Luke
7:11-17
11
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large
crowd went with him. 12 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. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had
compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." 14 Then he came
forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said,
"Young man, I say to you, rise!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to
speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 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!" 17 This word about him
spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country.
Compassion, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is the
“sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to
alleviate it.” Compassion, according to our Lord, is this—the ability to see
and feel and understand another’s distress, compounded with the desire to do
something to ease it. Compassion is this according to Christ, but it is so much
more. When I sat down to read and contemplate our Gopsel story about the widow
and her son from Luke this week, the 13th verse really jumped out at me: “When
the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’”
This story tells us so much about the compassion of Christ—the compassion that
he shows to all of God’s children, especially the poorest among them, the
compassion that Christ calls and demands us to live out for one another, the
compassion that is defined by his life, by his grace, by his love.
This text, along with so many others from Luke’s Gospel, tells
us about Jesus’ great compassion for the poorest among us. Just a chapter
earlier in the gospel, Jesus has just called his disciples to come and follow
him. The disciples and so many others are gathered around him—they have heard
about him—about how he heals, about his great power. And, in his first of many
incredible sermons, Jesus tells those who are gathered there how to treat each
other, how to serve each other, how to live. I don’t think it’s any accident
that his first words, his first instructions, are about how to see the poorest
among them: “’Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God kingdom of God
Jesus tells those gathered to have compassion for the poor, to
love them, to help them, to serve them, and he illustrates that compassion as
he comes to a nearby town. The text tells us that the disciples and a large
crowd are following him, and as they all draw near to the city gates, there is
a big stir. As they come to the gate, folks are approaching from the other side
carrying the body of a man. The text tells us that the man is an only son, the
only son of a woman who is a widow. From this we know that the woman is poor—if
she is a widow, then her livelihood has passed away with her husband, that her
husband had no brother for her to subsequently marry, that her only source of income,
of life, of hope, has come through her only son. And now he is gone. Not only
has this woman lost the only love left in her life, she has also lost her
livelihood, her only way to live. She has lost everything and is penniless,
hopeless, lifeless. This widow has indeed become the poorest of the poor in so
many ways, both poor in spirit and poor in life.
As she follows the body of her only son through the city gate,
Jesus sees her and immediately knows her story—that she has nothing, absolutely
nothing left. The widow doesn’t have to say a word to express her deep grief.
Jesus just knows. He is immediately overcome with compassion for her—“Do not
weep,” he says, and then he touches the funeral bier and brings the widow’s son
back to life, giving her new life in so many ways. I love that the text tells
us that Jesus “gave him to his mother.” That is compassion at its best—the
restoration of life, the salvation of livelihood, a son given back to a mother
who is grieving the greatest loss she could ever have imagined. It’s the
compassion that Christ gives.
The compassion Christ shows us in this text is also a call to
all of us—to give as Christ gives, to love as Christ loves. Jesus not only sees
and understands and feels the widow’s distress, but his understanding is also
mixed with his desire to alleviate it for her. Christ shows such compassion
this widow who is almost left with nothing. Through his compassion, he gives
her life. His compassion is filled with empathy and action.
In the original Greek, the word for compassion used in the
widow’s story is the same word that we hear in two subsequent stories from Luke’s
gospel. This fact would not have been lost for early New Testament readers, and
it’s so important for us to discover and hear today. In the story of the Good
Samaritan found in the 10th chapter of Luke, we hear that a man is severely
beaten and left for dead on the road. A priest sees what happens and passes him
by without offering help; the same way for a Levite passing by. But a man from Samaria
Later on in the 15th chapter of Luke, we hear the tale of two
brothers, one who tends to his father, works with him, honors and respects him;
the other who basically tells his father that he would rather him be dead as he
asks him early for his portion of the inheritance. When the money is given to
him, he leaves his family and his home, spends the money quickly on dissolute
living, and loses all of it—even getting to the point that he considers joining
the pigs in eating their slop. That son knows that he has nothing, and he tries
to return home to his family. His father could shun him, could disown him, has
every right to never speak to him again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sees his
son coming from far away and drops everything to run to him and welcome him
home with open arms. His father is filled with compassion, as the text tells
us, and welcomes him home with the biggest party ever seen—reminding us to do
the same for those who have sinned against us, hurt us deeply, even wished for
us to be dead.
For the Jesus found in Luke’s gospel, compassion is the way of
life—compassion in the sense of feeling and understanding suffering, and then doing
everything possible to alleviate it. The compassion of Christ is empathy and
action melded together—compassion is pointless without both. Compassion is
sensing that someone is suffering gravely, that they are about to lose
everything in their life, and then showing the greatest mercy of all.
Compassion is bringing life back from death. Compassion is blessing the poor
and giving them new life. Compassion is showing that mercy to those who are
lying on the side of the road, picking them up and bandaging their wounds,
taking care of them and giving them shelter. Compassion is healing what has
been so deeply broken. Compassion is forgiving what was previously deemed
unforgivable, running with open arms to embrace those who have sinned so deeply
against us. This compassion is the compassion of Christ, the compassion we are
called to give as Christ’s healers in the world.
I love what this story tells us about the compassion of our
Christ, and it does tell us so much. However, I have to confess that miracle stories,
stories of resurrection like this, leave me feeling a bit hollow at times. I
have to confess that these miracle stories sometimes prompt me to ask wonder
why Christ doesn’t do the same thing for everyone who is about to walk into the
face of tragedy, prompt me to wonder where God is in the midst of absolute
chaos. After a natural tragedy, when some survivors profess their faith and
say, “I’m just blessed that God saved me,” I always think to myself, “Well,
what does that say to the families of those who lost their lives? Were those
folks not blessed?” My students asked the question after the Haiti
I wish I could tell you that I had the answer to those questions,
but I don’t. Maybe the answers will come when we meet God face to face, when we
are finally able to see God fully instead of dimly like we do now. But maybe
this story reminds us that the compassion of Christ is something we will not
ever be fully able to understand, that Christ’s compassion comes to us in big
ways in small, in huge miracles and little every day ones, in ways we can
sometimes understand and in others that will leave us wondering why. We see the
compassion of Christ as he raises Lazarus from the dead, and we also see it as
he welcomes the tax collector to a meal. We see the compassion of Christ as he
brings the widow’s son back to life, and we also see it as he calls Martha away
from her many tasks. We see the compassion of Christ as he brings Jairus’
daughter back to life, and we also see it as he stops the woman’s flow of blood
after 12 years. Christ’s compassion comes to us in so many ways, ways big and
small, ways ordinary and ways unbelievable.
The widow doesn’t ask for compassion and salvation, probably
because she is too broken and overcome with grief to know how to ask--but
Christ senses that she yearns for it from the very depth of her bones. She
doesn’t say a word to him, but he says something to her as he brings her son
back to life: “Do not weep.” We see the compassion of Christ here in such a
miraculous way, but that shouldn’t keep us from seeing Christ’s compassion in
small, every day ways, especially in those times when tragedies do take over
our lives. Sometimes the compassion of our Lord is seen in overwhelming,
miraculous ways, and sometimes it is seen through the small glimpses of grace
where God brings good out of the sadness of tragedy. I love how one minister
says it:
We cannot stop ourselves from praying for even the most impossible
of miracles…we cling to a central message of the gospel: in Christ Jesus all
things are possible. In reality our lives, like that of Jesus, are filled with
messy unfinished edges, not the nice tidy ending that the widowed mother in our
story experiences. We must come to recognize miracles that come in other less
dazzling forms. Indeed, when we focus on only one vision of what is possible,
we become blinded to the many moments in which God’s compassion reaches into
our lives to hear, touch, and stand in the chaos of life, helping us find new
meaning even in the greatest tragedy. (M. Jan Holton, Feasting On the Word, Year C, Volume 3)
I love that. When we only focus on what our ways or our hopes or
our answers are, we lose sight of the small, everyday good, the small, everyday
miracles that Christ brings to our lives. Christ so often shows compassion in
ways that we would or could never begin to imagine or believe, bringing good
into a world that often seems to chaotic and harsh and cruel. Christ’s
compassion cannot and will not be defined by what we think it should be.
Christ’s compassion comes to us before we ever know how to ask, comes to us in
ways that we may never be able to wrap our minds around. Christ is able to look
into the depths of our souls to know what we need before we ever know how to
ask. That is the compassion that Christ
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