Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity
“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”
In the Gospels, Jesus Christ seems to come and go constantly as a visitor, a man of no fixed address and one who is always, it seems, passing through. He is the babe of Bethlehem, but apart from his birth there is no mention of his birthplace. He is the boy of Nazareth, but apart from his boyhood, Nazareth is only the city to which he returns once and then, only to be rejected. He is by the sea and on the sea; upon the mountains and in the desert places; in the fields and on the roads. He passes through all the countryside and every region of that ancient promised land. He comes to innumerable villages and towns. He makes his way to Jerusalem. He is constantly drawing near and passing through. And yet, he is constantly in our midst, the abiding presence of God with us.
He comes and goes, strewing blessings on his way. But the blessings are not the passing moments of God’s visitation. They are the signs of his abiding presence.
In the gospel story for today, Christ comes to the city of Nain. It is really a little town or village. If I am not mistaken, this is the only time that it is mentioned in the Scriptures. And “as he came nigh” – as he came near – to the gate of the city, he meets a funeral procession. Christ is the stranger who becomes a neighbour to those who mourn. He enters into the sorrows of the mourners and, most especially, into the grief of the widow of Nain whose only son lies dead and is being carried to the grave.
It is a most extraordinary and touching encounter. “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” Compassion. The word is strong; it refers to his inmost being. He takes her sorrow into his abiding love for the Father. “Weep not,” he says to this woman who has lost everything. What he means is, ‘do not weep forever’; ‘don’t always be weeping’; ‘don’t keep on weeping’. The weeping is not to be forever, for in the compassion of Christ we see the abiding love of God for us. That love means resurrection and life in and through the conditions of sorrow and death. That love means fellowship and joy. “Young man, I say to thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak: and he delivered him to his mother” (Luke 7.14,15). He delivered him to his mother for whom he had already carried him into the heart of his abiding love for the Father. He delivered him to his mother even as we have fellowship with the Father through the Church.
