In this section of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus
speaks through his actions and today we hear about a miracle of resurrection. This
widow has nothing left, her security and her loved ones are gone. Jesus reaches
out to her, crossing cultural boundaries, as to come in contact with a dead
body according to the laws of the time would make one ‘unclean’. The crowd must
have been shocked as Jesus moved towards the bier. No one approached Jesus or
asked him to intervene in this situation. He acts out of deep sympathy and
compassion for the woman who has lost her only son.
Often we can give up on people, those
who suffer addiction, refugees, prisoners, people who endure one tragedy after
another. In today’s Gospel we see an example of Jesus restoring someone to
life. He reaches through the social, moral and cultural stigmas of the time and
performs the ultimate miracle. We can ask ‘did he really do this?’; ‘is this possible?’
but one clear interpretation of the
passage for us today is that Jesus restores people; He restores life to the man;
He restores the son to his mother; He restores the crowd’s faith through his
deep compassion. Through Jesus the crowd experience God’s presence among them
in a time of total despair. Today we might recall moments where God reached
into our desperate situations and restored life.
“Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral
conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ.” Brian Zahnd
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