Sunday, June 5, 2016 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Healed

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 30
Luke 7:11–17

Jesus repeatedly emphasizes the difficulty of explaining his gospel in words,
and indeed, most of the time his disciples do not understand what he is saying
until he finally speaks to them in food.

Gillian Feeley-Harnick

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come . . .

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Those two stanzas from the poem “Funeral Blues,” penned by W. H. Auden, come about as close as anything can to articulating the heartbreak of a parent who has buried her child. I have not personally lived through that kind of experience, but I have walked beside many who have, including some of you in this congregation. And whenever I do, I always stand in that space of heavy grief feeling like I have little to say that would be useful.

In those moments I draw on the training I received in seminary and as a hospital chaplain. That training promised that merely standing there can sometimes be enough. Refusing to run away because their mournful wails are raw and vulnerable, that can be enough. Just simply being present as their shoulders heave in concert with the waves of their tears, that can be enough. I know many of you already know this, for I have watched you do it as well. Sometimes the only way to be of use to someone as his heart breaks with grief and despair is to simply be present, to stand with him no matter what.

I hope the widow in today’s story had someone who stood with her. The gospel writer tells us a large crowd was with her that day, following the body of her only child as they made their way to the graveside. But we don’t know if those in the crowd were his friends or hers; if they were merely curiosity-seekers, like those who slow down on the opposite side of the highway from the wreck; or, worse-case scenario, if they were religious busybodies who tried to communicate love by coming to the service but who easily fell into judgment and critique. “He should never have been driving that fast in the rain,” they might have said. Or, “She should have kept him from hanging out with that crowd of young men. Lazy parenting.” Worse yet, they might have been folks who secretly chalked the death of her only child, her son, up to a lack of faithfulness. “They must not have prayed enough or the Lord would not have let him die.” Believe it or not, I have actually heard that particular critique from church folk. So even though Luke is careful to let us know the widow, the mother, was surrounded by a large crowd, we might wonder how many of them were truly helpful.

For as some of you know, the death of a child or a grandchild is beyond heartrending. And in the days of Jesus, the death of a child, particularly the death of a son, could also be life-threatening, especially if it was the death of the only son of a widow. Widows were incredibly vulnerable. They had no economic power. They had no standing in larger culture. Their lack of status and agency is why both Hebrew and Christian scriptures always admonish people of faith to pay particular attention to the refugees, the orphans, and the widows.

Thus for this woman, this widow, the death of her son did not just mean the end of his earthly life. It very much put her earthly life at risk as well. “Now what,” tongues would have wagged. Who will take care of her now? Yes, we sure hope she had someone who was standing with her, merely present, refusing to be scared away by the torment of her grief, and refusing to try and explain her only child’s death by repeating empty platitudes or trying to make meaning when meaning could not be made.

Some of you know that one of my preaching heroes was William Sloane Coffin. In 1983 Coffin lost his son Alex in a car accident. Remarkably, Coffin was in the pulpit the following Sunday. As a part of that sermon, he railed against one person’s attempt at comforting him. He relayed that the woman had quietly said to him, “I just don’t understand the will of God,” hinting that somehow his son’s death must have been a part of a Divine Plan of which Coffin was clearly unaware. The preacher and grieving father responded with thunderous anger:

I’ll say you don’t lady. Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of road and no guard rail separating the road and Boston Harbor?

Coffin then directly addressed his Riverside congregation:

For some reason,” he preached, “nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels . . . the one thing that should never be said when someone dies is ‘it is the will of God.’ My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break. (William Sloane Coffin, “Alex’s Death,” The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, the Riverside Years,Vol. 2, Louisville: WJKP, 2008)

Coffin believed that with every fiber of his being. I do as well. And that is partly due to what we find in this scripture from Luke. As the widow and that large crowd made their way through the city gates, they ran smack dab into Jesus and the large crowd following him. It must have been quite a sight. Jesus’ crowd was probably festive, talkative, all abuzz with conversation about how Jesus healed the centurion’s servant merely by speaking a word. They might have resembled a parade of sorts. And as they reached the city gates, that parade group ran right into the group of mourners carrying the young man’s corpse. That moment must have felt as awkward and as messy as a wedding party, full of joy and new beginnings, walking into the narthex and running into a memorial service crowd, somber and heavy, fresh grief laid bare on their way to the cemetery.

Yet in the middle of that awkwardness, that messiness, Jesus does not hush his followers or have them quietly stand aside the road in order to allow the crowd of mourners to continue making their way. Rather, Jesus immediately focuses in on the widow, the one undone by sorrow. Now, it is important for us to see that at that moment, we have no indication that she saw him at all. The widow was lost in grief, shoulders heaving, her own spirit fighting for breath. My guess is she was not looking up but rather looking down, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. But her lack of attention to him did not matter to Jesus. He saw her. He saw her just as she was in that unguarded moment—messy and dying inside.

And as Luke states, Jesus instantly felt deep compassion, the kind of compassion that makes your own eyes water in empathy over another’s pain, the kind of compassion that causes your own stomach to hurt just imagining what it was like to be her. That is the meaning of the verb Luke used to indicate Jesus’ reaction to the widow. He felt gut-level, visceral compassion for that woman well-acquainted with grief. And he immediately approached her to be present with her. “Do not weep,” he said. At first hearing, those words might sound cold, but if we hear them spoken gently, they feel appropriate. Don’t weep, Jesus promises, I am here now, with you, alongside you. I am present and not going anywhere.

If the widow had been keeping up with Jesus’ teachings and travels, she might have heard what he had preached not too long before their encounter. On the sermon on the plain, Jesus proclaimed: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Yet regardless if she knew of his promise or not, in that moment, right before her distraught eyes, Jesus decided to embody that beatitude. He decided it was time to reveal what God’s will truly is for all people—restoration of life, healing from brokenness, relief from despair, the death of death.

Jesus decided it was time to put flesh and blood on his promises and restore her son to full life, restore the widow to full life. “Rise,” Jesus said, touching where the body was placed. And Luke proclaims the young man did so, immediately, and began to speak. And in that work of miracle, that deed of God’s word enacted, Jesus gave the boy back to his mother, and gave her back to herself. In response, Luke tells us the crowd became afraid, but also praising God, even though they were still not sure who Jesus was.

Now, I must be totally honest with you—this healing is the really hard part of the story for me. It is hard not because I don’t believe Jesus could have done that. I do. Rather, I find it hard because there are so many other mothers and fathers, grandparents and siblings, children and friends, undoubtedly some of you in here today, who have prayed for that same kind of miracle to unfold for their loved one only to have it not happen in the same way. Their loved one’s healing did not come here, but came only through their death. Their loved ones were restored, but not in the way their family longed for. Just read the stories of the parents who are daily losing their children to violence on our city’s south and west sides. As C. S. Lewis once admitted, “Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God’” (Richard Lischer, Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son, New York: Knopf, 2013, p. 229).

And yet even as we say that out loud, even as we acknowledge the grief of what feels like unanswered prayer, we look at this story and watch what Jesus does and we know, we trust, we believe with every fiber of our being that just as Jesus felt compassion for the widow, so Jesus feels that same gut-level compassion for all of God’s children well-acquainted with grief. And even though that widow was not looking for him; she showed no indication of having heard of him; she did not ever speak of having faith in him; Jesus still saw her immediately and was drawn to her, reminding us Jesus sees all people and is drawn to all people, especially those whose eyes cannot be lifted up, whose burdens are heavy, and whose hearts are heavy and laden.

And just as he was present with the widow, so is Jesus present in all spaces of deep grief—not with simplistic answers or thin platitudes, but with the abiding presence of one who knows exactly how it feels both to suffer and to die as well as to grieve and to weep. We see it not just in this story of his brief interaction with the widow—we first see it in the manger, then around the table, and on the cross, then at the tomb. And knowing of that promised presence is how Bill Coffin was able to trust that indeed, God’s heart was the first of all the hearts to break when his son died. It is how I am able to stand up here Sunday after Sunday.

Richard Lischer, a professor at Duke Divinity School, wrote a book in which he reflected on his own son’s journey with cancer and into death. In it Lischer talks about how his son’s body changed as the day of his death grew closer. Lischer wrote

The age of miracles is not past. But now we know it is a different miracle than the one we dreamed about in the summer of 2005. Not the supernatural escape from illness, but the faithful companion in the Valley [of the shadow of death]. Not the restored flesh we hoped for, but God in the flesh of those who suffer. That’s why we loved [our son’s] flesh . . . because what his body was losing in mass it was gaining in transparency. The sacred presence had always been there, of course, as it is in each of us, like stars on a cloud-filled night, but we had never seen it so clearly as when he began to die” (Lischer, p. 231).

Maybe that is one of God’s miracles that happens for all of us, even when we cannot see it—the promise that regardless if we have someone here in flesh and blood to stand with us as we travel in those valleys of grief or death, we are still never alone. Rather, we are always surrounded by presence—the sacred presence of the one who saw the widow in her grief and immediately went to her; the sacred presence of the one who then restored the boy back his mother that day, giving them both new life; the sacred presence of the one who promises that restoration will also come for us and for this world as well, in God’s time; the sacred presence of the one whose heart is always the first heart to break and whose “welcome home” are always the first words to be uttered after the threshold of death. On most days, may that be enough, and may we welcome the stars back into existence and invite the sun and the moon to shine as brightly as they can. Amen.