We get two stories about death in today’s scripture. Elijah and Jesus are each faced with a similar situation. A widow’s only son has died. What will they do?

What are these stories about?

--Are they stories about faith?

Is God faithful to us if we are faithful to God? If we pray hard enough or if Jesus walks by is our loved one returned to us?

--Are they stories about compassion? Jesus and Elijah are so moved by the plight of these women who face destitution that they call upon God and reach out in power and bring these two sons back to life. They show deep compassion that we should mirror.

--Or are these stories about society, about us, ultimately? How do we respond to tragedies in our midst?

Firstly, these are stories about death. A woman has lost her son. In the Elijah story it is a young boy who has died, the son of a widow that took Elijah in while he has been hiding from evil King Ahab. In our gospel, Jesus passes by a funeral procession where a widow mourns her lost son, probably a grown man, who is the only son she has.

Grief, desolation, despair suffuse the text. We know these feelings. Death is a universal experience. It is an inevitable part of life. From moment we are born, we are dying. This is terrifying in one sense. We probably don’t think about it much, and when we do we do everything in our power to forget. Advertisers take advantage of this offering us wrinkle creams,  plastic surgery, hair dye, and more to disguise our aging and dying.

But the reality is in another sense we are never far from death. People die, all the time.

Some tragically, some violently, some just because they are at the end of their life.

Death is hard. We get a sense of it in the raw emotion of Elijah who prostrates himself over the body of the dead child calling out to God: God, what are you doing?! I already saved this family once, now look!

Death is, in fact, one of the hardest things we go through and it has been a hard season for us at Edgewood as we have lost many people over the last six months whom we loved and who were part of this congregation: Jean Fickett, Don Devendorf, Bill Heater, Margie Greer, Pete VanderWaals. Of course that doesn’t count the personal losses of family, friends, relatives, and colleagues we each sustain.

The more people you know, the more deaths you mark, the more you mourn, which sounds dreadful unless you look at the alternative which is to sit in a room alone.

So, this is a story about death. About the despair and grief we feel and how we reach out to God. Interestingly, we don’t hear the widows calling out to God but instead these two prophets intercede and raise these sons from the dead. God is faithful. God heals. God saves. God does miracles.

But, we ask, why did Jesus raise up this one person’s child? What about all the other dying children and adults? Elijah called on God to save the one boy. What about the other children? What about the neighbor’s child. Why not my child?

Does God pick and choose which ones to save? Does God even have power to intercede in such dramatic miraculous ways? If so, why does God choose not to help? If not, how do we understand miracles that do happen?

A colleague wrote this week with this statement:

With God anything is possible, but not everything is possible.

Yes.

The texts report these healings happened. We don’t know how but I would suggest that it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the actions Elijah and Jesus took. They reached out in compassion for these two women. Why?

Being a widow was about the worst thing that could happen to you in ancient times. Not only was a woman vulnerable to attack without a husband in the home, she was also considered a disgrace. She must have done something sinful to have such a tragedy befall her. She would be avoided, seen with suspicion. Her eldest son would then take over the role of head of household, very important in that society.

If that son then died leaving her bereft of male family members, she would become destitute. She would lose all her property. There were only two opportunities for women to “work outside the home”—begging or prostitution. Or there was starvation. She would be shunned and despised. It is no wonder that over and over again in the Hebrew Bible and the Law God declares, “take care of the widows and orphans. Care for the widows and orphans.” Jesus’ teaching about caring for “the least of these”—that would be widows and orphans.

These women stand on the brink of absolute destitution with their last living link, their last chance of survival, their sons, lost to them in death. They have no future. Jesus and Elijah reach out in compassion and bring the sons back to life. Not only is the son restored to the parent/mother but a future is restored to a woman. The healing really is far less about the coming back to life of the sons but rather the restoration of life to the widows. A sliver of possibility again is present in their lives.

You perhaps have heard the story of the man walking on the beach after a storm washed thousands of starfish up and stranded them on the beach. The man was picking them up and throwing them back into the water. A woman passed by and said, “why are you doing that? It’s pointless, look at them all. It doesn’t matter.” And the man said, “it matters to this one,” and threw it back in. Restoration of life to the destitute, the hopeless.

But what about the others?

What about all the other starfish? All those oil slick covered pelicans and cormorants on the Louisiana coast? What about all the other widows, all the other orphans, all the others sliding toward the brink of destitution and despair?

The deeper question for us is why is it so bad to be a widow? I mean I understand how awful it is to lose someone you love, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Why is this death such a tragedy aside from losing one we love? In Jesus’ context, why is it so bad to be a widow? Because you are ostracized, isolated, discriminated against, left to your own, uncared for. Even now, today, when someone dies we can be left on our own—no one knows what to say, or they fear irrationally that death might be catching.

But, if the community operated differently, if it took care of widows and orphans as dictated in Law and prophets, she should have nothing to fear, at least as far as her livelihood. She would be cared for by others.

So this story is really about our compassion or lack thereof for the vulnerable in our midst. Are we perhaps the ones that need to be healed, healed into a more full understanding, into greater compassion?

Raising a son from dead is a short term solution. It solves these two widows’ problems. But the son will die again eventually, maybe even next week, who knows. And Jesus will be moving on and he will eventually die too. Which leaves us to be the healing, compassionate presence he taught us to be.

Changing how community cares for those in need, that is long term solution, that is changing us, which is really what Jesus’ ministry about. Aside from occasional miracles, Jesus constantly was teaching about love, care, compassion, and justice. That is what about. If have those things, live those things, then all will be cared for. No one faces life on the streets alone.

That was philosophy started the church.

Share.

Tell of Jesus works and deed and teachings.

Live them out imperfectly.

Can we live this?

A few months ago I was talking with the rabbi Amy Bigman from Shaarey Zedek. We were sharing our work with families whose loved ones were ill or dying. I commented on doing “pastoral care” and then apologized for misspeaking, saying of course it’s not “pastoral” care. But she said, “no, actually we are called on to do pastoral care which is a carryover from you Christians.” The synaogogue members here from their Christian friends that the pastor visited and then they want the rabbi to come. She continued by telling me that this is not however the Jewish tradition. Judaism teaches that a person who visits someone who is ill or grieving takes one sixtieth of their suffering away with them. The point being that we are the ones who heal one another, and that it takes a lot of us.

As I said before, it’s been a hard few months at Edgewood losing people we love. And when we have a service we offer hospitality. I’ve had a couple conversations recently about this and how we can get folks to come help with that hospitality.

In reflecting on this it is clear that, yes, we need folks to get jobs done, but our presence is important too. Our being here for a memorial or funeral says to our grieving members, “as church community I care enough about you, your sorrow, your suffering your pain, your life, even if I don’t really know you, that I will come and sit with you and remember your loved one. I will come and bring cookies so you can sit and remember your loved one with friends. I will write you a card in a month to say, I know, I remember, I care.” This is one way we care for our widows, our orphans, our bereft.

That is the first part.

Then there is the second part that reaches beyond our walls.  We care for the suffering of all widows and orphans. Enough to advocate for better foster care system and for comprehensive health care coverage so folks don’t die of poverty or no emergency room care or diseases caught far too late. We care for suffering so we work for better healthy food access in the cities so folks don’t die early from diabetes.

Jesus is not around to raise folks from the dead. And even if he were, he can’t be everywhere. This morning’s healing story: that was just a moment, one person, an instant.  We are to be Christ, to live as Christ. And it is up to us to do the work, not raising from the dead, but creating community that holds all of us when tragedy comes.

God is indeed at work in the world. But through us, nudging us, prodding us, moving us. Filling us with compassion. Urging us with justice seeking. Pushing us to open our hearts even wider to receive the wounded ones of the world.

In all our living we belong to God… As does everyone else.

That every son’s death is our son’s death. That every widowed mother is our widowed mother. That every person at risk for falling into the abyss of despair and destitution is our brother, our sister. And we are the hands of Christ reaching out to work the miracle.

Amen.