Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Hildegard (1179), Abbess of Bingen. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
The resurrection of the young man of Nain, by Lucas Cranach (1569)Luke 7: 11-17 (NRSVA)
11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As 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. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus[b] gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his people!’ 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
Today’s Reflection:
Funeral stories and the stories of children being raised to life, like the story in the Gospel reading this morning, are not always the most cheerful Bible readings. This reading was particularly difficult when I was preaching one Sunday morning many years in Saint Patrick’s Church, Donabate, Co Dublin, when I was baptising a little baby boy.
But at the moment in the lectionary each weekday morning we are working our way through Saint Luke’s Gospel. It is full of stories about healing and wholeness. And I found myself that morning asking who does Jesus bring healing and wholeness to in this reading.
When we look at any Gospel story it is always good to ask a few basic questions, like who, what, where, when and why.
If you want to watch a movie on Netflix this evening, you would probably ask a few basic questions before making your choice:
• What’s the story all about?
• Who are the principal characters, the main actors?
• In other words, is there anything in this for me?
In a similar way, if we are to find anything in a Gospel story that not only makes it interesting but makes it relevant for me, then I suppose I could approach a Gospel reading with the same questions:
• What’s the story all about?
• Who are the main characters?
• Where’s the action?
In today’s Gospel story, there is a lot of action, and a lot of people. In fact, there are two large crowds, and the drama is created in the way they meet each other, in an unexpected and unplanned way.
The first crowd is made up of those following Jesus, who have just arrived after a long, 20-mile walk with him from Capernaum.
This group includes not just those who are his disciples. But a lot of other people too – people are there to see what he is doing, what’s going on. Like Netflix viewers after a hard day’s work, they are looking for the entertainment, looking for the drama, perhaps even hoping for a miracle or too … after all, at Capernaum they have seen him heal the centurion’s servant.
And we ought not to be too dismissive of this crowd following Jesus, or their motives. After all, that is the way a lot of people end up coming to church. They go with the flow, they like what is on offer for their children, it gives them a sense of identity. Andm in coming along, they find out who Jesus really is, why it matters to follow him.
Perhaps they were expecting nothing. Perhaps they were just tired, and after a 20-mile walk are anxious about whether there are enough beds in the tiny village of Nain for them all to stay overnight.
And, unexpectedly – in a way that no-one could have planned – this large crowd bumps into another, second large crowd. Nain is called a town here, but it was more like a village, about nine or ten miles south of Nazareth. Until the mid-20th century, it had a population of less than 100 or 200, so we can imagine a tiny place in the days of Jesus.
So, one large crowd bumps into another large crowd. And it is bad news for the large crowd that has been following Jesus.
In a tiny place like Nain, to have a large crowd they must have been drawn from every house and dwelling place, every family in the village. If they are all in mourning, not only are they unlikely to be able to offer anyone bed and breakfast for the night, they probably are ritually unable to do so: a dead body, a corpse, a funeral, a burial, all make a practising, observant Jew ritually unclean.
The disciples and the other people who are following Jesus on the road from Capernaum to Nain must have taken pity on themselves. Where are they going to go tonight? What can they do? Where can they stay?
Perhaps the appeal of following Jesus, waiting for the miracle to happen, suddenly evaporated as this reality dawned on them.
Perhaps they even thought Jesus should have pity on them, pity on their plight.
But instead, Jesus takes pity, not on them, and not even on the poor young lad who has died either. Instead, he takes pity on the boy’s widowed mother. He has compassion for her, he tells her not to weep.
However, having compassion and doing something about it make two separate sets of demands.
The love of a mother for her young son is incomparable, as people knew too that Sunday morning at the baptism in Donabate.
Jesus recognises, Jesus identifies with, Jesus is consumed with, the love of this widowed, probably young widowed, mother. As a widow, left financially ruined, her only hope of survival in this world may have been in the livelihood her son would eventually attain.
She has already been widowed, now her son has died. She faces not only emotional devastation, but financial destruction and social ruin … she will have no-one to work her fields, no-one to provide an income, no-one to guarantee her safety and security.
Jesus recognises her plight … and he does something about it. First he does something that is shocking in his day, shocking behaviour for a rabbi in those days. He touches the bier, he touches the dead body. It is no wonder the bearers stood still. He has identified so much with the widow’s plight that he too becomes ritually unclean. In Christ, God’s identification with our humanity is so complete that he takes on everything about us. God so identifies with us in Christ that he even identifies with us in birth, in life, and in death.
The miracle is amazing. The fact that God identifies so much with us is even more amazing. God’s compassion should be more amazing than God’s miracles. It is because of his love and compassion in the first place that there are miracles.
No wonder the crowds, the two large crowds, all of them, are seized with fear. It is awesome.
And yet, in telling this story, Luke rises to some of his most poetic language in this Gospel.
He looks back to the words of the pregnant Mary and ageing Zechariah in the canticles Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, when Saint Luke says they glorified God (7: 16, cf Luke 1: 47-48), when they realised a great prophet had risen among them (cf Luke 1: 69-70), when they said God has looked favourably on his people (cf Luke 1: 48), when they realised a new day had dawned. She has been shown mercy, she has been saved from the hands of her enemies, she has received the tender mercy of God.
Luke looks forward to that moment when the suffering Christ meets the weeping women outside the gates of Jerusalem (Luke 23: 28-29). And he looks forward to that moment on the Cross, in Saint John’s Gospel, when the dying Jesus takes pity on his widowed mother and entrusts her and the Beloved Disciple to the mutual care of each other (John 19: 26-27).
What we are invited to be witnesses to this morning is not some old-fashioned miracle show. That’s what the large crowd was hanging around Jesus for what the large crowd was hanging around the funeral procession for.
What we are being invited to this morning is the realisation that in his compassion, in his actions, in his caring, Jesus shows us that God loves us, each of us individually, as a mother loves her only and precious child.
If you imagine for one moment the love that little boy who was being baptised in Donabate that morning could expect from his parents, then you can catch, just catch, a glimpse of the love that God has for each of us, individually. God loves you and God loves me as if were the only child in the world that matters … and even more than that.
This is a new dawn. That is what the promise of baptism is: it is about dying to sin, to the old ways, rising to new life in Christ, and continuing for ever.
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 17 September 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 17 September 2024) invites us to pray:
Index (leaders): Lord God, we pray for heavenly wisdom for our earthly leaders, teachers and church leaders. May their thoughts, words and deeds bring glory to your name.
The Collect:
Most glorious and holy God,
whose servant Hildegard, strong in the faith,
was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts:
by the breath of your Spirit
open our eyes to glimpse your glory
and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Merciful God,
who gave such grace to your servant Hildegard
that she served you with singleness of heart
and loved you above all things:
help us, whose communion with you
has been renewed in this sacrament,
to forsake all that holds us back from following Christ
and to grow into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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