The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Today in our readings from the Bible, we meet an unusual group of people: the prophet Elijah and a widow from the town of Zarephath; the apostle Paul; and Jesus, God the Son, who meets up with a funeral procession for the son of a widow who lives in the tiny town of Nain. What could this group of people possibly have in common? Why has the Church put the stories about them together for us to read this Sunday?
It seems to me that the theme that ties them together is that of death and new life. Each of today's readings speak of a kind of death, and a new, sometimes surprising life that follows that death.
The story of Elijah and the woman of Zarephath is well known. Elijah was a prophet and he met a poor widow. It was a time of famine in Israel, and people were starving. There had been little rainfall for many years, and so no grain grew. Everyone had used up the last of the grain they had saved from the last harvest.
Elijah came into town and found a widow gathering sticks. He asked her to make him a small loaf of bread. She had very little flour and only a tiny bit of olive oil left; she told him that she intended to use up the flour and oil to make bread, and she was gathering sticks to make a fire to bake it, and then she and her son would die of starvation because they had nothing more to eat and no more money to buy more food.
Elijah promised that if she would make him a small loaf of bread, the flour and the oil would not be used up; God would keep replacing them. So she made him a small loaf of bread, and the flour and the oil kept coming back into the containers, and until the rains came, the widow and her son, and Elijah, always had the food they needed. She had given all she had to keep Elijah alive, and now, in today's story, Elijah returns the favor by bringing her son, who had died, back to life. Of course she was happy about that!
But, I wonder...what kind of life did that boy have when he grew up? Did he become a servant of the Lord God? Or did he become a robber or a criminal of some sort? Was his new life, the life that God, acting through Elijah, gave back to him, a blessing or a curse? We don't know. Was he, later on, angry that he had died, and been raised to life again, and would have to die again, someday? We don't know. The Bible does not say.
We come now to the reading from Paul's letter to the Galatians. Paul explains how he had been a very strict Pharisee, and had worked to get rid of all of Jesus' followers, because he felt that Jesus' teachings were a danger to the Jewish faith. Paul had actually led a gang or group of people, like our vigilantes of the old West, who tried to take the law into their own hands and get rid of all the Christians. They were almost like the Ku Klux Klan, killing people that they did not think lived properly, people who were different from themselves.
And then, Paul saw Jesus in a vision, and instantly became a Christian himself. He was baptized, and went away into the desert to pray and think about Jesus, and stayed there for many years. Later he met with Peter and James, the disciples of Jesus, and asked questions about Jesus' life and teachings. And now, Paul was "dead" to his old life as a Pharisee and a very strict rabbi. He had a new life, a life as an apostle of Christ. He was a missionary now. He went around the world, preaching about Jesus and starting new churches in many towns.
Of course this "new life" of Paul's had its tough side. Most of his family and old friends would not have anything to do with him. In fact, many of the Jewish people were trying to kill him, just as he himself had tried to kill
Christians when he was a rabbi. Paul no longer had a home and a place of respect in society. He was always staying with someone while he preached in this town or that town, starting up a church when enough people believed in what he preached, and then going on to another town. No family, no home, no friends, and always being beat up and driven out of town. I wonder if Paul ever looked back on his old life and thought about the family and friends and the place of honor he had lost? Did he ever sometimes wish that things had stayed just the same as before? Certainly he loved Jesus enough to accept all the things that went with his "new life". But he must sometimes have thought, and wondered.
The Gospel story tells us how Jesus came into the little town of Nain and saw a funeral procession. They were going to bury a young man who had died. We don't know why he had died. The Bible does not tell us. But it does tell us that his mother was following the procession, and that she was a widow. She was weeping, crying hard.
At that time in Israel, a woman had to have a man in the family. An unmarried woman always lived in her father's house. He took care of her, because women were not allowed to have jobs and earn money themselves. A married woman was dependent on her husband. Married women would try to have several sons, because if their husband died, they would have to depend on their sons to support them and take care of them.
But now, this widow's only son had died. She would have nobody to look after her, nobody to support her. She would have to become a beggar in order to get some food to eat and some money to buy clothes. No wonder she was crying so hard...not only for the loss of her boy, but also because she knew how her life would change as soon as they had buried him. She was mourning not only for his death, but for the death of her own old way of life.
And so Jesus saw her weeping, and stopped the funeral procession, and spoke to her. He said, Don't cry. Then he walked over to the men carrying the body of the dead boy, which was something that no good Jew would do....touching a dead body would make you unclean, so that you could not go to Temple or pray until you had been made clean again. But Jesus didn't worry about that. He touched the dead young man, who quickly came to life again, ready to begin a new life....a new life for him, and also a new life for his mother, who would be safe now that she had a living son to take care of her. You can imagine what the mother thought! I wonder, of course, how the young man felt about all this. Was he happy to be alive again? Or, after dying once, was he afraid of dying a second time later? What did he do about it? We don't know. The Bible doesn't say. But we wonder, don't we?
And, of course, that brings us to our own new lives. When we accepted Jesus as our savior and Lord, when we made our baptismal and confirmation promises, we began new lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you look back with regret at your old life, when you did whatever you wanted? Or do you look ahead with hope and joy to your new life in God, knowing that he will always look after you, help you and lead you into doing the right things, if only you will listen to him? Is it your old life or your new life that you find your happiness in? And, if it is your new life, your life in Jesus, that makes you joyful, why aren't you telling the world about it, as Paul did? Are you thanking God for it, and telling God that you want to do something for him to say thank you, by working to make his plans for the world succeed and his kingdom come to everyone on earth? Amen.
