Sunday 6th June - 1st after Trinity (green)
Theme: From death to life
Readings: Galatians 1:11-24
1 Kings 17:8-16 Luke 7:11-17 Ps 30
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Theme: From death to life
Readings: Galatians 1:11-24
1 Kings 17:8-16 Luke 7:11-17 Ps 30
Collect:
God of truth,
help us to keep your law of love
and to walk in ways of wisdom,
that we may find true life
in Jesus Christ your Son.
Comment
Nain was probably about 5 miles south east of Nazareth, a day’s walk from the Sea of Galilee and Capernaum, where he had healed a centurion’s servant. As Jesus and his disciples approached the town gate, they met a sad but all too common sight, a funeral procession. The professional mourners probably headed the procession, making a lot of noise and thereby giving permission to the mourners to express their own grief.
(Our televisions often show such scenes from the Middle East and
beyond.) The mother probably came next, walking in front of the bier which would have been a stretcher or long basket with the body, wrapped in grave cloths, lying on top. Then came the whole town; in a small community it was important for everyone to show their support, especially when the bereaved person was a widow and the deceased her only son, the only provider for the family.
When Jesus saw the widow, he felt great empathy for her. The expression in the Greek is the strongest one possible. We may pass over it as only natural. Yet we need to remember that the Jesus standing there was the Son of God; if anyone could justify how God could have allowed such a tragedy to happen, he could, if anyone could have accepted the situation as the will of God, he could. But that is not what God is like. God is not unfeeling, uncaring. Jesus shows that God feels deeply for us, even when he knows that something good is going to happen.
But then Jesus told her to stop crying. I don’t think that was being unfeeling. Rather it was alerting her to the fact that something amazingly good was indeed going to happen. And once he had got her attention, he did something that was extremely shocking: he touched the bier.
We don’t see that as shocking. But it would have shaken everyone there to the core. Touching a bier made a person ritually ‘unclean’, an ‘untouchable’ for a time, unable to do anything religious, unable to take part in any social interaction. No-one in their right mind would deliberately make themselves unclean unless they absolutely had to. But Jesus did it, and the bier bearers stopped in their tracks.
The next moment was the most amazing of all. Jesus told the dead man to get up – and he sat up and started speaking! No wonder the crowd was filled with awe. They could only think of two occasions in history when the dead had been brought back to life – in answer to the prayers of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. So here was someone at least as great as they were. There was one major difference: Jesus did not ask God to do it, but simply gave a command! He had authority over life and death.
He still has.
This could not have been the first funeral Jesus came across. Why did he raise this young man to life, and not others (except Jairus’ daughter and his friend Lazarus)? We know that he had not come to bring in the kingdom of God in all its fullness – that is still to come. He had come to open the way, and to inaugurate the process – all his miracles were signs, pointing both to himself and to the future he was bringing about.
But why raise these from the dead and not others? Why help some but not others? We don’t know. It was nothing to do with faith – no-one asked Jesus to do this. But we do know that Jesus is never short of compassion or power.
Questions
1) This story raises some questions. How important is it to have answers?
2) What do we learn about Jesus from this story?
God of truth,
help us to keep your law of love
and to walk in ways of wisdom,
that we may find true life
in Jesus Christ your Son.
Comment
Nain was probably about 5 miles south east of Nazareth, a day’s walk from the Sea of Galilee and Capernaum, where he had healed a centurion’s servant. As Jesus and his disciples approached the town gate, they met a sad but all too common sight, a funeral procession. The professional mourners probably headed the procession, making a lot of noise and thereby giving permission to the mourners to express their own grief.
(Our televisions often show such scenes from the Middle East and
beyond.) The mother probably came next, walking in front of the bier which would have been a stretcher or long basket with the body, wrapped in grave cloths, lying on top. Then came the whole town; in a small community it was important for everyone to show their support, especially when the bereaved person was a widow and the deceased her only son, the only provider for the family.
When Jesus saw the widow, he felt great empathy for her. The expression in the Greek is the strongest one possible. We may pass over it as only natural. Yet we need to remember that the Jesus standing there was the Son of God; if anyone could justify how God could have allowed such a tragedy to happen, he could, if anyone could have accepted the situation as the will of God, he could. But that is not what God is like. God is not unfeeling, uncaring. Jesus shows that God feels deeply for us, even when he knows that something good is going to happen.
But then Jesus told her to stop crying. I don’t think that was being unfeeling. Rather it was alerting her to the fact that something amazingly good was indeed going to happen. And once he had got her attention, he did something that was extremely shocking: he touched the bier.
We don’t see that as shocking. But it would have shaken everyone there to the core. Touching a bier made a person ritually ‘unclean’, an ‘untouchable’ for a time, unable to do anything religious, unable to take part in any social interaction. No-one in their right mind would deliberately make themselves unclean unless they absolutely had to. But Jesus did it, and the bier bearers stopped in their tracks.
The next moment was the most amazing of all. Jesus told the dead man to get up – and he sat up and started speaking! No wonder the crowd was filled with awe. They could only think of two occasions in history when the dead had been brought back to life – in answer to the prayers of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. So here was someone at least as great as they were. There was one major difference: Jesus did not ask God to do it, but simply gave a command! He had authority over life and death.
He still has.
This could not have been the first funeral Jesus came across. Why did he raise this young man to life, and not others (except Jairus’ daughter and his friend Lazarus)? We know that he had not come to bring in the kingdom of God in all its fullness – that is still to come. He had come to open the way, and to inaugurate the process – all his miracles were signs, pointing both to himself and to the future he was bringing about.
But why raise these from the dead and not others? Why help some but not others? We don’t know. It was nothing to do with faith – no-one asked Jesus to do this. But we do know that Jesus is never short of compassion or power.
Questions
1) This story raises some questions. How important is it to have answers?
2) What do we learn about Jesus from this story?
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