The Upload
Posted on Jun 03, 2016 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
In our gospel story from last Sunday, Luke 7:1-10, we heard how Jesus healed the slave of a Roman centurion. Now, although, we always like to hear about how Jesus healed people, my guess is that many of the Jews that were present when Jesus healed this man might not have been too happy about it. I mean, help a Roman soldier? I know the story told us that the centurion was a good man, but for most Jews he was still the enemy, and they didn’t like to see anything good happen to the Romans. They wanted the Romans out of their lives.
Our gospel story for this week happens immediately following the story that we read last week, but in this story Jesus helps a Jew. Jesus was heading into town when he and his followers came upon a funeral procession. The procession was heading out of town to the cemetery (a cemetery would never have been in town, for that would make the city unclean). The dead were considered unclean, just like gentiles and Romans were considered unclean.
We are told that “a man who had died was being carried out.” It also goes on to note that he was his mother’s only son, and that his mother was a widow. Luke tells us that Jesus had compassion for the woman, not for the sake of the man who died but for his mother. You see, she was now alone, and with no adult male in her life she would be unable to care for herself. That was the way the culture was. Culturally, a widow being helpless was acceptable, but for Jesus such a life was unacceptable. Jesus always had compassion for those on the margins, and so he touched the bier on which the dead man lay and he ordered him to get up. Now, Jesus actually did two remarkable things here: First, he touched the bier, which would have made Jesus unclean according to the culture of the day. Jesus didn’t care; to offer healing, he was willing to cross any boundary. Secondly, he raised a man from the dead.
Jesus’ compassion knows no boundaries, and not even death could keep him from bringing about healing then and now. When Jesus sees injustices in this world, he has compassion, and in response to those injustices he challenges you and I to be compassionate. He challenges us to speak out against injustices. He challenges us to walk with those who the world has pushed out and claims are worthless and unworthy. Jesus calls us to roll up our sleeves and get dirty as we work to bring about real change and healing in this world.
In these two stories, we are also challenged to see that faith can be found in the most unlikely of houses, in the neighbors you don’t like or in people like the widow who are marginalized, put to the side, and don’t have the makings of success, privilege, and power that we so cherish as a society.
My prayer this week is that each of us never forgets that we have a God filled with compassion and that we remember this good news, that His compassion is for everyone, whether male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, living or dead. Thanks be to God!
Have a blessed and holy week!
Shalom,
Pr. Dave