Encounters with Jesus: Widow of Nain

Luke 7:11-17

We all know the story of Thomas who was absent when Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection. When he returned they told him they had seen Jesus but he said to them,
“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Frederick Buechner writes about Thomas as a practical, no-nonsense kind of man.

Imagination was not Thomas’s long suit. He called a spade a spade. He was a realist. He didn’t believe in fairy tales, and if anything else came up that he didn’t believe in or couldn’t understand, his questions could be pretty direct.

Eight days after appearing to the disciples, Jesus came back,

Thomas was there and got his wish. Jesus let him see him and hear him and touch him, and not even Thomas could hold out against evidence like that. He had no questions left to ask and not enough energy left to ask them with even if he’d had a couple. All he could say was, “My Lord and my God!” and Jesus seemed to consider that under the circumstances that was enough.

Even though he said the greater blessing is for those who can believe without seeing, it’s hard to imagine that there’s a believer anywhere who wouldn’t have traded places with Thomas, given the chance, and seen that face and heard that voice and touched those ruined hands.

The disciple John wrote in his letter: (1 John 1:1–3)
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you,

John lived a long life of obedience to Jesus, was known as the apostle of love because he talked so often about love. John knew what it was to be loved by Jesus. He knew what it was like to be hugged by Jesus. He knew what it was like to sit and talk with Jesus. John persevered with hope because had personally experienced what it was like to be with the one in whom he hoped. When John had his revelation of the risen Jesus on the island of Patmos, it was not the first time he had seen Jesus in his heavenly glory. He, along with Peter and James, had seen Jesus in his heavenly glory talking with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. If it ever got difficult for John, he had real experiences to lean on.

We have a much more difficult time relating to Jesus. I first learned about Jesus in Sunday School, coloring pages of illustrations of Bible stories. I heard about Jesus in church but it was not until I was in university that I first encountered Jesus. I began to consider if God was real and when it became clear to me that God was real and was present, I had to decide if I was going to submit to him. I did and then the words of the Bible came alive as the Holy Spirit began to instruct me.

Over the years of my Christian life I have learned a lot, experienced a lot, but I have never seen Jesus. I have never touched him or heard him speak as John did or Thomas did. And yet Jesus said to Thomas:
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I don’t feel particularly blessed. If it was up to me, I would have a weekly meeting with Jesus, sitting and talking, listening to the advice he had for me. I would take great notes and work hard all week to do what he had told me to do so that I could come back and hear him say, “You did a great job this week. I’m proud of you.” I would tell him about my troubles and listen to him telling me, “Don’t worry, I am with you.”

But that is not how it works. I open my Bible and read the words on the page. Sometimes they leap out at me but other times they remain on the page. Sometimes I read and think, “That’s interesting,” but other times I have read my Bible and can check off the chapter on my “read through the Bible in a year” list but that is all that seems to have been accomplished. I pray and talk about the concerns of my life but I hear nothing.

I come to church and take communion and although I say this is the body of Christ and this is the blood of Christ, it is just a piece of bread bought from some hanut and a dip into some grape juice. I have to have faith that there is a spiritual strengthening that is taking place during communion.

In all of these things we do as Christians, there is a very weak connection between ourselves and God. We have a thought that comes to our mind and we say, “God spoke to me today.” Really? Was that God or was that your imagination? We meet someone on the street we had been wanting to talk with and we thank God for his orchestration in our lives. But people bump into each other all the time. Someone is in an accident and they survive and we thank God for his protection but what about the other people in the accident who died? Did God not care enough about them to protect them?

We are desperate for a physical, sensual connection with Jesus. Like John, we want to see him, touch him, hear him speak. So the church has the Shroud of Turin and relics of Jesus to which we can look and see evidence of his existence and presence. Periodically someone sees Jesus or Mary on the side of a building or on a piece of toast and everyone comes to see this physical manifestation of Jesus.

This is also why Christians are often so desperate for a supernatural cure for their physical problems. Someone with back pain can go to the doctor and have it fixed, but they suffer through months and months of pain because they want a supernatural healing. The goal is not to have the back healed, the goal is to have a physical, material experience of Jesus.

Thomas said
“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

But Jesus said, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

It is clear that Jesus wants us to believe in him and obey him and follow him. But our path is more difficult, in some ways, than for the disciples. We have to believe and obey and follow Jesus without tangible evidence of his existence. Jesus wants us to follow without seeing him so that our faith will grow and this is why he said we are blessed. As we follow without seeing with our eyes, we have to see with eyes of faith. As we follow without hearing his voice, we have to hear with ears of faith. It is because God wants to grow our faith that we have to work harder to encounter Jesus.

But we do need to believe in Jesus, follow Jesus, obey Jesus. And in order to do that we need to encounter Jesus so that he becomes more than a religious figure. We need to have personal encounters with Jesus. Jesus has to become more and more real to us. We need to develop eyes of faith so we can see Jesus in our lives. We need to develop ears of faith so we can hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us. We need to encounter Jesus.

So we are beginning a series of eight sermons this Sunday: Encounters with Jesus. Each week we are going to take a look at an encounter Jesus had with a person or a group of people. We will see the character of Jesus. We will see the heart of Jesus. We will see the creativity of Jesus. We will see the power of Jesus. We will see the love of Jesus.

And then we will be challenged to seek our own encounter with Jesus. Each week someone will stand and share with us a story of their encounter with Jesus. It might be about how they came to believe in Jesus. It might be about how Jesus helped them through a difficult time. But in some way they encountered Jesus and in telling us their story, we will be encourage do seek our own encounter with Jesus.

We will hear from the Gospels about an encounter with Jesus. We will hear the story someone tells about an encounter with Jesus and then we will challenge each of you to seek out your own encounter with Jesus. Each week we will encourage you to take time to sit down, quiet yourself, read a bit of the Bible, pray and then write down the one question you would most like to ask Jesus. And then write down the question you think Jesus would most want to ask you. We will do this each week for eight weeks. There is a sheet in the bulletin on which you can write your questions. Keep this in your Bible so you can use it each week. It will be interesting to see where God takes us week by week and I suspect we will be led into a deeper and more intimate encounter with Jesus as we take time each week to consider the two questions.

Today we are going to look at the encounter Jesus had with the Widow of Nain.

This story is the first lesson in Paul Miller’s Person of Jesus study and I will use his notes to help us see more clearly what happened in these seven verses from Luke.

Nain is a town nestled in a beautiful valley in southern Galilee and had a population of about five hundred people. In this town a widow laid her son’s dead body on the floor of her home, groomed his hair, dressed him in the best clothes she could find, then placed his body on an open wicker basket, face up, arms folded.

This was not the time she had done this. She was a widow which means she had also buried her husband. She knew what to do but she was not rejoicing in her knowledge. She was now a widow with no son and this meant she was a woman in poverty. When her husband had died, she had taken comfort in having a son who would look after her. But then her son had gotten sick or perhaps he had an accident and despite her prayers, despite her care, he had died and now she had no legal right to property and would have to survive on whatever the people in the town gave her. With the death of her son she had become a charity case, maybe not a beggar but the next thing to it.

Why had this happened to her? People in the town talked and speculated about what sin she had committed that had brought this punishment to her. She was clearly a woman out of favor with God. Why? Who knows? But she must have done something wrong to have lost everything.

Jewish funerals were usually held at six in the evening, after the day’s work was done. So in the evening the men came to carry the wicker basket with her dead son in it. The professional mourners came to weep and wail. Her friends and neighbors came and she set out in the funeral procession that would take her son to the cemetery where he would be buried. Most of the town would have come out for the funeral so there was a large crowd of 300-500 people.

And then came Jesus.
Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

The picture here is of two crowds coming together, intersecting each other: the smaller crowd from Nain – a considerable crowd – being met by the larger crowd – a great crowd – coming with Jesus. So Jesus with about 1,000 people following him came to the smaller crowd of 500 people.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”

As Jesus approached he saw the professional mourners and the wicker basket. He knew this was a funeral procession. But his eyes continued looking and focused on a woman who was grieving, not because she was paid to do this, not because she was a professional mourner, but because she was grieving the loss of someone close to her. The text does not say Jesus saw the crowd or the dead son, it says he saw her. And when he saw her he had compassion on her. His heart went out to her.

Jesus looked and he understood what she was experiencing. Jesus received insights from his Father about people, as he did with the Samaritan woman at the well when he knew she had had five husbands and the man she was with now was not her husband. In the same way, he knew she did not have any other sons. He knew she was alone and destined for a life of poverty. Jesus knew what she was experiencing. Perhaps tears came to his eyes. His response was not indifferent; he felt her pain.

The compassion of Jesus moved into action. He stepped toward her and told her, “Do not weep.” Jesus could have gone straight to work and raised her son to life, but he first went to her and reassured her. “Do not weep,” before he took action. Jesus gave her hope because he knew what was going to happen.

Picture the scene. The larger crowd with Jesus has parted allowing the smaller crowd following the funeral basked to pass through. Up to 1,500 people crowded on a dusty road. One crowd pushing to the side, the second crowd making their way through and then …

Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.

Jesus looked, saw the woman, had compassion and then acted. He went up to the woman to tell her not to weep and then he stopped the funeral procession. In all the commotion of the intersection of the two crowds, there is a center and the two crowds are now encircling Jesus and the widow and her dead son. Every eye is focused on this. Those who cannot see are asking what is happening.

Jesus did not have to yell to tell them to stop. There was authority in his being. He touched the wicker basket and in an act of raw, supernatural power for good he said,
“Young man, I say to you, arise.”

And what happened?
And the dead man sat up and began to speak

This is an incredible miracle and where do you think the attention of Jesus was? Where would your attention be? Where do you think the crowd was looking?

A young man died, was wrapped for burial, was in the process of being carried out to the cemetery to be buried and now he is sitting up and talking. Every eye was on the young man who was raised from the dead. Every eye was on the young man who was now speaking. What does someone say when they are raised from the dead? Wouldn’t you want to hear what he had to say? Wouldn’t you be focused on the man who had been dead but was not alive and talking?

But not every eye was focused on the son. Look at the picture on the bulletin cover. Where is Jesus looking? He is looking at the widow.

the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

In this encounter with Jesus the widow has been the focus all the way through the story. Jesus did not look and have compassion for the dead son. It was not because Jesus thought it was such a tragedy that a young man should die that he raised him to life. Jesus saw the woman and had compassion on her and for her sake he raised her son to life.

This woman who faced poverty now faced life. She had a son who would take care of her. He could be married (who would not want to marry someone who had died and come back to life) and have sons who would continue to care for her. She now had a future.

This is a great story because in this encounter with Jesus, we see a pattern for his interactions with all those he encountered in his ministry.

Jesus looked. Jesus saw. Jesus had compassion. And then Jesus acted. We will see this over and over again in the next seven weeks.

Jesus continues to look, see, have compassion and act, but we have a harder time seeing it. We have to work harder to see what people in the gospels say immediately. We have to see by faith what people then saw by sight.

Maybe it is that I have no job and don’t know what I am going to do. Where will I find work? How will I feed myself and if I have a family, how will I be able to provide for them?

It would be great if we could have our weekly sit down with Jesus and hear him tell us, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” But we don’t have that easy a time of it. We have to sit down, tell God about our worries and anxieties and then we have to listen to the low whisper of the Holy Spirit tell us not to worry.

The compassion of Jesus for the widow of Nain and for you in your situation are the same but you are blessed because in listening for the low whisper of assurance God is building your faith and faith is the wealth you will carry with you into heaven.

Whatever you are experiencing this morning, Jesus sees you, he has compassion and he will act. In the story today Jesus had compassion on a woman who had suffered the death of her husband and son and had no future. Over the coming weeks we will see the compassion of Jesus for his cousin John the Baptist who was in prison facing death and was wondering if it was really true that Jesus was the Messiah. We will see the compassion of Jesus for a man who was paralyzed whose friends would stop at nothing to bring him to Jesus. We will see the compassion of Jesus for a Pharisee who thought he was righteous and for a woman who knew she was a sinner. We will see the compassion of Jesus for three men who wanted to follow Jesus but were preoccupied by other concerns. We will see the compassion of Jesus for two women, one who wanted to sit and listen and the other who felt the responsibility to work. We will see the compassion of Jesus for religious leaders who demanded a miracle as an easy way out for them to believe. We will see the compassion of Jesus for his beloved Mary who was grieving his death.

There is not an end to the compassion of Jesus for us. So whatever your situation, take some time with Jesus this week. Sit and listen, pour out your heart and listen for the low whisper of the Holy Spirit. Then when you have sat and listened, write down your question. Think and pray before you write down your question. What do you most want to ask Jesus this week? Then take some time to sit with your question asked. Listen. Pray. Then write down the question you think Jesus wants to ask you.

We are going to do this each week as we approach Easter Sunday. Have an encounter with Jesus this week. Let your faith be stretched and listen to what he wants to say to you. The heart of Jesus is reaching out to you. Jesus knows your situation. He loves you and he will act in your life. He may not act in the way you want him to, but he will act out of his love for you in a way that will grow your faith and prepare you to be with him in heaven.