Intro: The Spring of the Year.
I. Two Crowds
a. A Jubiliant Crowd
1. A crowd which had traveled all day with Jesus
2. A crowd which had witnessed a miraculous healing
3. A crowd that was asking the question, who is this Jesus?
4. Like the feeling you get when you pass an overturned mini-van and can’t help thinking that someone’s child might have been in there.
b. A Mournful Crowd
1. A crowd which had assembled in the past hour.
2. A crowd thinking about the hardship of life.
3. A crowd on the way to a funeral.
II. The Boy
1. A boy like any boy
2. A boy at play – pretending to be the judges
3. A boy at school – he loved reading the miracles of the prophets
4. A boy at work – maybe apprentice to the potter?
5. A boy filled with dreams
III. The Widow
1. A lifetime of loss etched on her face
2. It had seemed as though God had given her a consolation in this boy – for he would be her only son, his father had been killed before he was born.
3. Hours of consolation as spoke to her unborn baby. A lifetime of hopes and dreams.
4. The labour had been long, and seemed longer because she was alone. Only the local midwife bustling around her little single room shack. But finally after what seemed an age the cry rang out.
5. When her son was given to her she vowed that this would be enough, she would be satisfied with the meager life she had, since she had this one ray of meaning left in it.
6. Then the sickness came. She had guarded him from danger, he was not to roam outside the village walls, he was not to walk to close to the roof tops, she always cut up his food when he was tiny, and suggested the potter was a better trade than taking a job offer in Tyre as a ships boy. But how do you fight sickness.
7. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before… that’s all the doctor could say.’ There were other doctors, but not in Nain, and not afforded by a poor widow woman, who needed to feed a growing boy.
8. But then the boy had stopped eating. He would try to take a little bread and water, and somehow he hung on for a few months that way, slowly wasting away to an emaciated form.
9. Finally last night it had happened. A trembling moment when the last bits of life seemed to shake from him, he was trying to say something to his mother, she had come to his side and was gazing down at him and a moment later he was gone and the eyes became dull.
10. With what sad care the last acts were rendered to that dead boy. It would have been the custom to lay him out quickly on the ground. There was no funeral home or professional, this was something every family learned to do at some point. The body had to be washed, and with what care did the poor widow woman find the best of her boys garments, the one he had most worn in life and put it on him, awkwardly, clumsily, he wasn’t a baby anymore.
11. Then with trembling hands she would have cut his hair one last time and held his hands as she trimmed his finger nails. All of this was part of the rights given to all the dead, but for this poor widow it must have been so much more.
12. Finally, early the next morning after a numbing night alone with haunting moments when sleep tempted her to hope she would wake from the nightmare, she had awoken to see her boy cold and ashen in the spring sunlight.
13. A few steps over to a neighbouring shack. The woman at the door didn’t have to ask, the entire community had known of the sickness, and the white face with red rimmed eyes told the rest of the story.
14. The professional mourner was sent for, and when she arrived with two young flutists, boys that her boy had once played with, they began the funeral tune. The mourner began her mournful lament. A few of the neighbouring men had lifted the boy on a bier and now, bare foot, bore it between them.
15. As the funeral procession wove its way out to the village gate the villagers fell into step. Soon the entire village had gathered. Leading the procession in short broken steps was the remnant of a woman.
16. She had nothing now. No hope for the future. On a purely social-economical level she was impoverished and without security or social standing, but I doubt that occurred to her, and if it did, I doubt she cared… would you?
17. It was just as they passed through the city gates that an unusual site caught her eye, over the knoll leading to the burial grounds came a great crowd. What they were doing in Nain was beyond her, but they would have to pass through the crowd.
IV. The Lord
1. Jesus saw her. When Jesus sees you, he sees more than anyone ever has before, and he knew her immediately, as the widow whose only son was being carried out.
2. Luke tells us that he was moved with compassion as he looked on her tears. Just as you and I can sense in some way her grief, so Jesus felt it in his deepest part.
3. Already the crowd behind him is falling silent as they see the scene before them, already they have moved off the path in respect. But Jesus hurries forward towards the woman.
4. Did they hear him right? Had he just uttered the words, ‘Don’t cry?’ Don’t cry to a woman whose entire world has collapsed. To a woman who will wake up every morning from now until she dies alone. To a woman who has been deprived of everything and left destitute and impoverished? How could he tell her to stop crying.
5. But Jesus had not stopped to talk with the woman. Instead he had walked right up to the funeral bier and reaching out his hand had touched it, willingly accepting the ritual defilement and uncleaness that came with such an action.
6. Were the pallbearers shocked at his action, had they been indignant at his words to the widow woman. They now stared at this Jewish peasant rabbi, who despite his dusty feet and well worn clothing seemed to carry some authority.
7. In fact, he seemed more like a king than any of the Roman governors they had seen. He seemed to hold more authority than a Roman centurion and he seemed more awe-inspiring than King David himself.
8. It’s interesting that here at this point for the first time Luke gives Jesus the title Lord. It isn’t a title the crowd has given him yet, it is a narrative title. Luke is telling us something deeper than the reality we are seeing.
9. His use of the term Lord should stand out more than it does in our Bibles. We have been accustom to thinking of him as the Lord for most of our lives as Christians. But imagine that this was the first time you had read of this man Jesus. It would seem as strange as if someone had introduced me as ‘The Lord’. At least it seems strange for a few more seconds, until we discover that he is indeed the Lord. He is the Lord of Life and death cannot exist against his bidding.
10. With a single phrase, Jesus addresses the boy – rise up. And immediately the stunning silence that surrounds the two is broken as the boy sits up, rubs his eyes and begins to speak.
Conclusion: The miracle isn’t over yet. For while this appears to be a resurrection story, it is truly a story about healing. It is the story of the healing of the broken-hearted. In the actual Greek, the boy is a secondary character, he plays a supporting role, the only two main character identified in the Greek are Jesus and the widow. And now we read with wonder that Jesus took the boy and gave him to his mother.
What thoughts filled her mind, what feelings swelled her heart, we cannot know, but we can imagine.
With wide-eyed wonder a great worship service broke out on the outskirts of Nain. Two great crowds wept and sang together. Total strangers talked together like old friends about what they had seen. The consensus was the same – today a great prophet has arisen among us. Maybe it was the boy himself who suggested the story of Elisha and the raising of a widows boy.
But they got even closer to the truth when they recognized that God had visited them, if only they knew how close he truly was.
Sometimes the telling of these stories raise more questions than answers. How could anyone raise the dead, we ask? But then our entire faith is based on the fact that Jesus was raised, and not only on that but that one day we too will be raised. So it is a question which has as an answer faith.
But the harder questions sometimes come when we ask, ‘If Jesus could raise the dead, then why did my brother die? Why did my mom die? Why did my baby die?
But this story offers this as comfort, the Lord Jesus was moved with compassion by the widows grief, and he is still moved by our own grief. He became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief for our sake.
Jesus did not come to raise our dead and return them to us. He did not come to prolong our lives beyond the time set for us. We, in our often finite thinking sometimes wish he did. But we must remember that even though he raised that boy, that boy had a postponed funeral at a later time.
Jesus didn’t come to offer a temporary fix to our eternal problem. He came to offer something far more lasting and permanent. He came to offer eternal life to all who would receive it. This is the consolation that Jesus offers, that whoever believes in him, should not suffer the consequence of rebellion against God (which is eternal death and separation) but should instead have an eternal place with God, an eternal life.
That is a reason for celebration. So on that day so many years ago, thanksgiving came in the spring to the village of Nain. Won’t you accept the gift of Jesus today, and give reason for thanksgiving to come to your home also.
