You Got Your Splankna All Over My Life!

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke 7:11-17

If you've ever seen the movie Groundhog Day you may know where this introduction is headed.  In hearing the texts from 1 Kings 17 and Luke 7 back-to-back, or very near to one another I sometimes wonder, haven’t I heard this story before?  Doesn’t this tale remind me of something I’ve heard elsewhere, or read in a different place or a different time?  Is hearing this story something we would call Déjà vu?  Is that "I Got You, Babe" playing in the background?

Luke certainly wants to take us back to the tale of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath as he tells us about the interaction between Jesus and the widow at Nain.  He wants us to remember the last time there was a powerful prophet who demonstrated the power of God in the midst of the people; but there are more contrasts between the two texts we heard today than there are comparisons.  

Jesus is coming into town with his disciples and a crowd of followers, hangers on, fan boys and fan girls.  They have just seen an amazing display of Jesus’ power as he healed the servant of a centurion with a word and are curious to see what he will do next.   As they enter the town of Nain, a funeral procession is moving through in the opposite direction.  A young man has died, and his mother, a widow, is left with nothing.

When we say that the widow is left with nothing, it is important to understand culturally that she has no husband, so she would have been married by her husband’s brother or another male relative.  If no other male relatives were available, the widow would be relegated to society’s margins and become vulnerable to alienation and exclusion from the community and simple daily provision of familial care.  She would be someone’s problem, but not ours; and if we happen to have some alms to give, we’ll toss some her way—because that’s what charity is, right: the crumbs from our table, the scraps of what we have after we’ve taken care of our own?  

Added to the issue of being a charity case, the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her.  Without an heir, all her personal property reverted to her husband’s family.

The widow has, quite literally, lost everything with her son’s death.  She has no husband, no son, no legal identity, nothing.  The crowd that surrounds her, and cries out in grief with her in this particular moment, will soon fade; they will go back to their families and she will be alone with no one to share her grief, no one to take care of her.

But, Luke says, “The Lord saw her.”  In her mourning, in her grief, in her pain, in her loneliness, the Lord saw her.  And he had compassion for her.

How many people saw the widow as the procession moved through Nain that day?  Probably a lot of people saw her that day, because you can’t miss a funeral procession as it moves through town with the mourners wailing at the top of their lungs, crying louder than the widow so that her grief would be hers alone.  Many people saw the widow of Nain that day, and knew what it meant for her to lose her only son, and they probably felt bad for her.  But feeling bad, having sympathy, is not the same thing as having compassion.

Compassion is sympathy that accompanies mercy.  Compassion is what moves us to act on behalf of those for whom we feel sympathy. The phrase "had compassion for" comes from the Greek word "Splankna" which I have spoken and talked about before; Splanka means basically his gut was so twisted by what he witnessed he couldn't not act.

This moment between Jesus and the widow leads me to ask a couple of questions.  First, do we believe this of our own mourning, grief, and pain? That the Lord sees us and has compassion for us?  And second, when we see the pain of others, how do we respond?  Are we like the crowd, who sees the pain of others and does the SMH thing but does nothing about it, or are we willing to be like Jesus who feels compassion and steps in to co-suffer with those who are hurting?  And more than co-suffer, but transform suffering to joy, to make hope where none can possibly be imagined.

Jesus says to her, “Do not weep.” Not in a belittling way, or with condescension, or to say that she has no reason to grieve at all, but in a way that says he is acting on her behalf.  Then he approaches the funeral bier, he touches the cart on which the body rests, and he speaks, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

These words are not a prayer.  This moment is not a fervent argument like Elijah has with the Lord.  It is a command, and the voice of Jesus reaches from life into death, and with a word, “rise,” the young man sits up, and begins to speak, “and Jesus gave him to his mother.”

Dr. Bonnie Thurston, former New Testament professor of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes of this: “The widow of Nain is both an individual woman for whom Jesus had compassion and a silent representative of all who have been deprived of personal worth, all who have been defined in terms of social relationships (to men.)”  She then asks if restoring her son, while compassionate, keeps the widow in a place where she is defined by her son.  I can’t help but wonder if this action does not solidify her identity as one for whom God has seen and acted.

The widow is seen by Jesus.  She does not approach him.  She does not cry out to him for mercy as so many others have done.  She does not send others to ask for his intercession, she is seen by the Lord, and is the recipient of compassion.

And perhaps this is precisely where the rubber hits the road for us this week.  The people respond to Jesus’ action by glorifying God and saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people!”  Another translation says, “God has visited us…God has come near to us, to save and rescue us! This is the time we have been waiting for!” 

So what I would ask you to do is to quiet yourself for a moment, and think of the thing you most dread that may be coming this week, this month, this year…something you know about…or something that is unknown but which strikes fear into you…feel the sorrow, the frustration, the bitterness, the anger, the disappointment, the grief…and then watch Jesus join you in the middle of it.

Hear him say to you, “Do not weep; do not fear; put away your anger.”  And then see him speak life into that moment, feel him speak peace into that moment.  And know, trust, believe, that God has visited you.  God has come near, to save and rescue, and that this moment of Emmanuel, this moment of God with us, is the time we have been waiting for.