Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

This passage can be dramatically taught: encourage listeners to picture a big funeral, with the whole community involved, and then to put themselves in the place of those who witnessed this stranger’s dramatic intervention.

I would like us to begin this morning by picturing in our minds a funeral.

This is a large event.

Perhaps most of the town is in attendance.

At some point during the funeral, a stranger comes in, he has a bunch of people following him as well.

He goes up, speaks to the family who is obviously grieving.

Then touches the coffin, and the person inside, all of the sudden, sits up and begins speaking.

What an odd and amazing sight this would be!

And yet this is exactly the picture of what we see Jesus doing in our passage today.

Jesus reaching into a grieving widows life.

Joseph Bayly (1920–1986) was an author, editor, columnist, novelist, and poet.

Joe and his wife, Mary Lou, raised seven children, three of whom became pastors.

Joseph Bayly knew what the loss of a child was like.

In fact, he and his wife MaryLou lost three sons—one at eighteen days, after surgery; another at five years, with leukemia; the third at eighteen years, after a sledding accident.

So when Joe Bayly wrote about the death of a child, people listened.

I want to read for you part of one thing he had to say.

Of all deaths, that of a child is most unnatural and hardest to bear.

In Carl Jung’s words, it is “a period placed before the end of the sentence,” sometimes when the sentence has hardly begun.

We expect the old to die.

The separation is always difficult, but it comes as no surprise.

But the child, the youth?

Life lies ahead, with its beauty, its wonder, its potential.

Death is a cruel thief when it strikes down the young.

The suffering that usually precedes death is another reason childhood death is so hard for parents to bear.

Children were made for fun and laughter, for sunshine, not for pain.

And they have a child’s heightened consciousness rather than the ability to cope with suffering that comes with maturity.

They also lack the “kind amnesia of senility.”

In a way that is different from any other human relationship, a child is bone of his parents’ bone, flesh of their flesh.

When a child dies, part of the parents is buried.…

I met a man who was in his seventies.

During our first ten minutes together, he brought the faded photograph of a child out of his wallet—his child, who had died almost fifty years before.

The death of a child is certainly one of the greatest agonies possible in this life—a burying of a part of oneself, a period before the end of a sentence, the death of a future.

It is a burden that all parents fear.

Such untimely pain was the emotional context of Jesus’ next ministry event.

It is in this untimely pain that we see Jesus compassion displayed for all to see.

In this story we see the compassion of Christ, his power over death, and the worship and witness they inspire.

A sorrowful situation.

Our passage this morning brings up an extremely difficult situation.

Jesus has left Capernaum and is traveling to the town of Nain along with his disciples and a great crowd.

The town of Nain was about twenty-five miles from Capernaum, a day’s journey

As he approaches the gate of the town, he comes across an extremely difficult situation.

We don’t know the exact age of the widows son, but that he was considered a man, he was at least 13 years old.

To know a little more of the significance of this, we must know a little more about the culture of the day, which in turn helps us to see the significance scripture places on widows.

In that culture a widow without children was alone and in need of protection.

The Old Testament portrays widows and orphans as among the most helpless of people and uses the figure of mourning over the death of an only son as a sign of a painful loss (Jer.

6:26; Amos 8:10; Zech.

12:10).

If you read in the OT the book of Ruth, her mother in law called herself bitter, because she had lost her husband and all of her sons.

It was an extremely difficult life for a women who did not have a partner to live with.

Naomi told her daughters in law to return to their families so that they could live, but Ruth chose to stay with Naomi and seek God, and we know that she is a part of Jesus lineage.

This death would have also been very fresh, and very raw.

The death probably took place that very day, since the Jews usually buried immediately, people were normally buried before nightfall of the same day that they died.

It would have been quite a scene leaving the town of Nain.

The procession would have been led by this solo, sorrowful women.

Followed by men carrying the funeral bier (beer) carrying a body wrapped in cloth.

There would likely have been musicians playing mournful songs.

Professional mourners—women who wept and wailed as a public expression of communal grief.

Then there were all the people from town who had come to pay their last respects.

Together they would lay their friend to rest in one of the rocky tombs in the cemetery outside of the city.

Coming to this scene, we can perhaps feel the sadness present.

I remember when my grandmother passed away.

I had the privilege of conducting her graveside service, but it was in Conrad.

Her funeral arrangements were made in Stevensville, so I traveled with my dad in our van as we transported her body on that long trip.

A somber experience when it is something expected, let alone an unexpected death.

This is a common sorrow many of us have experienced.

But the truth of it is that it comes because of sin.

God gave us life, but we chose to sin, and in choosing sin, we have come under judgment.

If there had never been any sin, there never would have been any death, any funerals, or any tears.

But “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom.

5:12).

This is the source of all our sorrow.

Martin Luther said,

“When you hear … of death, you must think not only of the grave and the coffin, and of the horrible manner in which life is separated from the body and how the body is destroyed and brought to naught, but you must think of the cause by which man is brought to death and without which death and that which accompanies it, would be impossible … namely, sin and the wrath of God on account of sin.

This would be a just end to the story if it ended there.

But it does not.

Jesus moves with compassion.

Jesus, a complete stranger to this woman, having traveled some distance from Capernaum, sees this mourning mother, in the time of her greatest need.

And he had compassion on her.

“to be moved as to one’s inwards (splanchna),

to be moved with compassion, to yearn with compassion,”

This word is frequently recorded of Christ towards the multitude and towards individual sufferers,

Later in Luke we will see Jesus using this same word of the good Samaritan

This is also the same word Jesus uses of the father when he sees his prodigal son returning.

It is significant here that our text says that Jesus had compassion on her.

Compassion vs empathy

Compassion

sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

One word we confuse compassion with today is empathy.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) (Empathy)

em•pa•thy

Literally emotional passion.

1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Jesus is not acting out of an imaginative projection.

He is not acting because of vicarious feelings.

We might say today, Jesus heart went out to her.

This is a term that is commonly associated with Jesus healings and miracles

These are not simply displays of power, but responses to perceived needs.

Think about how often in scripture we see Jesus perceiving the thoughts and needs of others.

Normally, Jesus healed in response to a request, but here he seems to take the initiative.

A widow would have been dependent on her only son for her livelihood.