he fell out of the window, three stories high, and hit the pavement below and died. Luke’s memory is vivid. The boy was taken up from the pavement and he was dead. Paul ran down stairs, bent over him and held the boy. He then told everyone not to worry because his life had returned to him.
What these four narratives have in common is that they are accounts of resuscitations from the dead. What do I mean by resuscitation? This is another point I want you to take away today: I mean to distinguish resuscitations from the resurrection of the dead. Lazarus is probably the most famous case of resuscitation from the dead. Mary told Jesus not to go to his grave because Lazarus had been then for at least four days and he would stink. Death stinks. Dead people have to be buried. Tabitha was washed and no doubt already wrapped up in a shroud and spices for her burial before Peter came and called her back from death. But here is the point: every one of these persons eventually died again because they were not resurrected — they were resuscitated. When we are resurrected from death like Jesus was resurrected from the dead, we will never die again. In the resurrection we are still who we are, we do not become different persons, but all things are made new. We put on incorruption, we put on immortality, and we are raised to everlasting life never to die again. But it is important to understand that the resurrection from the dead does not involve the annihilation of nature. It is not that Christ will destroy our human nature by raising us to life eternal – rather Christ will complete nature. Grace never destroys nature it completes nature. Grace does not suspend the laws of nature; grace opens up our true nature. By his resurrection, Christ has not negated nature, he has rather fulfilled nature’s destiny – our nature burst into blossom in his resurrected body.
But resuscitation is not a resurrection; resuscitation is not a bursting into blossom! It is an act by which Jesus brings the person back to life and thus he declares his authority over death and provides proof that the Kingdom of God has come. This is exactly what he wanted to make clear to John the Baptist. But this also gives us a peek into the interior life of our Lord. So let’s get back to this account in the Gospel for today.
Jesus and his disciples came upon the little village of Nain, which probably had a population of a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty souls. It is also about six miles south of Nazareth. As Jesus and his disciples approached the village near to the gate a funeral procession got his attention. Funerals would process out of the city gate to bury the person outside the city walls where the family cemeteries were located. Funerals were usually at the end of the day and as much as was possible it was on the day of the death of the person. Luke makes a point of telling us that this death involved an only-begotten son. The mother was a widow who was now childless. She had no family left and she had become an “orphaned parent.” This passage bristles with emotion. Many people in the town shared in the widow’s grief as they gathered around her in mourning. Such mourning was seen as an act of love by one’s neighbors. This is the sad scene that greeted Jesus as he enters the little village.
The burial customs in Judaism in antiquity required that the person not be prepared for burial until the death was certain and then the family tore their cloths as a sign of mourning and physically shut the eyes of the corpse to show that they were dead. Next it was important to quickly wash and anoint the body for burial. They were not generally kept in the house overnight. The corpse was wrapped in linen and spices and place on a wooden plank. This is what the text refers to as a bier. They were not placed in coffins. Everyone could see the corpse on the plank as they processed to the family cemetery.
Jesus, moved by compassion, first approached the widow and told her to stop crying. He then approached the men carrying the dead boy and then he touched the plank. As soon as he touched the bier the procession stopped, not because of a miracle, but more likely out of shock because touching the bier defiled a person according to the Law. That person would have to stay out of the community and forsake the worship of God for seven days. Luke tells us that our Lord actions were motivated by his compassion for the widow. This motive – the motive of compassion – is attributed to Jesus in all four Gospels. Here is another point I want you to take away: part of the collective memory of Luke’s eyewitnesses was that on more than one occasion they witnessed the Word of God made flesh so moved by his very own human compassion for other people that he stopped everything he was doing and made the wrong thing right. And I submit to you that he still does that today. God does not wait for the lost to find their way back to him. Jesus took the initiative to raise the widow’s son.
Now, here is something else I want you to consider: what is absent from this account is the every present, every critical, Pharisee. But for the original audience, his touching of the bier was probably enough to bring back the contrast between Jesus’ love for people and the self-righteousness of those who had nothing to offer but the Law. The righteousness of God is not attained in its pursuit, holiness does not glory in itself — but rather as we follow Jesus in his love for others, the righteousness of God overcomes us.
We don’t know how the people carrying the plank responded to Jesus at first other than the fact that they stop in their tracks. When he started talking to the dead boy they and others may have thought he was deranged. Why would a stranger, who did not know this family, interrupt such a sad and necessary ritual at the most grievous moment? They may have laughed at him. The very idea of speaking to a dead person would have been humorous had the context not been so heart breaking. But unthinkable was about to happen: The way of all flesh had crossed paths with the Word made flesh.
And he (Jesus) said, Young man, I say unto thee Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.
This is the last take away I want you to have: This account of Jesus raising the widow’s son from the dead first of all demonstrates Jesus’ compassion and willingness to reach out and meets our most profound needs. It is Jesus taking the initiative in this account. He comforts the widow and he restores her boy to life and health. This account also displays the power of Jesus to reach to the very limits of our personal existence. He can and does overpower death. Jesus offers humanity more than a signal that the Kingdom is coming. And please note once again that it is not that the Kingdom is coming in the future, not that the Kingdom has come in part, not that the promise of the Kingdom has come. No. The Kingdom of God has come. A new and happy state of being has come upon all creation through Jesus and he has put a stop to death:
And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still.