Grace and Peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
On the coast of California, from San Francisco northward grow some very unusual trees. I remember taking my young kids to see them for the first time. I have two boys who were rowdy and active, and a little girl who tried to keep up with them. The John Muir Woods is a holy place. There is no other word for it. When we entered the woods, my kids fell silent. They were spellbound by the presence of those trees. They have been growing there on that spot since before Jesus was born. As a father, I couldn’t help but love my children’s awe struck silence. No, not because they were quiet at last, but because they were moved by a grandeur so immense, and so transcendent that they had to stop talking. Their silence was saturated with praise and amazement. Their reverence was their tribute to the God who creates ex nihilo-ex nihilo mean “from nothing”.
I’ve been reading a wonderful book called Birdology. I love to read about the natural world because it gives me the same kind of awe and wonder that my kids felt in front of the great Redwoods. In 2007, an astonishing record was broken. Satellite tracking allowed researchers to follow a female shorebird, a Bartailed Godwith who flew 7,145 miles, nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. In nine days, she crossed the vast Pacific Ocean, and as far as we know without a single meal, rest or drink. She flew a third of the way around the world in a week and two days. She had no navigation system, no fuel tanks, and no nothing. She responded to an internal navigation system given to her by her creator who guides the migration of great sea whales, ocean swimming salmon, the Chesapeake’s eels and rockfish and the glorious Monarch butterflies who go to Mexico every winter. It is awesome, amazing. The handiwork of God leaves us with our mouths open staring into heaven.
I must confess I love that feeling. It puts me in my place. Like all human beings I am capable of doing wonders, but if I lose an arm I can’t grow one back like the stone crabs in Florida can. While I am made in God’s image and my Spirit responds in awe and wonder at what God does, I am a mortal and if I have any hope of life beyond death it is with my creator, not me.
I love today’s lesson from St. Luke. It is early in Jesus ministry and he and his “posse” of disciples are in Nain which is a town in Galilee not even then miles from where he grew up. They meet a funeral cortege, a procession of folks grieving, making that “final journey” to the graveyard carrying a young man on a palate on their shoulders. It is all so unnatural. A woman, a Mom, is burying her only son. Her husband is in the graveyard too. Her daughters, if she had any now abide with their husbands and their families. She is alone. She is defenseless. She has a future, but as a charity case.
Jesus sees what is going on; The New Testament Greek text says “Jesus had compassion for her”. The actual Greek word is Splag cinizo mai. It literally means he felt her plight in his bowels, his guts. In English we would say “His heart went out to her”, or maybe better he identified with her pain in a visceral way. Visceral means from your viscera – your guts.
We don’t know why he felt her pain so keenly. Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, the man who raised him is never mentioned after the story of Jesus at age 12 in the temple. I feel if he had been alive at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion he would have been with Mary on Golgotha. I feel certain Jesus knew what it was like to bury someone so close to you. You always remember the shock, the feeling of helplessness that empty feeling death always gives.
In many of the healing miracle stories Jesus says “Your faith has saved you”. This woman, this widow doesn’t even ask for Jesus’ help. She is too numb. Jesus felt her numbness. Jesus identified with her terrible grief. Jesus understood what it feels like to be vulnerable too. Jesus calls the widow’s son back to life because he wants to take her pain away.
What has happened to her? True, her son will die again. Until the resurrection, everything born will ultimately die. But while Jesus walked on earth the temporal and the eternal freely mix. The future and the present collide in beautifully healing ways. The last chapter of the Bible, the Book of Revelation talks about transformation of the earth that will come. There will be no more death; no more grief, no more crying or pain, God, the very God will be with us, intimate with us, to wipe away our tears with his healing touch.
It’s pretty awesome thought?
When the crowd gathered around Jesus as he demonstrated his power and love, they were speechless too. They fell silent just like my little hellions when they saw the redwoods.
When they finally speak, their mouths are filled with praise, “A great prophet has risen among us”, and “God has looked favorably on his people”. The Bible describes their initial reaction as fear. Yet fear, as it subsides give way to awe, then reverence, then promise. The disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee feel pretty much the same thing. A storm rages so violently that their boat fills with water and they fear they will drown. Sleepy Jesus is awakened and commands the sea to be quiet. “Peace, Be Still”. Fear seized the disciples too. They exclaim, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
We know who this is. Jesus is God. The very flesh of the creator of the giant redwoods, the Bartailed Godwit who flies over the Pacific in a week, the true and living God who raises the widow of Nain’s son with the single world “rise”.
So may you believe in this Christ so completely that your fears evaporate like morning fog. May you trust in this God to provide for you in all things, and may you love this God with all your heart, your soul, your mind…your very self. In the same way he loves you.
In Jesus’ name Amen.
Who We Are