Luke 7: 11-17
he
glory of God is bigger than just this resurrection.
As
hard as it might seem to imagine, the glory of God that was revealed that day
at Nain was more than bringing a dead man to life.
The
widow is also brought back from death to life.
The
story begins with the widow.
Jesus
has compassion on the widow, tells her not to weep.
After
the man comes back to life, he gives him back to his mother.
By
doing so, he brings her back to life. Jesus heals more than a dead man, he
heals a woman broken by a society that could not see her as fully human without
a man.
The
crowd may have been more afraid of this than anything else.
The
social order had been altered.
A
woman who didn’t count suddenly counted again.
This
may have been as awesome, as fearsome, as the resurrection itself.
The
crowd would immediately have known what happened.
They
knew they were in the presence of a prophet because they had read their
scripture.
They
knew God cared for widows,
God
insisted on the care of widows.
hey
knew that God sent prophets like Elijah to heal widows, they remembered the
widow at Zarepath who was near death and who was brought back to life by God’s
gift of a jar of meal and a jug of oil that never ran out.
Caring
for the ones that society wants to leave behind is what God does. Having no
edges, no boundaries to the scope of care, is God.
God’s
very being has no limits to love.
We
still live in a world of social divisions.
Our
society, our now-global society, is full of divisions.
Indeed,
it feels like we have found many more ways to divide ourselves than could have
been imagined by the people of Nain.
We
can be divided by religion, by ethnicity, by nation, by age, by the kind of
music we like, by wealth and poverty.
Sadly,
we can still be divided by gender.
But
amid all this division, God gives us life.
God
is the source of all being.
And
God doesn’t just give us biological life, God gives us a full life, a life
where our divisions are healed.
That
is the action that Jesus undertook at Nain – he restored biological life so
that a full life could be had by all.
That
is what Jesus showed the people of Nain, that life means more than simply
existing, it means living fully within the web of life.
It
means being loved by all and loving all.
This
is the reign of God. It is a reign of well being, a reign of justice, a reign
of abundance, a reign of joyous harmony.
It
is a reign we recognize when we are fully in God’s presence, and when God’s
presence encompasses all of creation.
God’s
presence has no social boundaries.
The
crowd at Nain rejoiced because God had looked favorably upon them with a sign
of God’s reign.
This
is the action of our God.
Restoring
to the social community, bringing people we push out of society back into love
because we need each other.
This
is also our action.
We
too are called to be healers. The mission of the church is to restore all
people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
We
do this by refusing to draw boundaries, by refusing to exclude people from the
fullness of life that God promises.
We
do it when we welcome all people into our churches.
We
do it when we work to ensure that all are fed, and clothed, and housed, and
cared for when sick.
We
do it when we work to transform unjust social structures.
We
do it when we fix any system or practice that treats anyone as undeserving of a
full life.
We
still make people of all races and genders powerless.
We still try to make human souls into
non-people. Our mission is to be people who draw no distinctions.
Our
mission is to be a people who recognize the dignity of every human being.
After
Jesus left Nain, the people went back to their homes and chores, but things
didn’t go back to normal.
And
thanks be to God for that!
Normal
doesn’t always mean right.
Normal
can be unjust.
The
people of Nain weren’t normal anymore.
The
people were transformed. They had moved beyond what they thought were
limitations.
They
had seen a new world.
Let
us open our eyes to this new world and glorify God.
Let
us be a people without boundaries.
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