he was moved with pity for her and said to her,
“Do not weep.”
His pity is for the mother. He has compassion for her great loss. He knows how hard the life of a widow can be. He sees a little bit of his own mother in every mother who suffers. In every widow he can't help but think of how he is to be taken from his own mother. His mother becomes Our Lady of Sorrows not because he delights in sorrows. This mother suffers not because Jesus takes pleasure in it. God does not delight in death.
We tend to take the world as it is and assume that God must be OK with it. We assume that an all-powerful God will change any aspect of reality that displeases him. There is no way that our imagination can hold in tension the idea of God's ferocious compassion and love, the pain of the world, and his power. No way, that is, except to fix our eyes on Jesus. When we look at Jesus this morning we see the compassion of God revealed. In Jesus we see God's restraint. His love and compassion don't allow him to make the quick fix or to take the easy way out. We see that his restraint in allowing evil is caused by a love that insists on the greatest possible good.
This mother does experience the loss of her son. Jesus does not prevent it. As with Lazarus, she can say that if Jesus had been there he would not have died. Yet as Jesus said to the disciples about Lazarus, "I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him." Jesus says to the widow's son, “Young man, I tell you, arise!" and the dead man sits and speaks. Jesus reveals his power and his love. Those who see this are amazed. They see a God who is both powerful and compassionate.
Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming,
“A great prophet has arisen in our midst,”
and “God has visited his people.”
But still we are plagued with doubt. Would not it have been better for this man to not die at all? In a way. But in a world where pain and death are impossible so too is choice. So too, therefore, is love. Jesus solves the problems inherent in choice rather than creating a world of automatons. Automatons may never deviate from the will of God. They won't create any pain for that reason. But they will not love. Jesus prefers a world where love is possible. And the ultimate destiny of that world is greater than any perfection a world without freedom can possess. This is because the destiny of this world does not stop at the pain and death. It stops in the risen life of heaven where our exulted freedom is finally fully committed to God.
The grace this morning is to know God's compassion even in a world where there is suffering. We are meant to read this gospel and see in his glance at the mother a compassion profound and all-encompassing. Doubts that suffering causes are meant to dissolve like mist in the light of that gaze of love.
It is love that makes sense of all the disparate pieces of goodness we see in the world. Love orders them. Love unifies them. This is what Paul is getting at when he talks about the one body with many parts. We need each part of the body of Christ. If all are mouths there is only shouting and no conversation. But unified in the love of Christ we can be ears when we need to listen, mouths when we need to speak, and hands when we need to help and heal. We cannot fully embrace this unity when we harbor doubts about its very source.
Let us therefore drink of the one Spirit. May we lay aside all doubt and drink deeply.
For he is good, the LORD, whose kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.
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