resounding compassion

Some observations on Luke 7:11-17, the story of the widow's son raised at Nain, a text I preached on some weeks ago when it came up in the lectionary:

The story is about compassion, God's suffering with us in Jesus.  Jesus' compassion for the widow is central to the text.  Luke reports that, "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her" (v. 13).  Luke underscores God's compassion for the widow in the detail that the "man who had died" and who "was being carried out" was "his mother's only son" (v. 12).  The phrase "only son" immediately evokes other New Testament texts, most notably John 3:16, in which Jesus himself is the only begotten of God whom God gave, even unto death, out of his love for the world.  Consequently, the tears of the widow for her only son are as the tears of the Father for his only Son, the very experience of loss in which human pain touches divine pain.  The Spirit of the Father in the person of the Son recognized the widow's pain for her only son as God's own, and was moved to action.

Further emphasis is laid on the close association between the divine and human experience of suffering in the crowd's acclamation of Jesus in response to the raising of the widow's son.  As Jesus had raised the son from his bier, so the crowd testifies, "a great prophet has risen among us!" (v. 16).  Just as the widow's son was dead and raised to life, so Jesus will die and be raised.  The crowd's acclamation that that prophet has even now arisen, powerful even over death, is an anticipation of God's ultimate victory over death in the resurrection of the prophet Jesus from his own grave.  Luke thereby invites the reader to see in the experience of the widow's son from death to life the eventual resurrection of God's Son from death.  All in all, the suffering of God in the suffering of humanity is an illustration of compassion, God's suffering with his people.

If compassion is God's suffering with us, then the antithesis of compassion is the posture of separation from the suffering of another.  The widow's predicament in this story, as in so many other biblical examples, is a suffering of separation from the men from whom she has been cut off.  In this story that separation is a result of the death of her son, though within its broader Lukan and canonical context, the separation of women from men is due to the unfaithfulness of men.  One example occurs subsequent to this story in the same chapter, the story of the woman who anoints Jesus' feet while he is sitting in the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50).  The issue in that story, as it is in the story of the widow of Nain, is the evidence of Jesus' prophetic identity.  Thus, whereas the crowd of Nain acclaimed Jesus a prophet for his mighty deed of compassion on the widow, Simon the Pharisee can only doubt the prophetic status of Jesus due to Jesus' refusal to reject the woman's act of love toward him.  Simon's concern is that the woman is a "sinner", and that Jesus' acceptance of her gift shows that he is unaware of her status, thus negating his status as prophet. Of course, the point of the story is that Simon, not Jesus, is the man unable to perceive the things of God; whereas Simon seeks to protect worldly status and privilege, Jesus values mercy and the repentance of sinners unto salvation.  In light of our first point, where Jesus values compassion, Simon would uphold separation.  Simon, consequently, is the embodiment of anti-compassion in the narrative, the contrast to Jesus' overwhelming compassion both in this story and in the story of the widow at Nain.

In valuing separation over compassion, Simon commits the sin of other men in the biblical narrative who abandoned women to their shame as sinners in the eyes of society.  An Old Testament example, the story of Tamar and the sons of Judah (Gen 38:1-26), brings together the themes of shame and death in the meaning of widowhood.  In that story, Tamar is not only a widow due to the death of her husbands (in turn the brothers Er and Onan), but a "sinner" in the eyes of Judah her father-in-law who blames her for the death of his sons.  As Judah should have provided for Tamar in her loss, he relinquishes responsibility by sending her back to her father's house.  Judah, by cultural convention responsible for Tamar his daughter, banishes her to the shame of separation from his household.  Judah too, therefore, is an embodiment of an all-too-common masculine aloofness, the anti-compassion to the compassion of the man Jesus.

The examples of Simon the Pharisee and Judah, therefore, paint the broader biblical context, both Lukan and canonical, in which the desperation of widows may be clearly seen.  Widows, as well as other women whom men have left behind, bore not simply the sting of death but the suspicion of society for the deaths of their husbands.  The predicament of "widowhood", therefore, is not simply a matter of losing a husband to death, but the abandonment of women by men to bear the shame of society.

A folk song from the American context captures well the widespread phenomenon of the separation of women from men in the South African context.

From a teenage lover to an unwed mother,
kept undercover like some bad dream
But unwed fathers, they can't be bothered,
they run like water through a mountain stream.  

Central to the salvation that Jesus brings is the restoration of men to women.  In the story, the compassion of Jesus for the widow led to the raising of her son from death.  What Jesus said to the corpse, he says to all men who have left women behind: "Young man, I say to you, rise!" (7:14).  And just as Jesus "gave [the young man] to his mother", so all men quickened by the voice of Jesus shall return to their wives and mothers as loving husbands and sons.

The compassion of Jesus in the lives of his people will resound across the earth.  The text moves from the predicament of death in "a town called Nain" to the proclamation of God's grace through Jesus "throughout Judea and all the surrounding country" (7:11, 17).  The good that is done in Nain is made known elsewhere. The compassion of Jesus spreads to all from wherever it is put into practice.

Then let the compassion that was in Jesus abound through his church.

-Joe