Love in Action
- The widow.
Luke 7:11-17 (NRSV)
11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his
disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12As 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. 13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion
for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ 14Then he came forward and touched the bier,
and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’15The dead man sat up and began to speak,
and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16Fear seized all of them; and they glorified
God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked
favourably on his people!’ 17This
word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
In this event, we see death
at its worst. A young man had died. It is always easier to come to terms with
death in old people, especially when they have lived long, full and productive
lives. When people are old and frail, we even look forward to death for them,
because we know that they will be liberated from their frailty and suffering
and will be transported into the presence of the Lord when their soul departs
from their bodies. We as Christians never see death, any death as a tragedy,
because we know that life with Christ in heaven is far better than life on
earth and also that in Christ, we have the victory over death - its loses its
sting. But while this is true, Christians also love life on earth, because
Christ gives us life in all its fullness as he transforms us from sin to
holiness.
When a young person dies, it
is more difficult to deal with, not because Christians have anything to fear in
death, but because we love people and want to be with them for a time longer.
When young people die or are killed, the pain is therefore much greater and we
need God's grace in abundance to help us to deal with our great loss. I don't
think many of us realise the vast amount of pain experienced in our country at
the moment. We so glibly hear of the countless hundreds who die daily in the
violence in our land. It is too easy not to think of the many mothers and
fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, in short the many people who
have been devastated by the unnecessary loss of dear young people through the
violence and hatred that ravishes our land. Again we are reminded that the only
solution for our country is Jesus Christ, convicting of sin and healing the
brokenness that so characterises these times.
Miller suggests that in this
story of the widow, 'death is seen at its worst'. The man was young and his
only remaining relative was a widow. This death therefore had serious
consequences for the widow. In addition to losing her husband, she had now also
lost her son and thereby her last means of support.
Widows had no legal rights in
these times and they were not allowed to receive any inheritance. On the death
of their husbands, widow were therefore totally dependent upon their sons or
other relatives. The death of this widow's son therefore meant that, in
addition to the pain she felt at losing a loved one, she had now also become
defenceless in a particularly cruel world. The commentator in the Life
Application Bible writes:
Unless
a relative came to her aid, her future was bleak. She would be an easy prey for
swindlers, and she would likely be reduced to begging for food.
But notice verse 13, which
has to be one of the most precious verses in all of Scripture. It reads: “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to
her ...”
Jesus never waited for her to
come to him for help. The woman was too broken to do anything; she was too
devastated to be able to think straight. Again we see the wonder of the
humanity of Jesus. Jesus was fully human. He knew a mother's tender care
because he had know Mary's love for him and so even though the widow was
rendered powerless by her grief, Jesus reached out to her.
This is a wonderful truth
that we should all take to our comfort. Even when we are powerless, in fact,
especially when we are powerless to do anything, Jesus often comes to us and
blesses us. We must never forget that Jesus is the same God, yesterday, today
and forever. Jesus never changes. And Jesus is alive. He lives. He is as real
to us today as when he lived on earth, in fact we know that he is even closer
to us because he fills us with his Spirit. Our spirits are linked to Jesus'
Spirit in an intimate and extremely personal way. The words that Jesus spoke to
the people as recorded in Luke's gospel are real and alive and are addressed to
Christians of all generations. And so when Jesus comforts the grieving widow -
he comforts us to. J C Ryle elaborates:
He
lives, who made the widow's heart sing for joy in the gate of Nain. He lives,
to receive all labouring and heavy-laden ones, if they will only come to Him by
faith. He lives, to heal the broken-hearted, and to be a Friend that sticketh
closer than a brother.
Coupled with this
unfathomable compassion, we see also in this incident the immense power of our
saviour. Verses 14 and 15 read: ‘Then he went up and touched the coffin, and
those carrying it stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get
up!" ... and Jesus gave him back to his mother.”
The crowd were filled with
awe. They immediately recognised him as a great prophet because they would have
known that what Jesus had done was paralleled in their Scriptures. In fact,
verse 15 is a quotation from the story of Elijah and the raising of the widow
of Zarephath's son as recorded in 1 Kings 17:23. But we know that Jesus is far
more than a great prophet, Jesus is God Himself, who came to earth to reveal
Himself to us and save us from sin and its consequences.
The commentator in the Life
Application Bible adds that this story can be interpreted as illustrating our
salvation. The Scriptures teach that all people are spiritually dead. Paul
writes in Ephesians 2:1 'As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and
sins ...' Because of sin, there is nothing anybody can do to rectify the
situation because sin makes people helpless. Like the widow, we are so lost
that we cannot even ask for help. But God has compassion on us and sent Jesus
to raise us to life with him. Paul explains in Ephesians 2:4-5:
...
God was merciful! We were dead because of our sins, but God loved us so much
that he made us alive with Christ, and God's kindness is what saves you. God
raised us from death to life with Christ Jesus ...
The commentator concludes:
The dead boy did not earn his
second chance at life, and we cannot earn our new life in Christ. But we can
accept it, praise God for it, and use it to do his will.
We see therefore a
beautifully intimate picture of our God, perfectly revealed in and through
Jesus Christ: We see God who is sensitive to and who understands everything
that humans have to go through; we see God who has compassion for humans who
are hurt and helpless and who loves us so much that He is willing to allow His
heart to go out to us; we see God who is willing to do even more and intervene
into our various situations and do things to mend our brokenness; we see God
who is powerful enough to achieve what is humanly impossible - forgiveness,
worthiness, wholeness; we see God who has had nothing to do with anything evil,
sin, suffering - in fact anything negative in the world - who even warns people
against all these things, and yet, He never loses patience with us when we
ignore him, go our own way and thereby cause hurt and pain to ourselves and
others; we see a God who never turns away from anyone who turns to him in their
helplessness and powerlessness.
It seems obvious that the
widow was prepared to accept the gift of her son's life at our Lord's hand - it
would seem ridiculous that she might ever even consider refusing it. Yet Christ
offers new life to all people unconditionally and yet most people turn their
backs on Him and reject it. Jesus offers all people a wonderful life on this
earth, a life of dignity, worth, contentment, purpose and inner peace even in
the face of the sin and suffering that characterises this life - and yet, most
people choose to reject it too.
Jesus knows everything about
every individual. There is nothing that he does not know. Jesus also loves all
people. He has compassion on every one of us and his heart goes out to us in
our need. He also offers all people a new life.
If only more would accept the
gift and live …
It is interesting to be
reminded by one of the stop theologians and philosophers of today that the only
credible means of using Scripture is to not take it literally, but to read it for
what it is: a human document where people try to put into words the
inexpressible; people’s experience of God. These authors were not conscious
that they were being inspired, they were just honestly trying to convey to
others, the joy and beauty of their experiences – as best they could. Like so
many things, trying to explain to others when something special has happened,
we find words fail us and we need to resort to ‘you had to be there’ because no words ever do justice to what we
have experienced. What is also evident is that just as we interpret things
wrongly, some of the authors were also mistaken and so needed to have their
misconceptions challenged and corrected. The Book of Job is a case in point
where people thought that if they were good they would prosper and if they were
evil they would suffer loss. Job points out that even the ‘good’ suffer, not
because of anything that God does but because of the reality of sin and evil in
the world we inhabit. It is vital that the misconceptions remain part of the
biblical canon, because we can follow the journey of others and so learn from
their mistakes.
Fundamentalism is a
relatively recent innovation. Aquinas spoke of the need to use analogy when
speaking of God because God, by definition is so ‘other’ that human vocabulary
can never come close to understanding or expressing divine truth. Throughout
the ages people sought to differentiate between the literal and allegorical
messages of Scripture. Neither Luther, Calvin or Zwingly were fundamentalists.
Fundamentalism was never the intention of any of the authors who rather spoke
into different contexts. The resulting so-called contradictions are not
contradictions at all, but merely revealing the need to address different
specific situations.
It is a complex matter, and I
do not do justice to Ward here, but suffice it to say that I feel richly
blessed as a result of our whole Scotland experiences and am inspired yet again
to wrestle with Scripture in an attempt to discover what God is saying to us
now and in our context. I am reminded of my calling as written in 2 Timothy
2:15:
“Do
your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has
no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.”
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