Hope to the Helpless (Luke 7.11-17)

Among the more difficult things I get to do as a minister is taking funerals from time to time. For obvious reasons, funerals are not occasions that anyone really looks forward to attending. Once in a while, you get a funeral that is quite depressing. Usually they’re very moving and, especially when the deceased was young, some can be absolutely heart-rending. Funerals for children or young people are often like this. There is no greater pain to observe than that of a mother burying her child. The part of her that she has just lost will always be missing. No consolation is adequate. No affliction in human experience compares with this one.

So you can picture the ghostly, grief-stricken face of the widow of Nain in Luke chapter 7 as it describes two groups of people converging at the town gate. The first crowd is the funeral cortege making its way out of the town to the cemetery. The second crowd is a large gathering of interested followers surrounding Jesus who just happens to be passing that way.

What’s going through this woman’s mind? She’s at that stage in the grieving process where everything is numb. Nothing has really sunk in yet. She still can’t believe what has happened to her. She was acquainted with sorrow. She had already lost her husband, she was a widow. Now her only son has died too and with his death the family line has ended.

We can’t always appreciate how serious her situation had become. With this death, this woman had just lost her last source of income. In a land and culture with no social security she was now facing destitution. Her son was her one and only pension plan – and the basic income that she would need in her retirement and old age was now gone forever.

In a few hours, the crowd of mourners would give her a hug, say ‘goodbye’ and then all go home. Once the last one left the funeral she’d be penniless and alone.

We know her son was grown up (it says he was a man) so we can surmise that she would have been in her forties - and in her society, at that age, her prospects for remarriage were practically zero. The bottom line was this; unless someone from her wider family took pity on her, she was facing a bleak future - probably begging bread. She would be easy prey for crooks and racketeers.

But her funeral procession meets Jesus and his followers on the way to the grave and immediately everyone knows that something is not quite right. Normally, Jesus and his entourage would just stand respectfully to one side as the funeral party passed by – or perhaps they’d join the back of the crowd out of sympathy. To interrupt a funeral procession was completely taboo. It was one of the most serious transgressions you could think of in 1st Century Jewish culture.

To touch the funeral bier, the cart on which the body lay, meant that, according to the Law, Jesus would be ritually unclean for the rest of the day. To touch the body he would be ritually unclean for a week. Jesus didn’t seem to mind that much. He never let ceremonial religion get in the way of healing someone’s broken heart.

The funeral party would have been led by the widow (the next of kin always used to go out in front); so she’s the one Jesus would have met first. When the Lord saw her, it says, “his heart went out to her” and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Why did he say “don’t cry”? Was he a bit embarrassed by a show of emotions? Was he saying to her “Come on now, chin up, stiff upper lip and all that”? Never.

He didn’t want to see her suffer any more. He wanted to do something about her pain. He wanted to bring hope out of her tragedy. And so he did.

He turns to the dead young man. A body ready for burial would usually be anointed in fine spices to cover the smell of decay, dressed in strips of linen, and a shroud would be covering the face. “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

And it seems to me that this is what God wants his Church to be like. That’s certainly what Lions Raw is about. I thank God for men like Jon Burns to whom God has entrusted a vision of Christians bringing blessing and renewal to some of the poorest communities in South Africa with the good news about Jesus.

• Hearts going out in kindness and compassion to the loveless and abandoned
• Drying the tears of street children who have lost their parents to HIV
• Saying to people who are down in the dust, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
• And helping them to their feet again
• Showing the world what “Good news for the poor” looks like

Every time you watch the Three Lions on TV this summer, pray for the ministry of Lions Raw and cry out to God for the kingdom of heaven to come in power in the townships.

Pray for Matthew, Stephen and Michael who’ll be part of that 120 person army.

Matthew Trotter, Stephen and Michael Farish; why don’t you come out to the front and tell us more..?

• Why did you want to get involved in Lions Raw?
• What are your hopes and fears about the trip?
• When are you flying out to Durban?
• What exactly will your role be when you get there?
• Is there anything you still need to get sorted before you go?
• How can we pray for you while you’re out there?

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 16th May 2010