“A Nuttin' Happenin' Place”

Luke 7:11-17
                            

When pastors get together, you hear
the most incredible stories. One pastor once told the story of one of his
colleagues in ministry, a young man fresh out of seminary at the time.                          

While conducting his first grave-side
service, he stepped backwards, lost his balance and somehow ended up on top of
the casket which, in turn, went down into the grave under his weight.  

Now I don’t know how you gracefully
recover from that unless you happen to bring the deceased back up with you.

Of course, I don’t believe that’s in
our power … but it was in Jesus’.

Jesus had just arrived in the little village of Nain.  Nain was a quiet town, for
the most part.

Not much happened in Nain after
dark.  They would have rolled up the sidewalks at nine
 o’clock,
except that they had no sidewalks.    

Actually, not much happened in Nain before
dark.  It was pretty much a “Nuthin’ happenin’” place.

But today was different!  Today,
Jesus had come to Nain.  That, in and of itself, was pretty amazing! 
See, Jesus was getting a lot of attention these days.  In fact, he seemed
to be on his way to becoming pretty famous.    

And Nain didn’t attract many famous
people. So a large crowd gathered round him, hoping that he would say or
do something interesting –– something that would relieve the tedium of this
little, dusty, one-donkey town.

Jesus I imagine was flattered. 
In fact, you would assume that because of the crowd he would be completely
focused on them … that he would be devoting all his attention to their
questions and his answers.    

But Jesus was the rare man who could
multi-task. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that something was going on
down the street.  A funeral procession!    

The crowd was large there, too. 
That was amazing!  How often would there be two crowds on the same day in
Nain?    

Jesus looked more closely, and what
he saw broke his heart.  He saw a woman, dressed in black.  There was
no man beside her.  She was alone, and she was in mourning.  Perhaps
it was her husband who lay on the open casket being carried through the street
just ahead of her.    

But no! On closer inspection,
Jesus saw that the body in the casket was that of a young man.  Her
son!  It had to be her son!    

Who wouldn’t be moved by such a scene? 
You need to know that widows in first-century Judea were women on the margin of society.
Without a social security system in place, widows relied on their extended
families for support which was often lacking due to the overall poverty of the
common population.  

In this patriarchal society if you
didn’t have a man in your family to take care of you – most often you became
destitute or worse were forced into prostitution just to stay alive. It was
hard to imagine a more pitiful scene.

Luke says that Jesus was moved to
compassion.  Jesus excuses himself from his crowd.  He stops his
teaching and quits answering questions.  He moves toward the funeral
procession.    

The crowd watches, expecting him to
offer his condolences to the woman.  That would be a  nice gesture!

How sad that Jesus hadn’t been here a
couple of days earlier.  Everyone had heard how he had healed the
sick.  Perhaps he could have done something two days ago.  How the
crowd would have loved that!  

Not only would it have saved this
woman her terrible grief; it would also have been a great honor for this little
village –– to have a holy man work a miracle in their midst.  But it was
too late now!  The young man was dead.  

Jesus stops for a moment beside the
woman.  Both crowds pause.  It is an electric moment!  What will
he say?

Jesus tells her not to cry.  How
disappointing!  Preachers sometimes talk like that –– at least in their
weaker moments –– at least in their stupid moments. They say, “Don’t cry; he’s
on his way to Heaven.”  But that rarely offers much comfort. They are
grieving at their loss, and their loss is terrible!

But then Jesus moves toward the young
man’s body.  The pallbearers stand as if paralyzed.  They aren’t sure
what to do!  The undertaker hadn’t briefed them for this.  They had
never seen anyone stop a funeral procession on the way to the cemetery.    

Jesus reaches out with his hand and
touches the casket.  And then he starts talking to the young man’s
body.  Had he lost his mind?  Was he going to do something
terrible?  Was he going to defile this sacred moment and make this an even
more terrible day for the widow?    

Whatever else was happening, you can
be sure that Jesus now has everyone’s full attention.

And then he says, “Young man, I say
to you, rise!”  Talk about walking a tightrope without a net!  What
is Jesus going to do when nothing happens?  This young prophet was about
to make a fool out of himself in front of the whole village!  One tragedy
layered upon another!

But then the people closest to the
casket notice a movement.  And then there is another!  And then this
young man, wrapped in his grave clothes, begins to struggle to sit up.  He
says something to his mother.    

He probably asks what is going
on!  He probably is asking her to unbind him!

And suddenly the people are
afraid!  Now, that doesn’t surprise me, does it you? Imagine witnessing
something like that at a funeral you attend; imagine the corpse starting to
twitch, then it sits up and starts walking around.  

I’ll bet your first reaction wouldn’t
be joy, but shock and fear! There are few things creepier than the thought of a
casket opening and a believed dead person staggering out. Hey, that’s the stuff
horror flicks are made of.

These mourners weren’t looking to be
part of a horror story, they had hoped that Jesus would say or do something
memorable.  They were hoping that he would say or do something that their
children would remember when they were older.    

But they weren’t prepared for
this!  This was astounding!

And when the realization of what
actually is happening finally takes hold of them, they begin to shout!  “A
great prophet has risen among us!  God has looked favorably upon his
people!”    

Suddenly, they understand!

In just a few moments, with just a
few words, Jesus has made their day.  He has restored the young man to
life, and he has restored his mother to joy! 

Great story!

But there’s one thing about this text
that initially puzzled me. Jesus heals a lot of people in the Gospel of Luke.  

A woman approaches him at a dinner
party and pours perfume on his feet. Another woman battles through a crowd to
touch the hem of his garment.  

Just before today’s story, a
centurion sends word through his friends that his servant is ill. “Just give
the word,” the man says, “and I know he’ll be healed.”  

Jesus praises all three of these
people and attributes their healing to their faith.  

But the woman in today’s story? She
doesn’t ask Jesus to raise her son from the dead. She doesn’t fall on her knees
and beg for her son’s life. All she does is cry.  

There’s not one word in the story
about faith. Just a mother’s tears before the raising and a son’s random
talking after it.  

Well, then, maybe this story isn’t
about faith. Maybe this story
is about grace-pure, unadulterated, undiluted, unbidden, unearned, un-asked-for
grace.  

This raising doesn’t happen because
of a mother’s faith or her son’s worthiness. It happens because Jesus has
compassion for her. Period.  

When I red this story, I was reminded
that we are all called to be disciples of Christ.  Do you know what that
word means?  The word, disciple, means “learner.”    

A disciple is a person who is
learning from his or her teacher.  A disciple is a person who is learning
to be more like his or her mentor.    

So what can we learners learn from
this story?

The obvious is that Jesus was a
compassionate man.  He saw this grieving widow, and was moved with
compassion.  And in his compassion, he did something to help.  

Great! But now, Jesus is no longer
physically walking the face of the earth, and so if Jesus’ work is to get done,
his disciples have to do it.  And that’s us! We are his hands in this
world.    

He has sent his Holy Spirit to dwell
in us so that, just as people could look at Jesus and see the Father, so people
can look at us and see the Son.    

And accordingly, we, Jesus’
disciples, are called to put Jesus’ compassion into practice.

People need compassion today, don’t
they?  This can be a tough world, and certainly many people are
hurting.  They are lonely; they are afraid; they are broken-hearted; they
are grieving.    

A little caring makes such a
difference.  When Edgar Guest, the famous poet, was a young man, his first
child died.  He felt terrible.  He says:

“I was lonely and defeated. 
There didn’t seem to be anything in life ahead of me that mattered very much.”

Then he had to go to the drugstore
for something.  The pharmacist, a man named Jim Potter, saw him come in
and motioned for him to follow him to the little office in the back of the
store.    

When they were standing together in
that quiet place, the pharmacist put his hands on Guest’s shoulders and said:

“Eddie, I can’t really express what I
want to say, the sympathy I have in my heart for you.  All I can say is
that I’m sorry, and I want you to know that if you need anything, anything at
all, come to me.  I am here for you.”

Many years later, Guest remembered
that moment.  He said:

“Just a neighbor across the way –– a
passing acquaintance.  Jim Potter may long since have forgotten that
moment when he gave me his hand and his empathy, but I shall never forget it,
never in my life.  To me it stands out like the silhouette of a lonely
tree against a crimson sunset.”

That’s how it is, isn’t it! 
Can’t you remember when someone reached out and touched you with a healing
hand?  Don’t you wish that you could reach out and touch someone else with
a healing hand?

The truth is, you can!  There
are hurting people sitting all around you right here in this sanctuary. We
get glimpses during our Joys and Concerns.  And there is so much that is
left unsaid –– hurts so tender that the person cannot even speak of them. 
                            

But it isn’t just here that people
are hurting.  You will meet hurting people at work.  You will stand
next to them at the check-out counter.    

Sometimes they will be difficult to
love, because they will be lashing out.  But Christ has asked us to be his
caring hands, reaching out to touch all people with healing hands.

John Killinger, a well-known
Presbyterian minister, tells about a business associate who was praying for a
friend one morning.  The friend was going through a tough time, so the
prayer went something like this:

“Dear God, please put your loving
arms around my friend.” How often have we prayed using just those words?  

 ……But then he thought he heard a voice, so he
stopped praying for a moment and listened.  The voice said:

“What’s wrong with putting your loving arms around
him? That is how people feel my arms.”

Ann Weems is a contemporary Christian
poet who seems to get it.  I don’t usually enjoy poetry all that much, but
I enjoy Ann Weems. She wrote this:

“I see your pain and want to banish
it. I see your tears and want to dry them. I am the one God sends to sit beside
you, until the stars come out and the angels dry your tears and your heart is
back in place.”

That is what Christ wants us to do. 
That is what his disciples do.    

May we resolve to help banish the
pain, dry the tears and sit beside the person –– until their heart is back in
place.

AMEN!