I started working at my first church when I was a sophomore in college and I was so excited to have an opportunity to hang out with a core group of people who loved Jesus . . . because I loved Jesus and I loved people so this was the perfect match . . . we could sit around and talk about Jesus and worship Jesus and do mission projects for Jesus and maybe even introduce new people to Jesus.
But what I quickly realized is that within the church there are a lot of broken, devastated, completely wrecked people. I need to be honest with you . . . when I got into ministry; I was not at all prepared for the devastation of wrecked lives.
• I’ve sat with a mama holding her 6 month old baby daughter that had just died in her crib during her nap
• I’ve cried with a 13 year old girl whose mother had just committed suicide,
• I’ve been there when a man passed away and his siblings told his parents the “dirty family secret” that it was AIDS that took his life and not cancer.
• I could tell you story after story of people whose lives I’ve seen absolutely wrecked and how absolutely wrecked I was for them.
Which why I get so frustrated when pastors make every story a good story, and every verse a good verse, and every tale have a glorious ending and they don’t connect with people who are wrecked.
Just because somebody dresses nice and smiles on Sunday morning, just because we have a good laugh around the coffee pot, just because worship was amazing and a lot of people showed up . . . doesn’t mean that people aren’t dealing with a lot of pain and desperately want to connect to a God who has compassion on broken, wrecked people.
Because the reality is that your life is going to be wrecked. My life is going to be wrecked. And the more people you love, the more people you are willing to be in authentic community with, the more occasions you will have to be wrecked.
But what we learn this morning is that Jesus finds wrecked people. God comes to earth as the man named Jesus, and he goes looking for absolutely wrecked people.
At this point of Jesus’ ministry, he was popular . . . And he has just wrapped up a preaching tour and large crowds are following him to see what he’s going to do next.
But what he does is kind of weird in light of his rock star rabbi status . . . he heads towards a small town in the middle of nowhere called Nain. This town isn’t mentioned any other time in the bible so this is a pretty unimportant place located in the middle of nowhere.
Jesus walks a few days over hilly terrain, crowds following him, multitudes pursing him. They all want him to stop. They want to ask him questions. They want him to pray for them. They want him to plant a church, teach a bible study, or meet their “urgent” needs in some way.
But for some reason, Jesus is set on going to Nain and as he approaches the city gates, Jesus and the large crowd “with him” are met by another large crowd “with her “, a woman who has lost her son.
We don’t’ know much about this woman other that she’s a widow. And in that day, widows, along with orphans and strangers, were particularly vulnerable. You see, there was no social security or retirement that she could count on; widows had to rely on their sons to look after them.
But now she’s burying her son . . . not just a son but her only son.
Which means that this widow is without any means of economic support and relegated to the fringes of community; a community located in the middle of nowhere. In other words, this woman is absolutely wrecked.
When this procession left her home that day, her son’s body lying in a coffin she wasn’t planning for a celebration. No one was.
Everybody is mourning and grieving for this poor woman, this widow. This was a loud community wide event. The village had essentially shut down. Everyone is weeping and bawling. This young man’s friends are weeping. All the families who know this family are weeping. The friends are embracing this woman, because she is wrecked.
And in the midst of this pain and suffering . . . Jesus just shows up. She doesn’t ask for Jesus to come to her side and comfort her, she doesn’t fall on her knees and beg for her son’s life. All she does is cry.
But Jesus just comes to her. He puts aside the demanding needs of this fresh new ministry and goes out of his way to pursue this wrecked woman. That’s how Jesus works. He seeks and he finds wrecked people . . . I want you to see that because this is not how we generally work.
Most of us, when we find out that someone is really suffering, really hurting, we almost have to force yourself to pursue them. Because we know that it’s going to be exhausting. It’s going to be devastating. It’s going to be hard work to love them. Emotionally, it’s costly.
But that’s what Jesus does. He seeks and finds wrecked people. I just want you to see that.
When he enters in the city and his entourage collides with her entourage, he was moved with compassion for her. He approached her and says, “Do not weep.”
Now, if the crowd hadn’t hushed when he spoke to her, I’m sure it does when Jesus touches the coffin which the woman’s son lays. The text doesn’t say but I’m guessing that more than one or two Jaws dropped.
You see . . . you’re not supposed to reach into the casket and you’re not supposed to touch a dead body because it’s ceremonially unclean. And by touching it, it will make you unclean. It will make you defiled.
But Jesus walks right up to the body, reaches into the casket . . . the bearers stood still. Everyone is shocked, “What is he doing? He can’t touch the unclean dead . . . it’s against the rules.”
And Jesus reaches literally into death, and he touches the young man, and he gives him a command, just one word . . . “arise”. It’s the same word used to speak of Jesus’ own resurrection . . . and with this command the young man sat up and he began to speak.
Can you imagine the emotional transition in that moment? The man sits up, and starts’ talking, gets out of a coffin, and Jesus escorts him over to his mother.
• Can you see her face? Can you feel her joy?
• How long do you think she held her son in her arms?
• Do you think she was screaming for joy, jumping up and down?
• Do you think tears of shock and joy were streaming down her face?
• She got her son back alive and well and restored to health.
And that’s what Jesus does. He breaks the religious rules and he touches dead people and brings life.
Ephesians 2:4-5 says it this way, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
What the bible says is in the same way that this man is physically dead, we are spiritually dead . . . we are absolutely wrecked people but because of God’s great love for us, he goes out of his way to pursue us in order to bring us life.
You see, this story is about grace . . . pure, unadulterated, undiluted, unearned, un-asked-for grace.
This raising doesn’t happen because of a mother’s faith or her son’s worthiness. It happened because Jesus has compassion for her . . . period.
Once the shock wears off . . . a celebration begins and the two crowds become one gripped in common by both fear and praise.
It’s like a New Orleans jazz funeral after the body is lowered into the ground, and the mood shifts and brightly colored umbrellas burst open, the snare drummer and brass begin to play, and the funeral procession heads back to town to the raucous strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In”
It says that news about Jesus spread . . . people went back to work, to school, and back home, about their usual routines talking about Jesus, “Jesus is amazing, do you know him? You’re not gonna believe what he did . . . can I talk to you about him?
You see the right response to the person and work of Jesus is worship and mission.
It’s interesting though, it says that word of Jesus spread to “all of Judea” which is not the venue of this story. This story takes place in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the region of Galilee, yet word of the “great prophet” Jesus who has power over death is said to go to Judea . . . the place where he will be killed.
You see, in the midst of all of this, there is something else happening. A foreshadowing of things to come and a glimpse into what God intends for us.
Jesus does not just love a widow, and raise a son . . . he is also unveiling His kingdom . . . He’s showing his power over death and revealing a kingdom that has yet to come . . . it’s a kingdom in which there will be no more pain, no more suffering and no more death.
And as we read the story of the resurrected widow’s son, we are reminded of the death and resurrection of the Son of God. The parallels are curious:
• Jesus comes as the only Son of God who is deeply loved by his father . . . this is the widows only son and she deeply loves him
• And just as the widows son died, Jesus died on our behalf
• And as this young man rose from death, so Jesus rose from death to conquer death for all of the children of God.
You see, we don’t worship a God who is immune to suffering. Our Jesus suffered and died. And we don’t worship God the father who is indifferent to suffering.
If you’re hurting, he knows exactly what you feel like, because he was present for the death of the Son and he felt it.
But his promise is, “Trust me. Stick with me. We need to get through this. We need to get to the other side of resurrection. I have worked out all things for Good. I have a plan. And I know right now, it is exceedingly painful because I myself have felt that pain but we can do this!”
So, if you are suffering, your life is wrecked, or it will be wrecked . . . I want you to remember Jesus and I want you to go to him for comfort and love and support and understanding and encouragement.
And I want you to be in community with his people. What we see is an entire community surrounding themselves around this widow in the moment of her suffering . . . that’s what God church is supposed to be about. You need others around you when you’re suffering and you need to rally around them when they are suffering.
And God today would call us to worship him in faith, and get the good news out about Jesus because today may feel like a funeral day but a resurrection day is coming.
So today, suffer and weep as this woman did, mourn and cry as she did, surround and support one another as the town of Nain did, but by faith, trust that resurrection is coming, and this same Jesus, reaches down into death, and has life for and for me.
And it will happen, and you will see it by the grace of God. We can’t earn it. We can’t work for it. We can’t plead for it. It just comes. What we can do is choose whether to receive it or reject it.
When Jesus comes with compassion in his eyes, we can wrap our funeral clothes tightly around us or we can change into our party clothes and celebrate – the choice is ours. The choice is always ours.