Divine Insensitivity

Sandwiched between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, we have these disturbing stories of the Widow at Zarepath and the Widow at Nain, whose live every parents’ worst nightmare: the death of a child. These stories, however, have happy endings. We know that everything ends up okay in the end. So, instead of walking alongside the characters, living into this tension of what it is to have life at its end and what it is to be at the end of our ropes when Jesus finally shows up, most of us skip the end of the rope part and the death part and respond as though this is commonplace. Of course church is the place where we read stories about resurrection from the dead as though it is completely normal (wait a minute…). But anyone who has watched a child as they have taken their last breath know the deep hole of pain that a glib word of resurrection cannot fill.

We hear in Elijah’s words our own words to God when our grief is so heavy and our faith is so thin that the moments become reminders of our brokenness and our inability to save ourselves: “What are you doing, God? Have you determined to bring us this far and then leave us to our own devices? How could you let this happen?” And God remains silent. The blur of people, the freezer full of casseroles, the friends who sit and hold our hands and sit and cry with us become our only evidence of faith. They become our faith when our own is too frail to stand.

I imagine the people propping up the Widow at Nain, the women on each of her arms all but carrying her as the funeral procession makes its way to the edge of the city where the dead are buried so that the smell doesn’t pervade the town. As they walk, Jesus approaches the procession and says what is perhaps the most insensitive thing to say to a grieving mother: “Don’t cry,” and the whole procession stops.

What would you have said if a stranger approached you during your child’s funeral and said, “Don’t cry?” What would you have done? What could Jesus have meant by this? Was he really asking this grieving woman to stop crying at the death of her son?

I cannot help but wonder if Jesus’ word, “Don’t cry,” is an affirmation that our lives our bound up in the lives of those around us. I wonder if it is not so much a word of distance, but a word of empathy and compassion. I think this is the word of God taking us into his arms and rocking us when all the world has gone wrong. It is the word of God taking us into his arms when we have messed up so bad we are not sure we can bear another day. Don’t cry is the word of a God that feels what we feel, whose heart is crushed by the death of a child, who knows the pit of despair and hopelessness that refuses to be filled. These are not the words of a far-off God who is somehow apart from our feelings or emotions. These are the words of a God who has drawn near, the depths of whose love yearns for us even as we turn away. These are the words of a God who sees in this Widow not a woman whose identity is defined by the men in her society, but rather, that sees the Widow for who she is: a child of God.

As the crowd stops to stare agog at this wandering prophet who says to a grieving mother, “Don’t cry,” their mouths were surely were hanging open as Jesus says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” As he sits and looks around, as a child disoriented by a nap, his mother’s reaction is left to our imagination. The crowd calls Jesus a prophet, and knows that God has looked favorably on them, but it is only the child’s mother that understands what has happened as Christ drew near: it was not only her son that received new life, but she received her own life as well. The memories of playing hide and seek in the market place now give way to the hopes of new memories, as she imagines her son coming home with his wife, as she imagines her son handing her her first grandbaby to hold, as her tears gave way to hope for the future. It looked as though everything was over, but it was only beginning.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that God always comes through when everything else has failed. When we have exhausted all of our efforts, when our hands our empty, when the only prayer we can say is, “Oh God…” and our tears of fear and failure, of despair and desolation, of hopelessness and grief take over. Perhaps this is the exact moment where we let go of all of our striving, of trying to become something we are not so that God will love us. This is where we realize that God’s love for us came even when we were dead in sin and entangled in our own self-importance, and drew near enough to us so that it could touch us and hold us. As infants cradled in their parents’ arms, we were loved before we did anything right or anything wrong, loved not because of who we are, but loved because of whose we are.

It is easy to forget that before we ever knew to choose God, God chose us. Before we ever knew how to love, God loved us. Before we knew what sin was, God forgave us. Before we feared death, the promise of resurrection came to us to give us new life. New life, however, is not simply what happens after we are resurrected. New life happens each morning, with each moment, with each breath, with each time we remember God’s promise to us and for us.

Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning… You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy...

This is God’s passion for you: it chases after you, takes you into its arms, and rocks you to sleep when the whole world has gone wrong. This is God’s passion for you: it sees past all of the things that you try to use to define yourself: whether career, success, children, or any other thing, and says, you are a child of God. You need no other definition, no other name, no other thing, as God takes you into God’s loving arms and says, “Shhh… don’t cry,” as we wait for the day when crying and death are no more and we rest in the arms of God’s mercy forever.