The Resurrection at Nain - Jesus Feels Compassion

Soon afterwards, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out – the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, ‘Don’t cry.’ Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, get up!’ The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God. ‘A great prophet has appeared among us,’ they said. ‘God has come to help his people.’ This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country. Luke 7:11‭-‬17 NIVUK When I was a teenager, we had two neighbours who were a little... well... different. They were two elderly Catholic sisters who used to play the same droney video tape every so often with highly monotonic worship on it - always the same dreadful, dreary, repetitive song. They were addicted to the tiniest titbit of gossip. They seemed to lack a bit of street smarts at times and were known for being harmless, but having some very strange ideas. One day my mother met them on the street. They were dressed all in black and so, out of politeness, she asked them, "Oh, I see you've been to a funeral. Was it someone close to you?" "No, not really." one of the sisters told her. "We went for the funeral tea. We went to the funeral. We wailed a for a bit. Then they thanked us by letting us eat their food." Funerals are not fun occasions. At least, not in our culture. In other cultures, like, rather famously, in New Orleans, a funeral is a celebration of life. And so it's not unknown to hear a jazz band play a lively tune as the casket is lowered into the ground. But in our culture they are sombre affairs. They are a time to say goodbye, to grieve, to show you are standing beside the bereaved family in their hour of pain. It is certainly not the place for theatrical caterwauling so you get a free feed. Jesus saw this funeral. Jesus did not avoid death. He was not like the Pharisee and the Sadducee in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, who crossed the street to escape the victim of a robbery in case he died and rendered them ceremonially unclean (Luke 10:20-35, see also Numbers 5:2, 9:6-13). Jesus did not fear death. He did not avoid it in case it reminded Him of His own impending demise. Instead, He walked towards the funeral gathering. Now, it's possible to see something and feel nothing. It's possible to feel no pity in the face of suffering. Often people avoid suffering by not watching the news, or seek to rationalise it and explain it away by looking for someone to blame so that they themselves don't need to do anything about it, or excuse the hardness of their hearts by saying that they have been desensitised or suffer from "compassion fatigue". Jesus does none of these things. He is not afraid of suffering. In fact, He heads towards the person who has suffered the most: the mother who has lost both her husband and her son. Then, just as now, people look for a reason why suffering has taken place. Or, to put it more accurately, they look for a scapegoat. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that the people around her could have been making insinuations and accusations against her, as if this awful double misfortune was somehow her fault. After all, even the disciples did it when Jesus met a man who had been born blind (John 9:1-3). Jesus doesn't do that either. Jesus had compassion for her. The Greek word rather poetically says that He was 'moved to the bowels' because this is where the Greeks believed powerful emotions came from, and the Jews believed that emotions like mercy and pity came from. In other words, as the modern versions of the NIV put it, His heart went out to her. Or, as The Message puts it, His heart broke. Imagine that! In the middle of a noisy crowd of mourners, Jesus finds the one person who suffers the most: the woman who has lost both her providers and is heading fast towards a life of destitution. In the midst of suffering, He feels compassion and His heart breaks for the very person who suffers the most. Friend, there is an aspect of suffering that makes it twice as hard. This is the aspect where you believe that no-one understands how you feel. That no-one cares. That you are absolutely on your own. Isolation can be as big a killer as the suffering you face. If a problem shared is a problem halved, then a problem in isolation is a problem squared. We've all been there. We've all had huge problems we didn't feel that we could talk about. When I came back from Romania the first time, I had seen real suffering and poverty. It hit me hard. Really hard. Particularly as Bucharest is only four hours and on the same continent as London. It sent my head into a tailspin. I wrestled hard with it. Yet I felt like there was no-one I could talk to about it. None of my family had been there. None of my friends had been there. I got irritated when they worried about the tiniest thing when I had seen real problems. And that made everything worse. Friends, do not make the same mistake I did! Do not bottle it up. Jesus not only sees and knows our suffering way better than we ourselves do, He has compassion on us! This is nothing new. The Father feels compassion for His erring children (Psalm 103:13-14, see also Luke 15:20), even when our suffering is our own fault (Isaiah 54:7-8; Jeremiah 12:15, see also Psalm 51:1, Micah 7:19). Compassion is a big driving factor behind why Jesus intervenes miraculously and comes to people's aid (Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34; Mark 6:34, 8:2). And that's what Jesus does here. He doesn't get involved because He has something to prove or to show off. No, He gets involved because He cares. There is no doubt that seeing death reversed and a young man raised up is an outstanding miracle. No-one could ever disagree with that. But what we see here is the Lord of all the earth, the creator of everything, the creator and sustainer of all things, feeling compassion for a lowly bereaved widow. Even that in itself has to be seen as a miracle. And yet it's true. And the same God who felt compassion for that widow also has compassion on us. There are few more wonderous things in the universe than that. Having seen that Jesus saw and had compassion, we go on to see now that JESUS SPEAKS.