Eyes to See

The Bible does not shy away from death, or from the grief that accompanies death. Unlike modern Americans, people in Biblical times did not try to mask death’s hard reality. They did not speak in pretty phrases about a loved one who has "passed away," or produce sentimental videos to show at the funeral. They knew how to lament, how to cry aloud to God, and how to give each other room for mourning. It is partly because we are so ambivalent about death that funeral practices these days are all over the map.

I have a friend who is a Lutheran pastor in California. She was presiding at funeral in a funeral home not long ago. When she mentioned Jesus Christ and the hope of resurrection, several people in the back of the room started shouting their objections. One of them was a local elected official. "No!" they cried. "None of that! Shut up about Jesus!"

"That’s the first time I’ve been heckled at a funeral," my friend told me. Well, that was California. Can Florida be far behind?

There are two stories of death and resurrection in today’s readings from scripture. Clearly they are related, although they are not identical. Both stories are about a widow who has lost her only son. Both occasion the unanticipated intervention of God, and both reveal a dimension of God that, for some reason, still comes as a surprise.

The first story relates the prophet Elijah’s dealing with a foreign woman he meets while hiding from the wicked King Ahab. Knowing that his picture is in every post office in Ahab’s kingdom, Elijah doesn’t dare go home. And to make matters worse, the region has been suffering from a long drought. Food and water are scarce, and the prophet himself is close to starvation. The Lord sends him to the city of Zarephath in Sidon, where he meets a widow who is down to her last few ounces of food. She takes Elijah in and feeds him, using up everything left in her meager cupboard.

Miraculously, the jug of oil and the jar of meal in the widow’s house do not run out – a sign of God’s protection for his prophet and a reward to the widow for her extraordinary hospitality.

But suddenly the tables turn. The widow’s only son dies. Elijah is furious with God. He takes the dead child from his mother’s arms, carries him upstairs, and gives the Lord a good piece of his mind.

What’s the matter with you? This woman was nice to me! Is this any way to treat someone who shows hospitality to one of your prophets?

Then he stretches himself over the child three times and entreats the Lord to restore the boy’s life. Elijah’s request is granted, proving that Elijah is indeed a mighty prophet of the Lord.

I suppose that’s a happy ending, but this is not the kind of story you’d tell to children before they go to bed. I’m not sure what to make of it myself, but Jesus was. He used it to remind his neighbors that God’s compassion for people doesn’t stop at the borders of the Promise Land.

Remember? Jesus was preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, the hometown boy made good. Everybody in Nazareth was bursting with pride at how "special" they were, when Jesus reminded them of this story – how God had sent Elijah to this foreign woman and had shown her compassion.

It took a couple of minutes for the penny to drop, but when it did, the good people of Nazareth turned into an ugly mob and tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. (Luke 4:26).

I’m pretty sure the Gospel writer Luke has both of these events in mind – the one from the days of King Ahab and the more recent episode in Nazareth -- when he tells us this morning’s second story.

It takes place in the town of Nain. Jesus and his disciples are just about to enter the main gate to the town when they meet a funeral procession on its way out. The funeral is for (Does this sound at all familiar?) the only son of a widow.

"When the Lord saw her," Luke writes, "he had compassion for her." This verb translated had compassion is the same one Luke uses to describe Jesus’ reaction when he looks out on the crowd at suppertime, before he feeds the multitude. Literally, it means he was moved in his guts, shaken right down to the core of his being. If we had a verb like that in English, we’d use it to describe what we all felt when we saw the TV footage of the Twin Towers falling down, or when we saw that picture of the firefighter carrying that baby from the rubble of the federal building in Okalahoma City.

"He had compassion for her." In that one phrase Luke hints at the future ahead for a woman of that day without a husband or children to support her. After she buries her son, this woman has three options. She can go back to her father’s family, which might or might not take her in. She can beg. Or she can become a prostitute. That, in all likelihood, is the future in store for this widow, and I have no doubt that Jesus takes all that in as he watches her trudge behind her son’s funeral bier.

"Don’t weep," he tells her. And then he does something quite extraordinary. He goes up to the funeral bier and touches it. As you might know, the religious law for Jews back then was very strict on this point: to touch the dead is to become ritually unclean. That’s why the priest and Levite scurried past the fallen man on the road to Jericho in Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan. "He came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still," Luke says. You bet they did! It’s a wonder they didn’t drop their burden on the spot.

"Young man, I say to you, rise!" The man sits up and starts talking. (You can bet the pallbearers let go of the casket then!) Jesus "gave him to his mother," Luke says – a curious turn of phrase. You could say that he gave her back her future – which, when you think about it, is what resurrection is all about.

When I read this story I see that scene from John’s Gospel of Jesus’ crucifixion, when Jesus looks at his own mother and says to her, "Woman, here is your son." Then he looks at the disciple he loves and says to him, "Here is your mother" (John 10:27).

In Luke’s story, Jesus gives this son to his mother -- gives her back the future death had stolen from her. He does the same for us. He gives us the future death would steal from us if it could. But it can’t, because God has spoken God’s own word of compassion in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These two stories of death, morning, compassion, and resurrection are timely. On March 19^th our nation marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Memorial Day was just two weeks ago, and grief is a familiar visitors to our community.

Four years ago, our eyes were glued to television screens showing rockets hitting Baghdad, Humvees speeding across desert sands, and the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled from its perch by exuberant Iraqis.

Since those heady days we have become familiar with other images:

Since the war began, 3,574 American servicemen and servicewomen have died, 25,830 have been wounded physically, and untold thousands have been damaged with wounds that do not show on the outside, but run deep into the soul.

The total of Iraqi civilians who have died in this war is impossible to know. The official estimate is something like 75,000, but God alone knows the true number. News accounts report three dozen killed one day, forty or fifty another, six or eight the next. You have to turn to an inside section and read the small print to find this news in our local paper, but sometimes the news comes home.

We buried two sons of Tallahassee recently – Daniel Chairs last October and Julian Woodall two weeks ago. Daniel was 20. Julian was 21.

Whether those two young men died in a just war or in a foolish one I leave for you to discern. Most of you know that I believe this war was morally unjustified from the beginning. Having said this, I must also say that I respect those who disagree, and I honor the memories of Daniel, Julian, and 3,572 like them.

These two stories from scripture cast a unique light on all of these deaths. They shine the light of God’s compassion for people in every land, of every religion, and of every race who are forced to bury their dead before their time. They show us that God loves the widows of Zarephath, the widows of Nain, the widows of Baghdad, the widows of Nazareth, and the widows of Tallahassee. In short, God’s love for the vulnerable and the broken knows no limits of nation or race or creed.

In the lust for revenge after 9/11, a lot of Christians forgot that. We forgot that God loves the world and that Christ died for the world. We festooned our cars with bumper stickers that read "God Bless America," but we forgot to finish the prayer, the prayer that cannot remain unfinished if we are to be faithful to Jesus Christ. "God bless America, and God bless all the nations of the earth."

Why should that be our prayer? Because God holds all the nations in God’s hands. Because God has compassion on them all. Because God is pierced as deeply by the death of a child in Baghdad, Iraq, as by the death of a child in Chaires, Florida.

If that’s not true, beloved, then the Gospel isn’t good news for the world, and the God we invoke to bless America is not the God of the Bible, but some lesser, limited deity – an idol of our own devising.

I do not have a solution for the war in Iraq or a tidy ending for this sermon. I don’t know what our national leaders can do now that all the options are bad ones. But I know this much about what Christians can do. We can remember the God revealed in these two stories, the God who is blind to nationality, but feels the pain and joy of all.

This is the true God who walks with us into the future. This is the Father of Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life.