Luke
7: 11-17
By
Sister Rebecca
This
morning I would like to share some thoughts with you through the lens of
poverty. All
the scriptural readings have this common thread: Poverty. The readings present us with people who
are hopeless, in despair, incredible distress, neediness, and dire want. We hear of two widows losing their only sons,
and the Jerusalem community suffering from lack of the basics for life.
The
first story, from the Book of Kings, is about the Widow of Zarephath, whose son
had just died. Incredible deprivation and despair characterize this poor woman.
Just before the text we read this morning, this same woman and her son were
described as being on the brink of starvation.
The prophet Elijah was on the run, fleeing for his life and living in
exile. God provided him with food by means of a raven, and told him that this same
woman would provide him with food. We
may recall that she was ready to give up: she expected that she and her son
would have their last meal and die.
Thanks to Elijah, she was given a steady supply of food.
In
today’s story we see in this bereaved mother a deeply challenging type of faith.
She asks difficult questions regarding her understanding of sin, suffering, and
death. She sharply challenges Elijah, accusing him that his presence is what
has brought her sin to God’s attention, which is ultimately responsible for the
death of her son. This accusation leads
Elijah to confront God: he actually chastises God for bringing calamity upon
this poor mother. In these stories of
dire deprivation, we see a wonderful image of a God who in the previous section
of the Book of Kings intervened in a precarious situation. Now, we see God
listening to Elijah’s prayer for the dead son: “And the boy’s life returned to
him, and he lived.”
Elijah
gives the boy back to his mother. The
mother exclaims: You are a man of God. We need to keep in mind that Elijah
himself is in an exceedingly desperate situation, leading a precarious
existence, but he is still willing to act as God’s hands and feet on earth,
even when he himself is in dire straits.
The
widow’s doubt, and even the prophet’s struggle with this death, may also be our
own in these desperate times of sickness and death. It is easy to spiral down into
a belief in death-dealing powers, for this is what we witness in our world each
day.
Elijah’s
revival of the widow’s son is echoed in today’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus
revives another widow’s son. Jesus, like Elijah, shows
us today an aspect of his life as a pilgrim, a man of God walking in our
midst. He is on the road again. This time, with his followers in tow, he
approaches the gate of a town while another group is crossing in the opposite
direction outside the city. This crowd surrounds
a funeral procession of a widow’s young son on their way to the burial grounds.
Jesus, without being solicited to do
anything, feels compassion, tells the widow “Do not weep,” and then puts his
hand on the bier and says, “Young man, arise!”
The story couldn’t be simpler.
Yet, from the very depths of his being Jesus feels the wrenching suffering
of the poor woman’s incredible grief. No words are needed from her. Jesus sees, he feels, he acts—and he brings
forth new life. This is Jesus’ mission: “I have come to give life and to
give it in abundance.” Early in Luke’s Gospel,
Jesus announces his vision and mission in life: “The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;
he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted [literally, to those who are crushed],
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised.”
In all these scripture readings, we have also witnessed another
thread: compassion: the feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for
another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to
alleviate the suffering.
Whence
comes compassion? Is it not from love?
Both eros and agape together? In Hebrew, the word “compassion”
comes from the root “womb,” which enriches our image of God,
who loves the world with a deep and abiding compassion. In these texts, as in the others, love for
the afflicted is manifested through this feminine image of nurture and gentle
caring. It’s one image among many that we need to recapture and emphasize if we
are to return to a more complete and rounded image of God.
This
compassion is manifested by Elijah in our first reading, by the Corinthian
community in the second reading, and by Jesus, explicitly, in the third
reading. All have been profoundly moved
to action: bringing new life from death-dealing circumstances. In the second reading, Paul
holds up the Macedonians as exemplars of loving generosity to meet the needs of
the poor among the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem. The word “generosity” denotes
a kind of love that acts out of single-minded giving without reserve, without
strings attached. It is all about
koinonia: a community spirit of love.
In
today’s Gospel, when we hear Jesus say, “Young man, rise up,” isn’t he also
inviting us to experience this same reality? Rise up! Rise up from whatever holds
you down, drains out your energy, your pain, your doubts, your griefs, worries,
anxieties. Today, may his words resonate within us: the words I have spoken
to you are Spirit, and they are life.
The pandemic in our times has literally changed our world. With
what attitude do I choose to face the unknown future? Facing poverty in all its
facets: physical, psychological. and spiritual.
Do we need to examine our core values of conscience, which are greater
than anything surrounding us, that threatens us, where we feel anxious, worried,
or deprived? We are now leaving Chronos
time, and Kairos time is beckoning to us,
rising from within us. We are
being precipitated into liminal space, the space of unknowing, when we see the
open wounds of our country. At no other
time in my life have I experienced such a need for God—not for a God who will just
take away our problems, but God who will give us new wisdom, a vision to see when
and how I need to allow his love to be embodied and acted upon in my
life now. It seems to me that God is
calling us to abide in his love made visible in our times. We are not meant to pull down the blinds and
remain like a cocoon, in a hermetic self-sufficiency. But we are called to rise
up and allow ourselves to be irradiated by Divine love and make proactive
efforts to bear new life into this broken, suffering world of ours.
