NewCreation

Homily for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 10th Sunday in ordinary time. Our Gospel today continues straight on from the Gospel for the 9th Sunday — that's to say, the healing of the centurion's boy or servant. This happens immediately after; in fact, the day after, according to the text in the Gospel. It would have been maybe an eleven-hour walk from Capernaum to Nain, so it's possible. The translation we have here is "soon afterwards," but in fact the Greek is more exact: "on the next day." He went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. So obviously there was quite a commotion about him, hearing about the centurion's boy, even though we don't hear about it there. But that something is up is clear, and his disciples and a large crowd are going with him. It suggests not merely that there's a large crowd going, as they might be on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but they're actually going with him. And as he approached the gate of the town — now it's interesting that this phrase, "as he approached the gate of the town," apparently behind it the Aramaic is "as he touched the gate of the town." That's quite important, because touch is something that he does in this story. And touching the gate of the town would refer to the fact that at the gates of the city, as you came in, there were some texts of Scripture probably carved on the posts of the gate, and the pious traveler, recognizing that this was a city dedicated to the Lord, would touch the gates. So as he touched the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow. And with her was a considerable crowd — actually the same word as "worthy." With her was a worthy crowd. It's the same word as our centurion said: he was not worthy. Hikanos — "I am not worthy." But here the crowd is considered worthy in size. They're accompanying this widow. So there are now two large crowds coming together. The widow doesn't have a husband, and now she has lost her son, so she is going to be helpless. She can't be a property owner on her own, so she's going to be dependent on the kindness of probably distant relatives — not a good place to be. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her. And again, this is our key mercy word which appears in the Gospels: esplanchnizamai — his gut went out to her, his viscera went out to her. This is the tripes of mercy, the inner entrails of mercy. And it's the word which always carries with it a sense that this is God's compassion and love. And he said to her, "Do not weep." It's one of the things that he is keen on. He really doesn't like people weeping at death. He gets very annoyed with people weeping at death. The only time he weeps, he weeps because of the people who are making a big fuss about death — it really upsets him. And of course this is a reminder that in the holy place it is forbidden to weep; no one who is mourning could possibly be in the holy place. You do not weep there. "Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still." Actually, the verb behind the standing still has the sense of "stood up still." So it's the upward notion that's the thing being emphasized here, and we'll see why, because the next few verbs are always going to be about this upward movement. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." In Aramaic, just as in Mark's Gospel we have the lovely phrase taken from the Song of Songs, "Talitha koumi" — "little girl, arise" — when it's the daughter of the synagogue leader Jairus. And so basically the same phrase, except here instead of "little girl," well, "talitha," it's "neaniske" — "young man, arise." The dead man sat up and began to speak. Given that the Hebrew people considered that the soul, the essence of the person, was in the throat — this was the center of life — speaking was really the sign of life. So he sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. And that's a direct quote from the book of Kings, where the prophet Elijah gives the son of the widow of Zarephath to his mother, to the widow. Fear seizes all of them. Presumably not this kind of fear, not panic fear, but fear in the sense of, "Oh my God, what's happening here?" And they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us." Now, what did they mean by that? They knew that the great prophets were Moses and Elijah, and Elijah is clearly the one who is being called to mind here. And as we will see in a second, so is Elisha — in fact, just as in the story of the healing of the centurion's boy. There was a reference both to an Elijah story — how he played hard to get, how he was stroppy with Ahaziah's messengers who wanted to know whether he was going to speak a word to him — and Elisha, who played hard to get with Naaman, the foreign commander, when he was cured and sent back home with his skin like a little boy's. So Elijah and Elisha were both in the background there, and Elijah and Elisha are both in the background here, because both of them resuscitated a child. In the case of Elijah it was the son, as I say, of the widow of Zarephath, and in the case of Elisha it's an interesting story, because actually the boy is well old enough to go out into the field on his own, complain about a headache, before then suddenly dying. And the story in Elisha is very much about the woman, the Shunammite woman, to whom Elisha has been kind before, saying, "Right, I'm going to go out after and get the holy man and get him to come and cure my son." So she's not a widow, she's still got a husband, the father of the boy is still alive. But she's the one who tears off and persuades Elisha to come along. Elisha doesn't really want to come along — he plays stroppy here. He sends his servant Gehazi to lay a staff on the boy, and that doesn't work. But Elisha also accepts to be bullied by the woman into going along himself. So he's trudging along behind while Gehazi, presumably, is younger and able to get there faster. So Gehazi comes back and says, "Oh, that staff bit didn't work." So Elisha turns up and he does a very, very curious ritual. It's worth reading if you're just interested in the oddness of the rite which he does, which includes walking up and down, pacing, lying on the boy, the boy sneezing seven times and coming to life. It's an odd description. But the key thing about that story was that it happened for the Shunammite woman. And the town that was the basis for the Shunammite story is Shulem, which is about an hour's walk from Nain. Nain is very close to the place where the great Elisha mystery — the great Elisha miracle, if you like — took place. So here we have two tales in which Jesus prevents one person from dying and brings another back, so they can both grow up and become full human beings. In very much the same way as Mark tells the story of the young daughter of Jairus, who dies when she's just about twelve, and the woman who had had a complaint of blood all her life and had been trying to pay for doctors for twelve years. So the one about to become marriageable, but just dying before that, and the other kept back from being marriageable by her flow of blood. So the diptych, if you like — Jesus sorts both out. And here it's the same. He sorts out the boy, the centurion's boy, and he sorts out the widow's son. Now, the interesting thing about it is: what's the real difference here? What's the point? If you knew the Elijah and Elisha stories, you would know that each of them is pretty complicated in terms of who sends who, whether they go, whether they get stroppy back and forth. These are grumpy old men. Whereas in the case of Jesus, we have the exchange with the centurion, and then the centurion says, "Say the word." Jesus doesn't say the word, because it's the centurion's faith in Jesus being able to heal him that is the key thing in his healing. And here But it's very straightforward. The drama is much less than with Naaman, who went to get his king to write to the king of Israel, who then got all upset and worried. But none of that — it's very straightforward. The faith heals. And then in this second story, the widow of Nain: here, amazingly, with the crowd coming towards the town and the people coming out, Jesus takes compassion on the widow and in the presence of all says, "Do not weep," touches the bier, and then says, "Young man, arise." In other words, there he speaks the word. It's a direct order. Elijah prayed — Elijah prayed that this might happen. The Lord here speaks. This is a direct order: "Young man, I say to you, rise." In other words, a direct order from Jesus completely destroys the presence of death. That's what's being shown here. Death has no power in the presence of the Lord. "You should not weep," because weeping is a sign of mourning, and no one near the source of life can mourn. When the very first sacrifice of the atonement with Moses and Aaron — I don't know if you remember the story, but some of Aaron's sons put the wrong censer in the wrong fire and the wrong incense in the censers, and the fire came out and consumed them, and then God had to teach them how to do the sacrifice right without running the risk of being killed. But Aaron and his surviving sons were told that they could not mourn for their sons while they were in the presence of the Lord, because there's no crying, no mourning in the presence of the Lord, because there's too much life. So here we have the sign of all this life coming, and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us." Well, who was it going to be? Moses or Elijah? Those are two of the greatest, and the one who was to come after would be greater than either. Well, that's the one who's here. So the rumor is certainly spreading around, and it's putting around through all Judea and the surrounding country. So this is very unlike Mark's Gospel, where Jesus is very keen to keep this sort of thing quiet — here he's depending on the noise going abroad, and in fact it does, as we will see in a second. Another phrase which the people said — "God has…" — ah, the translation here says "looked favorably on his people," but actually the verb is "he has conducted a visitation on his people," which is "visited," as it were, which is the rather stronger word, because it's the notion of the Lord himself visiting, coming in and visiting, seeing what the state of Israel is like, finding a town that was fully supporting the widow, deciding that here is Israel as it should be, and here is going to be the greater glory than of old, and here the fullness of the Lord of life is going to be shown. So the word about him then spreads through Judea and all the surrounding country, and eventually… Gets to John the Baptist — this is going to be important. Alas, it doesn't appear in the Gospel of the next few days, but it's going to be important because John the Baptist, he's expecting something more wrathful and angry and violent indeed from the prophet whom he has indicated is the one who is coming into the world, who is to come. And he's hearing too many nice things, too many good things, and not enough striking people down and showing the more vengeful, quote unquote, side of God that he — John the Baptist — had imagined. And he gets worried, and he sends the messengers: "Tell John about this thing." And John is still concerned, and sends messages back saying, "Are you the one who is to come, or wait we for another?" And that's part of Jesus' answer: "Can you see that the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead are raised?" So we have the examples here of the dead being raised. This is one of the three resurrections in the Gospel: the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, of course. But a great voice goes out about these things — this is obviously a big deal by any standards, anywhere, at any time. So the voice goes out, and interestingly enough, just because this is how Luke does things in his Gospel, we have the account of Jairus's daughter and the woman with the flow of blood later, so that becomes a kind of a diptych folding back onto these two boys being healed here and the two women being healed later. And in the middle, apart from the message of John, the wonderful and very beautiful account of the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her hair, having anointed him with perfume — which is the Gospel for next Sunday, for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.