June 10, 2007 – Second Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 7:7-17
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Actor Kevin Bacon tells this story on himself. Following the release of his movie, “Footloose,” Bacon’s son came to him and said, “Dad, that movie was awesome! That part where you were swinging from the rafters in that building, that was really cool! How did you do that?”
“Well, son, that wasn’t really me. That was a stunt man.”
“What’s a stunt man?” his son asked.
“That’s a guy who dresses up in my clothes and does stuff I can’t do.”
“Oh. Well, that part in the gym where you twirled around on that bar and landed on your feet, that was pretty cool. How’d you do that?”
“Well, that wasn’t me either. That was a gymnastics double,” Bacon said
“What’s a gymnastics double?”
“That’s a guy who dresses up in my clothes and does stuff I can’t do.”
“Oh. Well, gee, dad, just what did you do in that movie?”
“Well, son,” Bacon said sheepishly, “I guess I got all the glory.”
What a great picture of grace: God’s grace, unearned, undeserved, given to us not because of what we’ve done but because of who God is. Sometimes, we acknowledge and celebrate that grace, as we do in worship and in our life together as a congregation. But sometimes that grace comes to us as complete surprise. That’s how it came to this woman who we have come to know in the pages of Scripture as the Widow of Nain.
In one sense, this is an isolated woman in an isolated story. She doesn’t appear in the verses before or after this passage; the town of Nain doesn’t appear anywhere else in all of Scripture. But in a larger sense, this is a snapshot of what God is up to in this world, and in that respect it very much involves you and me.
We don’t know what brought Jesus to the city of Nain. But we do know that before he even entered the town he encountered a funeral procession. The body of a young man who had died was being carried out on a portable platform, a plank. We don’t know how he died, if he had been ill for some time, or perhaps been the victim of an accident or even a violent killing. But we do know that his death meant almost certain death for someone else.
His mother was a widow. She had no other children. So the death of her son left her with no means of support. Being a widow, she was excluded from the inheritance laws; any valuables owned by her extended family could not pass on to her. So with the death of her son, the rest of her life was liable to be desperate and brief.
Jesus knew all of that, saw it in an instant. And he acted.
Several years ago a British publication ran a contest to determine the best definition of the word “friend.” Here’s the winning entry: “A friend is that one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.” Do you know the feeling? Something awful has happened and it seems as if the whole world has left you high and dry. And then one person steps up.
That’s what Jesus did with this widow. And, the Bible says, he had compassion. When we think of compassion we tend to think of pity, of feeling for someone in his or her distress. But the Bible’s depiction of compassion is much deeper, more graphic. It was thought that compassion was a physical function, located in a person’s intestines. So when a person felt compassion, he or she would feel an actual, physical pang or wrenching in the intestines. That’s what Jesus felt for this widow. It’s become trite to say, “I feel your pain,” but that’s exactly how Scripture conceives of compassion.
It’s important to note a couple of elements in this story. First, Jesus has compassion; but he has compassion for the widow, not the son. He knows what’s going to happen to the son. He knows he’s going to command the son to come to life again, and that he will; and Jesus will restore the son to the mother, that her weeping will turn to rejoicing, and that life for both mother and son will be transformed. He knows all of that. But she doesn’t, not yet. Jesus is so taken by her desperate circumstance that he literally enters into it. He stops the procession of death, he touches the plank bearing the body and thereby invades the domain of death, speaks a word of grace, and brings forth new life.
The second element to note is that no one asks Jesus to do any of it. No one comes up to Jesus and lobbies on behalf of the widow. No one says, “She has led such an exemplary life; she really is worthy to have you do this for her.” In fact, we know nothing at all about this woman, what her life has been like, what she has done or failed to do. Jesus simply sees the tragedy, chaos and desperation of her life, and acts to bring just a bit more of the Kingdom of God into reality.
This story is symbolic, because it looks ahead to the end of the Gospel, to the Resurrection of Jesus. Just as this young man is raised from the dead by the power of God, so too will Jesus be raised from the dead by the power of God. And the whole point of Jesus’ life, death and Resurrection is the resurrection from death of all humanity. That’s God’s agenda: Nothing less than the redemption of all creation, including you and me. It is a campaign of pure grace. And that’s where you and I come in.
Last weekend Pastor Susan and I and several members of Advent participated in the annual synod assembly, held this year in Overland Park. At the beginning of summer each year several representatives of the more than 100 ELCA congregations in Missouri and Kansas gather to conduct the business of the synod, but this year we had a theme, clearly fleshed out for us by a former seminary professor named Kelly Fryer. She produced a best-seller, at least in Lutheran circles, titled Reclaiming the L Word (L for Lutheran).
The theme of the assembly was this: God is on a mission to change the world, and that mission involves a living, breathing entity called “church.” Because that mission is in the world, that’s where Jesus is. We don’t need to take Jesus to the world; we need to recognize that Jesus has left the building and that he’s already out there And that means, people of Advent, that what we do in here has significance only as it equips and empowers us for what we do out there, in Jesus’ name.
That’s not a new idea here at Advent. We’ve been emphasizing for some time now that, “It’s not about us; it’s about God and God’s mission in the world.” We’ll continue to emphasize that vision because we all need to be reminded regularly to fight off the tendency to turn our attention and our energy in on ourselves. But it was clear that that was a fairly new concept for many folks at the assembly. As I looked around at the voting members to see their reaction to the presentations, all over the assembly hall I saw eyes lighting up, people sitting on the edge of their chairs. This is clearly a vision and an attitude whose time has come. I was reminded of a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, “A mind that is stretched by a new idea never returns to its original shape.” God’s church needs to be reshaped whenever we get comfortable with the idea that the point of church is what happens inside us, instead of what happens in the world through us.
In our Gospel story, Jesus intrudes on business-as-usual, halts the procession of death, speaks a word of grace and brings forth new life. So we too, as the living, breathing body of Christ in this time and place, are to have a tangible impact on our world, to be living reminders that God’s desire for all of humanity, in addition to living eternally with him, is for abundance of life now. One of our early Lutheran theologians, Philip Jacob Spener, said it well: “We are to be different because Christ is in us. The world is to be different because we are in it.”
So what might it look like if we were to intrude on our culture’s business-as-usual, speak a word of grace and bring forth new life? Let me offer three examples.
In the last four years, over 120 cities across our country, from Ashland, Oregon, to Camden, New Jersey, have enacted living wage laws that have raised the minimum wage, to as much as $12 an hour in some cases, for employees of companies that contract with those cities. That’s not an explicitly Christian campaign, but it certainly fits within God’s vision of economic justice for all. And those laws were changed because individual people got interested and involved.
Nehemiah Housing is an explicitly Christian organization that provides affordable housing to poor and lower-middle class residents. It’s a nationwide organization, but it didn’t start out that way; it started out with one person’s concern about the absence of a street light at a dangerous intersection in Brooklyn. One individual, getting interested and involved.
Thirty years ago, a Lutheran pastor named Art Simon, serving a congregation on the Lower East Side in New York, a poor area, said, “I know that my church can do a lot. We can start a food pantry and a clothes closet. But I also know that the federal government, with the stroke of a pen, can release billions to feed hungry people.” So he started an organization called Bread for the World. Some of you may already be members. If you make a donation to Bread for the World you can’t deduct it from your taxes, because the organization lobbies Congress to change systems that can help feed the poor.
Individual people, people like you, getting interested and involved in local communities, like the places you live, in order to bring just a little bit more of the Kingdom of God into reality.
You see, intruding on the realm of death and bringing forth new life, as Jesus did, is not always as dramatic as the stories in the Bible, or as public as Bread for the World. Usually, in fact, your involvement, your impact, your mission boils down to one other person.
At the assembly, we had a band. They played for worship and during the breaks between sessions. Various members of the band would occasionally say a few words by way of introduction. Except one, the rhythm guitarist. She simply played, never said a word. Until the last morning.
That morning, as the assembly members were sitting and chatting with each other at their tables, she stepped up to her mic and said, “I just wanted to say thanks.”
The conversation died down as everyone turned their attention to the stage.
“A few years ago,” she began, “my life was pretty messed up. I was on the outside, looking in. Didn’t care about much. Church? Couldn’t care less. God? Couldn’t care less.
“But then,” she told the assembly, “something happened. You came out. You were on the inside, and you came out. And you welcomed me. You told me that the tattoos didn’t matter. You told me that the body piercing didn’t matter. And you meant it! You were real. And after a while I started to get to know this Jesus, and I got to know him through you.
“So, I just wanted to say thanks.”
Somebody stopped this young woman’s procession of death, spoke a word of grace, and brought forth new life.
Was it you? In the grace and power of God, will it be you?
Amen.
