The Man Well Beyond Just "Mostly Dead"

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 7th Chapter

Soon afterwards Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 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. 

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 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!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Last week there was a centurion who wanted Jesus to heal his slave.  He sent some local, Jewish, religious folks (folks who should know better) to ask Jesus to heal the man’s slave and when they got to Jesus they embellished a bit and said, “This centurion is WORTHY of having this done.”  THEN, as Jesus made his way toward the centurion’s sick slave, the centurion sent some of his friends and they told Jesus (without embellishment) that the centurion said, “I am NOT worthy.”  After that, Jesus declared that the centurion, who understood that God works by GRACE ALONE and did not ever, ever, EVER work off of what we DESERVE… Jesus declared THAT centurion (not the religious people) the most faithful person in all of Israel.  

This week, Jesus, knowing that last week a lot of people were on vacation for Memorial Day weekend AND knowing that even 2000 years later we STILL have a HUGE problem believing that God’s grace is not somehow linked to us doing something GOOD or not doing something BAD… This week, Jesus makes that EXACT SAME point again, but THIS week makes it even MORE dramatically.  

Look carefully at the presumed primary recipient of God’s grace in this story.  He’s much worse than simply very ill like last week’s sick slave… This guy is dead.  He’s shuffled off the mortal coil, he’s pulled the pin, he’s bit the dust, he’s kicked the bucket, he’s pushin’ up daisies, he’s absolute gravy, he’s brown bread… which rhymes with DEAD (those are for our visitors from London), he’s taking a dirt nap… in short… he’s dead.  

So, in his current delicate condition of being… well, dead, what has he DONE to get Jesus to raise him from the dead?  NOTHING!  He just lies there being, not just MOSTLY dead, but the kind of dead where even Miracle Max says the only thing left to do is to look through his pockets for loose change.  So being all-the-way-dead, he can do NOTHING to get Jesus to act.  

Which all sounds pretty bad, but wait, it’s actually much, much worse than that.  You see, in practical terms there were two dead people at this funeral… not just one.  The son had bought the farm for sure, but without a living male relative in that day and time, his mother had no legal status, no means for income or support, could not legally own a home and would be completely dependent on the charity of others.  And in a time where almost everyone continually struggled to even feed their own families, her prospects were grim.  She was walking and leading the funeral procession but in a very real way, she was just about as dead as her son.  She too, though, did absolutely NOTHING… nothing “right” and nothing “wrong”… she too did NOTHING to get Jesus to act.  

So if neither the son nor the mother did anything to “deserve” Jesus to act… heck they didn’t even NOTICE that Jesus was there let alone ASK Jesus to do something… so WHY did Jesus do what he did?  The story says that when Jesus saw her, he had COMPASSION for her, but that’s way too tame a translation for what really happened.  A more raw translation is “seeing the woman weeping, Jesus was emotionally gut-punched in the bread basket... HARD.”  The Greek root word for “compassion,” you see is the word for bowels… for guts, because for folks back then, the guts were where pity, compassion and love lived.  

Jesus felt her pain in his guts… deep, deep down in the core of his being, Jesus felt her pain, her loss, her hopelessness and it twisted his guts into a knot.  In short, SHE did nothing.  She, like her son, COULDN’T do anything.  Her son was dead and she was basically the walking dead.  What happened was simply and only that Jesus loved her.  Not for what she had done or not done, but because the God who loved each and every one of us into being, continues to love us... feels our joys and pain, our losses and triumphs, our hopelessness and our hope, our worry and our courage, and feels it all deep down in the pit of God’s Divine guts and LOVES us.  THAT Divine love has the power to dry our most desperate tears.  THAT Divine love has the power to change the world.  THAT Divine love even has the power to raise the dead.  

LOVE is the way of our God.  Not deserving and undeserving.  Not earning or not earning.  Not being worthy or unworthy.  LOVE.  JUST LOVE.  Just deep down in the pit of the stomach, gut wrenching, never ending, unconditional, unlimited and perfect Divine LOVE for you… for you… YES YOU and for all of creation.  Amen.