When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” [Luke 7:13, NRSV]
Miracle at Nain, by Mario Minniti, 1620.
It is an extremely dangerous thing for members of two opposing groups in gangland to accidentally cross each other’s path. Some lives will be lost that day on the street. The word “compassion” does not exist in their dictionary. For the gang members, their reality was to kill or be killed.
Chapter 7 of Luke’s Gospel tells a gripping story of a different type of chance encounter on the street of a town called Nain, right at the town gate actually, also involving two entirely different groups. More accurately put, it was two completely different processions. The procession heading out of town for the burial ground was one of death and sorrow; the procession heading into town for communal interaction was one of new life and hope. At the front of the first procession was a man who had been defeated by death; at the front of the latter procession was a man who would enter death only to defeat death and to emerge from it glorified. Right on cue, Scriptures are about to tell us a stunning act by the Almighty Power. At the encounter, compassion wins and precipitates a new lease of life. Compassion is the key. Compassion has the power of bringing new life.
Luke is telling the story of Jesus raising the son of a widow in Nain [7:11-17]. Imagine this scene in a small town near Nazareth. A large crowd, women wailing and a funeral procession is passing by. The most pitiful sight is the more elderly woman whose son lies dead in the coffin. This poor woman has already lost her husband. Now, her only son is dead as well and all her future security and status has died with him. With her sole support gone, she is left behind to fend for herself. Her heart is pain-filled, and her grief is raw, for all to see. Jesus, accompanied as usual by “his disciples and a large crowd”, sees her grief and feels her pain.
Right there at verse 13, Luke employs a word that appears many times in the Gospels to describe the essence of who God is. Rather than defining God and his Christ in philosophical and dogmatic categories of “substances” and “essences”, the Gospels speak of God as a God of compassion. This God is best perceived and understood in active outreach and not as an Unmoved Mover. The word in the original Greek text is esplagchnisthe which is a compound word meaning to feel so much compassion and empathy for the one suffering that one’s inner bowels are twisting and churning. This is a vision far from the theoretical essences and the Unmoved Mover of Greek philosophy. According to the Scriptures, for the love of the sufferers, this God is interiorly and deeply tortured.
The compassion of Christ drives him to action.
- He at once consoles the mourning widow of Nain, “Do not weep.”
- He touches the bier, a “small” action huge in implications. He identifies with the sufferers, putting himself in their shoes, voluntarily making himself ritually unclean.
- He raises the dead man, and gives him back to his mother. Luke here repeats the exact phrase from 1 Kings 17:23 which describes the miraculous raising of another widow’s son by one of Israel’s greatest prophets, Elijah.
- As fear and praise grip the crowd, they echo the words of Zachariah’s prophecy about the Messiah: “God has come to save his people!” [see Luke 1:67-75]
This episode in the public ministry of Jesus points to a few implications for the ministry of the Church:
- Jesus is at his most “lordly” as one who shows mercy. This is in line with a very important insight in Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book, Mercy: The Essences of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life. Compassion, firmly connected with mercy in the Septuagint version of Proverbs 17:5, describes the reaction of the Samaritan in Luke 10:33 and the father in 15:20. Unique to Luke, these parables point to compassion and mercy as essential qualities of the Lord and as indispensable qualities of his disciples.
- A concern for assisting widows throughout the Bible stems from their dire need. Compassion drives Jesus to help without being asked. The mandate for disciples to do likewise is plain and obvious.
- The widow of Nain is also a small-town resident, powerless, and without an advocate. Yet, Jesus “sees” her. “Seeing” people who suffer and enacting the mercy that stems from such sight is a definite part of the calling of those who call Jesus Lord (Luke 6:46-49). The Church has a clear mandate to embrace a compassionate ministry to the poor in Jesus’ name. It is the calling of love.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, January 2016. All rights reserved.
You are most welcome to respond to this post. Email your comments to jeffangiegoh@gmail.com. You can also be dialogue partners in this Ephphatha Coffee-Corner Ministry by sending us questions for discussion.