The Widow's Son at Nain
Preaching
Preaching the Miracles
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
1. Text
Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.11 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.12 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep."13 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!"14 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.15 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"16 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.17
2. What's Happening?
First Point Of Action
After healing the centurion's servant, Jesus, his disciples, and a large crowd go to a town called Nain. When Jesus approaches the town gate, bearers are carrying out for burial a man who had died. Among the large crowd from the town is the man's mother. She is a widow. He was her only son.
Second Point Of Action
Having compassion for her, Jesus tells her not to weep. He steps forward and touches the bier. As he does this, the bearers stand still. Jesus tells the young man to rise.
Third Point Of Action
The dead man sits up and begins to speak.
Fourth Point Of Action
Jesus gives him to his mother.
Fifth Point Of Action
Fear seizes the entire crowd. They glorify God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"
Sixth Point Of Action
This news spreads throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
3. Connecting Points -- Conversations
Interviewing The Mother
Asker: We know little about you. The person who set down this story first identified you as a mother of a grown son who had just died. We do not know if your son died suddenly from an accident, if he had an illness, or if his body simply had not the strength to live. No matter when your grief began, on the day of your son's burial, you must have experienced a tremendous reversal of emotions.
Mother: That day, I lost my boy and I regained my boy. We were carrying him beyond the town walls to bury him. Formal mourning begins when a person dies. We bury our dead the same day they die. I still do not understand it. I did not see Jesus until he spoke. He spoke directly to me. Of course, he could tell by my clothing -- I wear the clothes of a widow -- that my husband is dead. He told me not to weep. That is all he said. I thought, "Easy for you to say." Then he moved forward to the bed on which my boy lay. The people carrying him stopped. Jesus touched the bier. Then he spoke to my boy. Jesus called him, "Young man." My boy sat up. My son was dead. I know he was. Now he is alive.
Asker: Since there is no mention of your family, you may have been completely alone. Traditionally, the relatives do the mourning. Who, then, were the people carrying your son's body, the bearers of the litter? Were they relatives? Townspeople? Hired mourners? The writer of Luke reported a large crowd from the town was accompanying you to the burial place.
Mother: We are like family to each other. I may have been alone, without relatives, but we are a small town. We are a community. Who was in this large crowd? People who knew me or my son. They knew my identity as a widow and what the death of my son meant. I knew who would leave extra olives on the tree for my gleaning later.
Asker: At least when a widow is a younger woman, she has a chance to remarry and possibly bear a child in her deceased husband's name. I wonder, had you been of childbearing age, would Jesus have resurrected your son? We do not know your age. The only hints are Jesus' addressing your son as "young man" and Luke's reporting that "the dead man sat up." Your son, then, was not a small child.
Mother: To me, he will always be "my boy." The very day that my boy died the Lord came to look after me. I knew only that while I had my son, my son would provide sustenance. I did not qualify for the remarriage to a brother of my deceased husband because I had one son to carry on my husband's name. After the days of funeral were over, I would be on my own. Do not misunderstand me. I am not complaining.
Asker: I hear no whine in your voice. In my day, older widows occasionally share housing. Widows with common interests group together. They work as their health allows and even when it does not. They live for their grandchildren, focus on their church activities, and enjoy hobbies. What did widows do in your day to survive both physically and emotionally? Did they help in the extended family with child care, getting the meals, gathering the food, and doing the essentials of existence that use a woman's time? How does God provide for the widow?
Mother: For me, God returned my son. For me, it is easy to say, "Trust in God." To another widow, can I say more than, "Trust in God. You will find a way to survive"? Among all your questions, I find the absence of one. You avoid asking how it felt to lose then to regain one's child.
Asker: I cannot imagine it, this miracle. I can understand it no more than you. I think about the ways we lose our children today and the ways they are "given back" to us when we suppose they are gone forever. Consider the mothers who lose their children to the naturally separating times of being teenagers, to drugs, to mental illnesses, to AIDS -- losses we presume are permanent. Could it be that by giving your son back to you, Jesus was trying to tell us that no death is permanent?
Interviewing Jesus
Asker: Why, Jesus, was your focus in this miracle on the weeping woman? You must have asked around because you learned quickly that this was her only son and that she was a widow. You did not give the widow a chance to cry out for mercy, but you anticipated her cry.
Jesus: Do not wait for the widow to cry out for mercy. We need to respect the widow. God sustains the widow. (See Psalm 146:9.) There are right ways to look after widows. "You shall not take a widow's garment in pledge" (Deuteronomy 24:17b). Every third year, scriptures tell us, we are to give a tithe of our produce to the widows in our towns. We are also to give to the Levites, aliens, and orphans so they will have enough to eat. (See Deuteronomy 26:12.) God "executes justice for ... the widow" (Deuteronomy 10:17, 18). Widows are not to be deprived of justice. (See Deuteronomy 27:19.) "Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation" (Psalm 68:5).
Caring for the needy is not news to these people. They need to hear the truth again in a new way so it is real to them, so they can connect. It is one thing to hear the scriptures theoretically. It is another to live out the implications of scripture in caring for each other.
Asker: Jesus, we hear you speak once to the woman and once to her son. When you told the woman not to weep, I wondered what you knew that we did not. Then you told her son to rise. That made no sense at all. The man was dead. God cannot just go around raising people from the dead through God's good compassion. Many widows have only sons who die. How would God choose? Why not resurrect everyone? What would be the criteria? There must be another reason for this. Were you trying to give us the encouragement of the resurrection yet to come for all of us? Jesus, was healing the widow's son a whim, an impulse of yours or of the Parent God? Were you trying to make a point to the large crowd that came to Nain with you?
Jesus: We have a precedent set by the story of the widow who fed Elijah. God took care of her. (For the story, see 1 Kings 17:8-16 in section five of this chapter.) It is almost easier to consider the great, impersonal vastness of an invisible God than to grasp God's specific caring for each person.
We know the right way to live. Absent from Hebrew law was the provision of inheritance for a widow unless brothers of her deceased husband were available. Then they had to take her in and marry her. Even then, sometimes they refused.
In my day, the widow had no voice. She was the most vulnerable of persons. If the widow is mute, then someone must speak for her. Is this voice not an extension of God's caring? The sense of loss through death remains the same in your day. While the process of grieving still is necessary, the outcome need not be. The widow of your day has the possibility of rebuilding her life and finding her voice.
Asker: Today, when the husband dies, it is too uncomfortable for some families to be together. The grief is strong when the daughter-in-law sees her brothers-in-law and when the family sees their son's widow. The family acknowledges each other on holidays, but it may be only perfunctory. Sometimes there are no grandchildren to keep the family connected. Then the widow might be a hanger-on if she did not get on with her life. With our high divorce rate, everything is transitory. Widowhood is tough luck. In the name of independence, the widow continues in a way similar to the divorced woman. At the least, she has a temporarily lowered standard of living.
It is better at first to continue wearing the wedding ring and pretend when among strangers. The temptation, after the initial chaos of widowhood, might be to succumb to hiding, invisible behind the walls of one's house. Today's widow also has little voice unless she works to have it.
Jesus: In your day, however, the widow usually has a choice. She does not have to be a victim. She may look to a remarriage to avoid loneliness rather than solely to survive. In some ways, your situation with widows is similar to those of my day. With provision of insurance or an estate, you do not have the same sense of family support. Community is as hard to come by in present times as it was in my day. Community requires work.
Women of your day are expected to be independent. They are supposed to be able to pick up the pieces and start a new life. My point, then and now, is that the current motto need not be, "Every person for himself or for herself." I call you as members of a community to care for and look out for each other even within the moment. I call for you to keep alive a sense of community. I tell the widow not to lose hope.
Perhaps you must tell the analogous, other mute widow of your day not to lose hope. This most vulnerable person in the approaching millennium might be the second-time pregnant child-mother. Through Jeremiah, God said, "Leave your orphans, I will keep them alive; and let your widows trust in me" (Jeremiah 49:11). Who is going to sustain the child-mothers in your country?
Asker: This is a most fragile trust, which one must have, that she will survive. In the Jewish community, family and religion were all intertwined as extended family. Our families fragment. They scatter all over the country. The closest we come today to playing the extended family is the annual or five-year reunion, the weddings, and the funerals that return us to our roots.
Jesus: Who is your family today? What about the family of God? Consider that the closest you might come to the Jewish extended family is the idea of church family.
Asker: Does the idea of family still carry weight today? Of course, intact families still exist. Long-distance families do overcome the obstacles to survival. Children from broken families can be amazingly resilient. The analogy of the family of God may have fit in Old Testament times. In reality, for how many people is "family" still a strong model? What are the family connections today?
Jesus: The family nucleus is whoever happens to be around. Persons must take the given and incorporate it into a renewed concept of present, temporary family. Hospice functions as a family for persons living with AIDS and cancers. Support groups are substitute families. We may not have choice in who our family is. However, we can choose with whom we will surround ourselves. God adopts each of us and treats us as God's own. We can adopt others, neighbors, and treat them as our own.
Asker: Before we close our conversation, Jesus, I would like to return to the story. His mother's only son, that is how we first meet the woman in Nain. Was this the description given because you may have been Mary's only son, God's only Son? Was this one reason for your compassion? Could you see your own mother walking beside your bier? You would give your mother to the care of the beloved disciple. You would give John to her as a new son. Here is the word again, but as a prelude to what is coming -- "Jesus gave him to his mother." You did not raise the young man to new life then send him on his way. You assigned his purpose. You presented him to his mother.
Jesus: A gift honors another person. A gift is voluntary, without pay or conditions. Might we live as if we were gifts to each other?
4. Words
Bier
A bier is a litter or bed on which a body was placed before burial. It was portable, probably several wooden boards.
Burial
Relatives prepared the body for burial and mourned the death. All affected by the mourning participated in the lamenting. The lament was ritualized with a proper time for the proper response. Proper responses were the striking of oneself, tears, a shrill cry or wail, or other exclamations of grief. No wonder Jesus' attention was drawn to the burial procession at Nain.
Because the lack of burial was considered a great tragedy, to provide burial for another person was a commendable act. Mourning that began immediately following death continued to the tomb, around the tomb itself, and generally lasted a week. Women played an important role as paid, professional mourners. They cried out and composed burial poems that consoled, eulogized, and lamented. According to rabbinical writings on the law, even for the poorest burial, at least two flutes and one wailing woman were essential.1
Family
Israelites were encouraged to have large families for both economic and religious reasons. The family grew by birth and by covenants made with other groups and individuals. Because the Hebrew family was an inclusive community, biblical mention of "in the house of" or "the clan of" could mean a variety of persons. Beyond persons of blood or marriage, households also consisted of slaves, concubines, foreigners, and hired servants.
Families were communities of persons. Additionally, the family functioned as a religious community, preserving past traditions and passing them on through worship and instruction. Israel was a community of faith rather than a nation. In The Source, James A. Michener suggests that for the Hebrew people religion "is an internal thing," a system for organizing life rather than for constructing buildings.2
Because the family was patriarchal, children, especially sons, were important. They carried on the family name. Young women only became important when they married and joined the husband's household. A woman's primary function was to produce children, to show them love and care for them, and to be concerned for their behavior and for their relation to God. In return, she asked respect and obedience from her children.
Jewish law made no security provision for a widow to inherit part of her late husband's property. However, the requirement of the levirate marriage may have provided inheritance of that property. This is the law as stated in Deuteronomy 25:5-6:
When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
The Sadducees later abbreviated the law when attempting to cause Jesus to stumble over Jewish law: "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother' " (Matthew 22:24). Such arrangements ideally prevented the marriage of a Hebrew woman to an outsider. By that, the name of the deceased husband continued in Israel. The Jewish historian, Josephus, suggested a threefold purpose: to keep the family name, to preserve the family estate, and to provide for the welfare of the widow.3
To preserve both the name and the inheritance of the family, the widow had to remarry. However, since a widow could publicly scorn before the elders the brother-in-law who refused to marry her, the ideal law obviously was not always a reality. (See Deuteronomy 25:7-10.) The possibility of a remarriage probably demanded strategic negotiating and awakening of personal interest. Community took as much work and was as hard to find then as in the present decade.
Nain
Nain was a town in southwest Galilee about five miles southeast of Nazareth and about 25 miles or a day's journey from Capernaum. Luke alone names the town in connection with this story (Luke 7:11). Its name may be a derivative of a word meaning pleasant or delightful. Nain has a fine view of the Plain of Esdraelon. A spring brings moisture to groves of olives and figs. Its ruins say the village was once important.
The name Nain survives in the modern Arab village of Nein. This village lies on the lower slope of the northwest side of Neli Dahi, a hill between Gilboa and Tabor. In Old Testament times, it was known as the hill of Moreh (Judges 7:1) and has also been called Little Hermon.
Prophet
A prophet is the mouthpiece of God. Speaking by divine inspiration, a prophet expresses and interprets divine will. The prophetic message may take the form of a tirade or judgment, an assurance or promise, an anguished cry or confession, or a symbolic act or relationship.
The people of Jesus' day, not knowing how God would come as Messiah, yet fully expecting the revival of prophecy, must have sustained an intense air of anticipation. With this on their minds, their spontaneous response to the miracle at Nain was "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" (Luke 7:16).
Aaron Copland described how one listens with rapt attention at a concert. The composer spoke analogously of such an expectant interest in the first Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard:
Expectancy denotes the ability to lend oneself eagerly to the thing heard while attention bespeaks an interest in the thing said, a preoccupation with an understanding of what is being heard.4
The miracles Jesus performed and the nature of his preaching and his teaching pointed to Jesus as a prophet. Jesus called himself a prophet when he said no prophet's hometown accepts its prophet. (See Luke 4:24, Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4, and John 4:44.)
Widow
A widow's clothing identified her. She put on the "garments of her widowhood" (Genesis 38:19). Writers of The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible5 suggest the word "widow" in Hebrew and the word meaning "to be mute" are similar. In biblical times, a widow carried disgrace in this inferior position because the death of a husband before old age was considered a judgment for sin. See Ruth 1:20-21 and Isaiah 54:4.
Jesus showed the widow compassion. His actions reinforced and modeled the older Jewish laws regarding vulnerable persons. Social mores grouped together widows, orphans, and temporary residents. They are people to feed either directly (see Deuteronomy 14:29) or by allowing them to glean the fields at harvest (see Deuteronomy 24:19). Householders also were to leave some olives on the trees and grapes on the vine for sojourners, orphans, and widows (see Deuteronomy 24:20, 21).
In "The Dilemma Of Celebration," Sheila Collins, theologian of the politics of Appalachian women, writes, "If theology is to be meaningful for us, it must not start with abstractions but with our stories."6 Collins says she found the idea of salvation among the Appalachian women dynamic and this worldly, but the telling about it must be "collective rather than a whining women's litany."
Consider the story of the widow to whom God sent Elijah as well as the widow to whom God sent Jesus in the present story. (See the Old Testament reading for this Sunday, 1 Kings 17:8-24.) In both, readers have the choice of hearing "a whining woman's litany" or of finding the absence of a whine in the widow's voice. Collins suggests that we must ask the right questions of our own stories to be able to understand the Bible stories of long ago.
Word
Consider the play on the word "word." Not only did word spread throughout Judah, that is through the gossip mill and the stories, but also "the word" in the fuller sense of active and being through Jesus spread throughout the land. The word was not merely empty words but something living and dynamic. Jesus made the word live, as defined in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus was the embodiment of the word of God. Jesus revealed God's plan and purpose for humankind.
5. Gospel Parallels
As with three earlier stories in Cycle C, this miracle and the following story, "The Lepers," are without direct parallel. However, several word cross-references given below may be helpful.7
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 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. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" (Luke 7:11-14).
No cross-references.
The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother (Luke 7:15).
In the Old Testament story reviewed below about the healing of another widow's son, Elijah went down from the upper chamber into the house and "gave him to his mother" (1 Kings 17:23). The woman, seeing this as proof, said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God" (1 Kings 17:24). A similar response arose from those who witnessed the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain.
Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" (Luke 7:16).
Three other references for people glorifying God include those who witnessed the healing of the paralytic (Matthew 9:8 and Luke 5:26) and the shepherds who saw Jesus in the manger (Luke 2:20).
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowds called him "prophet" (Matthew 21:11). After he fed the multitudes, the crowds again called him "prophet" (John 6:14). The derisive Pharisee in whose house Jesus ate commented that if Jesus were a prophet, he would have known the character of the woman who bathed his feet with her tears and anointed them with ointment (Luke 7:39). One of the two who met but did not recognize the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus referred in conversation to Jesus as a prophet (Luke 24:19).
This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country (Luke 7:17).
Eight of the thirteen "spread" references in the Gospels refer to the widespread travel of the news about Jesus and his activities. See Matthew 4:24, 9:26, 9:31; Mark 1:28, 1:45; and Luke 4:14, 5:15.
Luke 7:11-17
Two other New Testament and two Old Testament healing stories hold similarities with this miracle. In the New Testament are the healing of Jairus' daughter (Cycle B, Miracle 7, Mark 5:21-43) and Jesus' raising Lazarus (Cycle A, Miracle 3, John 11:1-45). In the earlier story, Jairus' daughter reportedly had died. Jesus took the child by the hand and said, "Little girl, get up" (Mark 5:41). The father approached Jesus.
In the latter miracle the brother of Mary and Martha and the friend of Jesus had been dead four days (John 11:1-44). It was also a relative, the sister, Martha, who went out to meet Jesus as he came into Bethany. She proclaimed Jesus as Messiah before he raised Lazarus. (See John 11:22-27.) See also John 11:43-44: "When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go' " (John 11:44).
The Old Testament stories are found in 1 Kings 17:1-24 (the Old Testament lectionary reading for Proper 5) and 2 Kings 4:32-37. In the 1 Kings story, the woman was also a widow. Her son had also just died, but she blamed Elijah, as a man of God, for the death of her son. The woman was holding her son. Elijah took him from her and carried him to the chamber where he himself was lodging and laid the boy on his own bed. Elijah cried out to God asking God if he were the cause of this death. Then Elijah lay over the child three times and asked God to put his life back into him. God did so.
In the 2 Kings healing story, the mother is the main focus. She was a wealthy woman who extended hospitality to the holy man, Elisha, whenever he passed that way. Wanting to repay her for the kindness, Elisha learned that she and her elderly husband had no son. Elisha proclaimed that she would have a son. It was this child who went to his father in the field with a strong headache. The woman went off herself to find Elisha. Elisha sent his staff on ahead with his servant Gehazi with the instructions to lay it on the face of the child. It did not work. When Elisha arrived, he shut the door on the child and himself, prayed to God and lying on the child, revived him. Then he called the mother and said, "Take up your child" (2 Kings 4:36). She fell at his feet then took up her son.
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1. See The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1.
2. James A. Michener, The Source (New York: Random House Inc., 1965).
3. See The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 3.
4. See Music and Imagination (Cambridge, MA: The Fellows of The Harvard College, 1952).
5. See Volume 4.
6. See page 151 in Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, editors, Womanspirit Rising (San Francisco: Harper, 1992).
7. Cross-references are from the self-pronouncing reference RSV edition of The Holy Bible (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1962). Texts are from NRSV.
Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.11 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.12 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep."13 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!"14 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.15 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"16 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.17
2. What's Happening?
First Point Of Action
After healing the centurion's servant, Jesus, his disciples, and a large crowd go to a town called Nain. When Jesus approaches the town gate, bearers are carrying out for burial a man who had died. Among the large crowd from the town is the man's mother. She is a widow. He was her only son.
Second Point Of Action
Having compassion for her, Jesus tells her not to weep. He steps forward and touches the bier. As he does this, the bearers stand still. Jesus tells the young man to rise.
Third Point Of Action
The dead man sits up and begins to speak.
Fourth Point Of Action
Jesus gives him to his mother.
Fifth Point Of Action
Fear seizes the entire crowd. They glorify God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"
Sixth Point Of Action
This news spreads throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
3. Connecting Points -- Conversations
Interviewing The Mother
Asker: We know little about you. The person who set down this story first identified you as a mother of a grown son who had just died. We do not know if your son died suddenly from an accident, if he had an illness, or if his body simply had not the strength to live. No matter when your grief began, on the day of your son's burial, you must have experienced a tremendous reversal of emotions.
Mother: That day, I lost my boy and I regained my boy. We were carrying him beyond the town walls to bury him. Formal mourning begins when a person dies. We bury our dead the same day they die. I still do not understand it. I did not see Jesus until he spoke. He spoke directly to me. Of course, he could tell by my clothing -- I wear the clothes of a widow -- that my husband is dead. He told me not to weep. That is all he said. I thought, "Easy for you to say." Then he moved forward to the bed on which my boy lay. The people carrying him stopped. Jesus touched the bier. Then he spoke to my boy. Jesus called him, "Young man." My boy sat up. My son was dead. I know he was. Now he is alive.
Asker: Since there is no mention of your family, you may have been completely alone. Traditionally, the relatives do the mourning. Who, then, were the people carrying your son's body, the bearers of the litter? Were they relatives? Townspeople? Hired mourners? The writer of Luke reported a large crowd from the town was accompanying you to the burial place.
Mother: We are like family to each other. I may have been alone, without relatives, but we are a small town. We are a community. Who was in this large crowd? People who knew me or my son. They knew my identity as a widow and what the death of my son meant. I knew who would leave extra olives on the tree for my gleaning later.
Asker: At least when a widow is a younger woman, she has a chance to remarry and possibly bear a child in her deceased husband's name. I wonder, had you been of childbearing age, would Jesus have resurrected your son? We do not know your age. The only hints are Jesus' addressing your son as "young man" and Luke's reporting that "the dead man sat up." Your son, then, was not a small child.
Mother: To me, he will always be "my boy." The very day that my boy died the Lord came to look after me. I knew only that while I had my son, my son would provide sustenance. I did not qualify for the remarriage to a brother of my deceased husband because I had one son to carry on my husband's name. After the days of funeral were over, I would be on my own. Do not misunderstand me. I am not complaining.
Asker: I hear no whine in your voice. In my day, older widows occasionally share housing. Widows with common interests group together. They work as their health allows and even when it does not. They live for their grandchildren, focus on their church activities, and enjoy hobbies. What did widows do in your day to survive both physically and emotionally? Did they help in the extended family with child care, getting the meals, gathering the food, and doing the essentials of existence that use a woman's time? How does God provide for the widow?
Mother: For me, God returned my son. For me, it is easy to say, "Trust in God." To another widow, can I say more than, "Trust in God. You will find a way to survive"? Among all your questions, I find the absence of one. You avoid asking how it felt to lose then to regain one's child.
Asker: I cannot imagine it, this miracle. I can understand it no more than you. I think about the ways we lose our children today and the ways they are "given back" to us when we suppose they are gone forever. Consider the mothers who lose their children to the naturally separating times of being teenagers, to drugs, to mental illnesses, to AIDS -- losses we presume are permanent. Could it be that by giving your son back to you, Jesus was trying to tell us that no death is permanent?
Interviewing Jesus
Asker: Why, Jesus, was your focus in this miracle on the weeping woman? You must have asked around because you learned quickly that this was her only son and that she was a widow. You did not give the widow a chance to cry out for mercy, but you anticipated her cry.
Jesus: Do not wait for the widow to cry out for mercy. We need to respect the widow. God sustains the widow. (See Psalm 146:9.) There are right ways to look after widows. "You shall not take a widow's garment in pledge" (Deuteronomy 24:17b). Every third year, scriptures tell us, we are to give a tithe of our produce to the widows in our towns. We are also to give to the Levites, aliens, and orphans so they will have enough to eat. (See Deuteronomy 26:12.) God "executes justice for ... the widow" (Deuteronomy 10:17, 18). Widows are not to be deprived of justice. (See Deuteronomy 27:19.) "Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation" (Psalm 68:5).
Caring for the needy is not news to these people. They need to hear the truth again in a new way so it is real to them, so they can connect. It is one thing to hear the scriptures theoretically. It is another to live out the implications of scripture in caring for each other.
Asker: Jesus, we hear you speak once to the woman and once to her son. When you told the woman not to weep, I wondered what you knew that we did not. Then you told her son to rise. That made no sense at all. The man was dead. God cannot just go around raising people from the dead through God's good compassion. Many widows have only sons who die. How would God choose? Why not resurrect everyone? What would be the criteria? There must be another reason for this. Were you trying to give us the encouragement of the resurrection yet to come for all of us? Jesus, was healing the widow's son a whim, an impulse of yours or of the Parent God? Were you trying to make a point to the large crowd that came to Nain with you?
Jesus: We have a precedent set by the story of the widow who fed Elijah. God took care of her. (For the story, see 1 Kings 17:8-16 in section five of this chapter.) It is almost easier to consider the great, impersonal vastness of an invisible God than to grasp God's specific caring for each person.
We know the right way to live. Absent from Hebrew law was the provision of inheritance for a widow unless brothers of her deceased husband were available. Then they had to take her in and marry her. Even then, sometimes they refused.
In my day, the widow had no voice. She was the most vulnerable of persons. If the widow is mute, then someone must speak for her. Is this voice not an extension of God's caring? The sense of loss through death remains the same in your day. While the process of grieving still is necessary, the outcome need not be. The widow of your day has the possibility of rebuilding her life and finding her voice.
Asker: Today, when the husband dies, it is too uncomfortable for some families to be together. The grief is strong when the daughter-in-law sees her brothers-in-law and when the family sees their son's widow. The family acknowledges each other on holidays, but it may be only perfunctory. Sometimes there are no grandchildren to keep the family connected. Then the widow might be a hanger-on if she did not get on with her life. With our high divorce rate, everything is transitory. Widowhood is tough luck. In the name of independence, the widow continues in a way similar to the divorced woman. At the least, she has a temporarily lowered standard of living.
It is better at first to continue wearing the wedding ring and pretend when among strangers. The temptation, after the initial chaos of widowhood, might be to succumb to hiding, invisible behind the walls of one's house. Today's widow also has little voice unless she works to have it.
Jesus: In your day, however, the widow usually has a choice. She does not have to be a victim. She may look to a remarriage to avoid loneliness rather than solely to survive. In some ways, your situation with widows is similar to those of my day. With provision of insurance or an estate, you do not have the same sense of family support. Community is as hard to come by in present times as it was in my day. Community requires work.
Women of your day are expected to be independent. They are supposed to be able to pick up the pieces and start a new life. My point, then and now, is that the current motto need not be, "Every person for himself or for herself." I call you as members of a community to care for and look out for each other even within the moment. I call for you to keep alive a sense of community. I tell the widow not to lose hope.
Perhaps you must tell the analogous, other mute widow of your day not to lose hope. This most vulnerable person in the approaching millennium might be the second-time pregnant child-mother. Through Jeremiah, God said, "Leave your orphans, I will keep them alive; and let your widows trust in me" (Jeremiah 49:11). Who is going to sustain the child-mothers in your country?
Asker: This is a most fragile trust, which one must have, that she will survive. In the Jewish community, family and religion were all intertwined as extended family. Our families fragment. They scatter all over the country. The closest we come today to playing the extended family is the annual or five-year reunion, the weddings, and the funerals that return us to our roots.
Jesus: Who is your family today? What about the family of God? Consider that the closest you might come to the Jewish extended family is the idea of church family.
Asker: Does the idea of family still carry weight today? Of course, intact families still exist. Long-distance families do overcome the obstacles to survival. Children from broken families can be amazingly resilient. The analogy of the family of God may have fit in Old Testament times. In reality, for how many people is "family" still a strong model? What are the family connections today?
Jesus: The family nucleus is whoever happens to be around. Persons must take the given and incorporate it into a renewed concept of present, temporary family. Hospice functions as a family for persons living with AIDS and cancers. Support groups are substitute families. We may not have choice in who our family is. However, we can choose with whom we will surround ourselves. God adopts each of us and treats us as God's own. We can adopt others, neighbors, and treat them as our own.
Asker: Before we close our conversation, Jesus, I would like to return to the story. His mother's only son, that is how we first meet the woman in Nain. Was this the description given because you may have been Mary's only son, God's only Son? Was this one reason for your compassion? Could you see your own mother walking beside your bier? You would give your mother to the care of the beloved disciple. You would give John to her as a new son. Here is the word again, but as a prelude to what is coming -- "Jesus gave him to his mother." You did not raise the young man to new life then send him on his way. You assigned his purpose. You presented him to his mother.
Jesus: A gift honors another person. A gift is voluntary, without pay or conditions. Might we live as if we were gifts to each other?
4. Words
Bier
A bier is a litter or bed on which a body was placed before burial. It was portable, probably several wooden boards.
Burial
Relatives prepared the body for burial and mourned the death. All affected by the mourning participated in the lamenting. The lament was ritualized with a proper time for the proper response. Proper responses were the striking of oneself, tears, a shrill cry or wail, or other exclamations of grief. No wonder Jesus' attention was drawn to the burial procession at Nain.
Because the lack of burial was considered a great tragedy, to provide burial for another person was a commendable act. Mourning that began immediately following death continued to the tomb, around the tomb itself, and generally lasted a week. Women played an important role as paid, professional mourners. They cried out and composed burial poems that consoled, eulogized, and lamented. According to rabbinical writings on the law, even for the poorest burial, at least two flutes and one wailing woman were essential.1
Family
Israelites were encouraged to have large families for both economic and religious reasons. The family grew by birth and by covenants made with other groups and individuals. Because the Hebrew family was an inclusive community, biblical mention of "in the house of" or "the clan of" could mean a variety of persons. Beyond persons of blood or marriage, households also consisted of slaves, concubines, foreigners, and hired servants.
Families were communities of persons. Additionally, the family functioned as a religious community, preserving past traditions and passing them on through worship and instruction. Israel was a community of faith rather than a nation. In The Source, James A. Michener suggests that for the Hebrew people religion "is an internal thing," a system for organizing life rather than for constructing buildings.2
Because the family was patriarchal, children, especially sons, were important. They carried on the family name. Young women only became important when they married and joined the husband's household. A woman's primary function was to produce children, to show them love and care for them, and to be concerned for their behavior and for their relation to God. In return, she asked respect and obedience from her children.
Jewish law made no security provision for a widow to inherit part of her late husband's property. However, the requirement of the levirate marriage may have provided inheritance of that property. This is the law as stated in Deuteronomy 25:5-6:
When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
The Sadducees later abbreviated the law when attempting to cause Jesus to stumble over Jewish law: "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother' " (Matthew 22:24). Such arrangements ideally prevented the marriage of a Hebrew woman to an outsider. By that, the name of the deceased husband continued in Israel. The Jewish historian, Josephus, suggested a threefold purpose: to keep the family name, to preserve the family estate, and to provide for the welfare of the widow.3
To preserve both the name and the inheritance of the family, the widow had to remarry. However, since a widow could publicly scorn before the elders the brother-in-law who refused to marry her, the ideal law obviously was not always a reality. (See Deuteronomy 25:7-10.) The possibility of a remarriage probably demanded strategic negotiating and awakening of personal interest. Community took as much work and was as hard to find then as in the present decade.
Nain
Nain was a town in southwest Galilee about five miles southeast of Nazareth and about 25 miles or a day's journey from Capernaum. Luke alone names the town in connection with this story (Luke 7:11). Its name may be a derivative of a word meaning pleasant or delightful. Nain has a fine view of the Plain of Esdraelon. A spring brings moisture to groves of olives and figs. Its ruins say the village was once important.
The name Nain survives in the modern Arab village of Nein. This village lies on the lower slope of the northwest side of Neli Dahi, a hill between Gilboa and Tabor. In Old Testament times, it was known as the hill of Moreh (Judges 7:1) and has also been called Little Hermon.
Prophet
A prophet is the mouthpiece of God. Speaking by divine inspiration, a prophet expresses and interprets divine will. The prophetic message may take the form of a tirade or judgment, an assurance or promise, an anguished cry or confession, or a symbolic act or relationship.
The people of Jesus' day, not knowing how God would come as Messiah, yet fully expecting the revival of prophecy, must have sustained an intense air of anticipation. With this on their minds, their spontaneous response to the miracle at Nain was "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" (Luke 7:16).
Aaron Copland described how one listens with rapt attention at a concert. The composer spoke analogously of such an expectant interest in the first Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard:
Expectancy denotes the ability to lend oneself eagerly to the thing heard while attention bespeaks an interest in the thing said, a preoccupation with an understanding of what is being heard.4
The miracles Jesus performed and the nature of his preaching and his teaching pointed to Jesus as a prophet. Jesus called himself a prophet when he said no prophet's hometown accepts its prophet. (See Luke 4:24, Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4, and John 4:44.)
Widow
A widow's clothing identified her. She put on the "garments of her widowhood" (Genesis 38:19). Writers of The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible5 suggest the word "widow" in Hebrew and the word meaning "to be mute" are similar. In biblical times, a widow carried disgrace in this inferior position because the death of a husband before old age was considered a judgment for sin. See Ruth 1:20-21 and Isaiah 54:4.
Jesus showed the widow compassion. His actions reinforced and modeled the older Jewish laws regarding vulnerable persons. Social mores grouped together widows, orphans, and temporary residents. They are people to feed either directly (see Deuteronomy 14:29) or by allowing them to glean the fields at harvest (see Deuteronomy 24:19). Householders also were to leave some olives on the trees and grapes on the vine for sojourners, orphans, and widows (see Deuteronomy 24:20, 21).
In "The Dilemma Of Celebration," Sheila Collins, theologian of the politics of Appalachian women, writes, "If theology is to be meaningful for us, it must not start with abstractions but with our stories."6 Collins says she found the idea of salvation among the Appalachian women dynamic and this worldly, but the telling about it must be "collective rather than a whining women's litany."
Consider the story of the widow to whom God sent Elijah as well as the widow to whom God sent Jesus in the present story. (See the Old Testament reading for this Sunday, 1 Kings 17:8-24.) In both, readers have the choice of hearing "a whining woman's litany" or of finding the absence of a whine in the widow's voice. Collins suggests that we must ask the right questions of our own stories to be able to understand the Bible stories of long ago.
Word
Consider the play on the word "word." Not only did word spread throughout Judah, that is through the gossip mill and the stories, but also "the word" in the fuller sense of active and being through Jesus spread throughout the land. The word was not merely empty words but something living and dynamic. Jesus made the word live, as defined in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus was the embodiment of the word of God. Jesus revealed God's plan and purpose for humankind.
5. Gospel Parallels
As with three earlier stories in Cycle C, this miracle and the following story, "The Lepers," are without direct parallel. However, several word cross-references given below may be helpful.7
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 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. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" (Luke 7:11-14).
No cross-references.
The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother (Luke 7:15).
In the Old Testament story reviewed below about the healing of another widow's son, Elijah went down from the upper chamber into the house and "gave him to his mother" (1 Kings 17:23). The woman, seeing this as proof, said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God" (1 Kings 17:24). A similar response arose from those who witnessed the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain.
Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" (Luke 7:16).
Three other references for people glorifying God include those who witnessed the healing of the paralytic (Matthew 9:8 and Luke 5:26) and the shepherds who saw Jesus in the manger (Luke 2:20).
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowds called him "prophet" (Matthew 21:11). After he fed the multitudes, the crowds again called him "prophet" (John 6:14). The derisive Pharisee in whose house Jesus ate commented that if Jesus were a prophet, he would have known the character of the woman who bathed his feet with her tears and anointed them with ointment (Luke 7:39). One of the two who met but did not recognize the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus referred in conversation to Jesus as a prophet (Luke 24:19).
This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country (Luke 7:17).
Eight of the thirteen "spread" references in the Gospels refer to the widespread travel of the news about Jesus and his activities. See Matthew 4:24, 9:26, 9:31; Mark 1:28, 1:45; and Luke 4:14, 5:15.
Luke 7:11-17
Two other New Testament and two Old Testament healing stories hold similarities with this miracle. In the New Testament are the healing of Jairus' daughter (Cycle B, Miracle 7, Mark 5:21-43) and Jesus' raising Lazarus (Cycle A, Miracle 3, John 11:1-45). In the earlier story, Jairus' daughter reportedly had died. Jesus took the child by the hand and said, "Little girl, get up" (Mark 5:41). The father approached Jesus.
In the latter miracle the brother of Mary and Martha and the friend of Jesus had been dead four days (John 11:1-44). It was also a relative, the sister, Martha, who went out to meet Jesus as he came into Bethany. She proclaimed Jesus as Messiah before he raised Lazarus. (See John 11:22-27.) See also John 11:43-44: "When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go' " (John 11:44).
The Old Testament stories are found in 1 Kings 17:1-24 (the Old Testament lectionary reading for Proper 5) and 2 Kings 4:32-37. In the 1 Kings story, the woman was also a widow. Her son had also just died, but she blamed Elijah, as a man of God, for the death of her son. The woman was holding her son. Elijah took him from her and carried him to the chamber where he himself was lodging and laid the boy on his own bed. Elijah cried out to God asking God if he were the cause of this death. Then Elijah lay over the child three times and asked God to put his life back into him. God did so.
In the 2 Kings healing story, the mother is the main focus. She was a wealthy woman who extended hospitality to the holy man, Elisha, whenever he passed that way. Wanting to repay her for the kindness, Elisha learned that she and her elderly husband had no son. Elisha proclaimed that she would have a son. It was this child who went to his father in the field with a strong headache. The woman went off herself to find Elisha. Elisha sent his staff on ahead with his servant Gehazi with the instructions to lay it on the face of the child. It did not work. When Elisha arrived, he shut the door on the child and himself, prayed to God and lying on the child, revived him. Then he called the mother and said, "Take up your child" (2 Kings 4:36). She fell at his feet then took up her son.
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1. See The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1.
2. James A. Michener, The Source (New York: Random House Inc., 1965).
3. See The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 3.
4. See Music and Imagination (Cambridge, MA: The Fellows of The Harvard College, 1952).
5. See Volume 4.
6. See page 151 in Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, editors, Womanspirit Rising (San Francisco: Harper, 1992).
7. Cross-references are from the self-pronouncing reference RSV edition of The Holy Bible (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1962). Texts are from NRSV.
