As he drew near to the gate of the city,
a man who had died was being carried out,
the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.
This death of the son, who was the only child of a widowed mother, may have brought to mind Jesus' own approaching death and the grief this would bring to his own mother.
When the Lord saw her,
he was moved with pity for her and said to her,
"Do not weep."
The pity Jesus felt for this woman might be taken as representing, in a way, the power of Mary's intercession. Jesus was moved with sadness for this mother and so for that of his own mother who would be able to relate to it so profoundly. The deep comprehension of this woman's loss that Jesus and Mary would share would lead them to pity all the deceased children of the world, whether the death was physical or spiritual. Mary wept first for Jesus and then for every son that was meant to be united to Jesus but was still not enjoying the fullness of life. And Jesus was moved with pity for them all, both because it was inherently a sad situation, but also because of the way it touched the heart of his mother.
He stepped forward and touched the coffin;
at this the bearers halted,
and he said, "Young man, I tell you, arise!"
The pity Jesus felt for this man and for his mother was not simply an idle and ineffective sorrow. It was not like the sorrow of the world which leads only onward inexorably toward death. It was powerful. It halted the forces bearing the coffin toward destruction. It raised the young man from death to life again.
The dead man sat up and began to speak,
and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Jesus is pained by every relationship that sin and death have broken or rendered less than they were meant to be. And his mother shares his heart. We should avail ourselves of the pity they feel, the fact that their hearts are moved with compassion for us. They want to enter the dark, silent, and isolated, places of grief and brief new life. Those who once lived in spiritual death can learn to speak the lifegiving words of the Gospel. Those headed from death to death can change trajectory, going instead from life to more life, from glory to glory. The results of Jesus entering into these dark places, the results of the sorrowful heart of his mother calling him there, is always going to be as it was in the case at Nain:
Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming,
"A great prophet has arisen in our midst,"
and "God has visited his people."
Something beyond the merely human had occured. Something that could only be accounted for by God himself had been accomplished. And it all began in the heart of a grieving mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment