Lord of Compassion

Scripture: 1 Kings 17:17-24 & Luke 7:11-17

I have to admit – I don’t honestly know how I would react if I were at a funeral, and the deceased suddenly rose up from his or her coffin and started talking. A miracle – yes. Frightening? Oh yeah. I imagine when Jesus raised this young man from the dead, there were probably a few people who screamed, probably fainted – and it’s something of another miracle that someone didn’t have a heart attack that Jesus would have needed to heal as well.

We read these stories sometimes with the eyes of familiarity – yeah, okay, so Jesus walks in, raises the dead, and moves on. I think we’ve removed the shocking nature of this resurrection story. Someone who is dead is now alive. I just want you to picture it for a moment. You’re here in First Lutheran, attending funeral of someone you love and care about. Suddenly, some stranger walks, orders that person to get up – and… they DO! They sit up and just – start talking.



And I must admit, I would have LOVED to have known what that guy started saying! Sitting up, looking around at everyone’s grief ridden faces, dressed for mourning… I can hear it now… “Hey guys… who died?”

And who was this widow and her son? We don’t know. A couple of ordinary people in a tiny village in a backwater province of the Roman Empire. No names are given. It’s simply – a widow and her dead son. You would think, if Jesus really wanted widespread acclaim, he would have taken the opportunity to find some rich and powerful family that was suffering from a similar tragedy. Perhaps a grateful king?

But instead – Jesus opts to help – the ordinary. A nobody. Someone society probably paid very little attention to.

Yet – that’s how God operates. Oh, sure – there are stories about kings and famous prophets in the Bible – but even one of Israel’s greatest prophets, Elijah, performed probably his greatest miracle in similar circumstances – another widow, a few hundred years earlier, who is dying of hunger from a famine, and her son eventually succumbs to some unknown illness. A widow who wasn’t even an Israelite. A woman who was worse than a nobody – she was a gentile. An outsider. Unclean. Unworthy. Not… special.

Yet, God has pity and shows compassion for this widow and her circumstances. He hears Elijah’s prayer and restores the boy to life.

Sadly – stories like Elijah’s in the Old Testament don’t get told very often. They aren’t what’s remembered about God in the Old Testament. People instead focus on the battles and wars Israel was engaged in and say things like the Old Testament is all about judgment, and the New Testament is all about grace and mercy.

What I appreciate about today’s scripture readings is it helps us realign our perspective regarding the “God of the Old Testament” and the “God of the New Testament” – showing us that God’s mercy and love is present throughout the entire Bible – that this is indeed the exact same God acting in very similar ways – if not almost identical – in both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament accounts of Jesus.

As Jesus raises this young man from the dead, Jesus really isn’t introducing anything new, he isn’t doing something that God has never done before with humanity. He is acting like the great prophets of old, doing what the prophets of the Old Testament did.

And the significance of what both Jesus and Elijah are doing is tied up in the fact that it’s the widow’s son in each case.

Widows in the ancient world were the most vulnerable people. Their lives were miserable at best, life-threatening at worst. The emotional toll of losing both a husband and a son is great indeed. But the reality of day-to-day life also became far more complicated for these women. The men in their lives – their husbands and sons, were how most women were provided for. In a society that was far more hostile to women in the work-place, widows had very little financial recourse. They were, literally, at the mercy of their community – whether the community would step up and help out, or leave her abandoned and begging for food and shelter.

The story states, however, that Jesus saw – and had compassion. Jesus was moved by the woman’s plight.

And his response? He turned sorrow – into joy. Weeping into rejoicing.

Now it’s very easy for us to point to this event and say, “Ah, yes. Jesus did this so that all would know he is the Christ – the Son of God. It was all to prove who Jesus was.”

And indeed – that is in part what is going on here. Jesus is proving what power he wields. He is showing that he is indeed God – with a simple word, he is able to reverse death itself. No prayer, no ritual – just his word uttered commands the reversal of death itself.

Though – there were a lot of different ways he could have revealed himself to be the all-powerful God of the universe. I mean, the prophet Elijah did get to have that kind of fun, showy fire from heaven thing going on to prove God was God. Couldn’t Jesus have done some of that? Or a parting of a sea, maybe a good old fashioned pillar of fire…

And there were a variety of ways he could have shown himself to be a “Lord.” Think about how the term Lord gets used in our own culture – Lord Voldemort… Lord Vader… powerful “lords” that demand our respect because of the fear and sheer power that they are able to wield.

But the streams of fire and parting of seas – while would have demonstrated the power of God – those things would have failed to reveal what God truly wanted to reveal about Himself to us. And… in the case of Elijah, the fiery show of power and supremacy by calling fire from heaven ultimately didn’t result in what was intended. Rather than bringing about repentance – Queen Jezebel got mad at Elijah and ordered his death. Not quite the response God was probably hoping for.

Thus the whole point of this story is wrapped up in a very short sentence. “He had compassion on her.” Why is God doing any of this? Why become incarnate? Why come down and heal the sick? Why come down and resurrect the dead? Just so the Lord of the Universe can prove He is who He says He is? Or – is there another agenda here?

The other agenda is… for us to know – God has compassion. God gets our pain. God feels. And not just feels – the word “compassion” in Greek is more than just showing empathy – it’s have a gut-wrenching emotion. A gut wrenching reaction to what he sees going on with this widow and her dead son. It goes far beyond any word we could come up with.

Someone was telling me the story not too long ago of a question they had asked a student. The question was, “What do you think is the most difficult thing God has ever done?” The kid thought on it a while and finally, answered, “Well – at first I was thinking it was the creation of the universe and all that – because I think that would be pretty hard. But then, I decided what’s harder than that is for God to reveal himself to us in some way that we can actually understand who he is.”

Sometimes kids say the darnedest things.

How can God let us know His heart? How can God reveal to us what his intention towards us is? How can God make us know that he’s not some tyrant God sitting on a throne, hurling thunderbolts and smiting those who displease him? And indeed – we get some glimpses of that side of God from time to time – that’s the side that we find ourselves in fear and awe of. A God whose very existence and power demands our reverence and respect.

But – I think God was faced with a very similar dilemma I found myself in when I became a manager. The first time I became someone’s “boss” it was difficult for me to adjust to – because suddenly, yes, people respected me –but – they were also suddenly afraid of me and very distanced from me. Afraid of making a misstep because I had the power to fire them. When I wanted to just chat with them for a moment in my office, the first response was: “Why? Am I in trouble?” My heart would sink because I was like, “Really? People are that afraid of me? I haven’t even done anything to warrant it!” I wasn’t going around firing employees left and right. But just HAVING that alleged power elicited that response.

Now, not that God hasn’t done things to instill, well, for lack of a better term – the fear of God into us – but as I soon discovered – having people fear you in that way doesn’t foster a close relationship. And God desires relationship.

So in order to have that relationship – he comes down to an ordinary village, walks into the lives of ordinary people, shows those on the fringes of society love and compassion – heals the sick, and yes – even raises the dead. He returns a son back to his widowed mother. Shows compassion not only for her emotional pain and grief at having lost a child – but for her social situation as well.

Jesus is moved to help her. He has empathy for what she is going through and is not oblivious or blind to her pain and suffering.

Thus, the entire point is for us to realize that God is not oblivious or blind to OUR pain and suffering either. He is not blind to the ordinary person that sits here this morning, or the ordinary person who is outside these walls. He sees the pain – and he has compassion upon it.

We all know – there’s something very wrong with death. We see it all around us – it should just be natural for us – but we recognize – there’s something WRONG with death. And God acknowledges, too – there is something WRONG with death. And his promise is – he knows, he has compassion, and he is Lord of life and death. And death is not the final word.