The Rev. Julie Wakelee-Lynch
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Albany, CA
Sunday, June 5, 2016, Proper 5C
A free woman in the time of Jesus would likely have married between the ages of 12 or
13 and 20. Her husband would probably have been 10, 15, even 20 years older than her.
She probably lost children in infancy or childhood (roughly half of the children born in
that time did not survive to adulthood.) She would have been fortunate to survive
bearing her children. It’s not a big surprise, then that in the gospel today we hear that
the son who has died was her only surviving son. By this time, the in-laws with whom
she would have lived as a young bride are likely also dead and she left her family of
origin when she married.
Jesus sees all of this and is moved with compassion—he is moved from his core. It is
likely that Jesus’ own earthly father Joseph died while Mary was still a relatively young
woman, and that his brothers were left to care for her. So he acts from his heart, from
what he knows and loves, risking becoming ritually impure if he touches the dead body.
Because love has the power to move us beyond our fears.
Imagine what it might have felt like to be that woman: She has lost the only connection
to social and economic survival that she had left. Not only that, the connection was her
child. Jesus loves her—his heart is moved by her pain. And he does what he knows he
can do—he restores the young man to life. To me, the bigger miracle is not this raising
from the dead, but rather that Jesus feels so compelled to act on behalf of a woman so
on the margins; she is a nobody, and yet he sees her as worthy of his attention.
Luke’s gospel shows Jesus again and again noticing women and children and the sick
and outcast. And, again and again, he acts out of love to recognize them, to give them
value, to offer healing of one kind or another.
Have you ever felt bereft, or lost, or cast aside? Have you ever experienced what it feels
like, in that place, to be noticed, to have that hand risk reaching out in love? Did you say
yes? If so, how are you different now because of accepting that love?
If not, what needs to move so you can say yes next time?
Let’s turn the story around: Have you ever been so moved by another’s pain, you found
yourself, in love, stretching beyond where you thought you’d be willing to go? How did
that change you? How did it change your relationship with the person you sought to
love?
Such acts can’t help but change both parties, because that is the healing power of love.
Acts of compassion matter. Jesus calls us, and we can choose to act. He commands the
young man to rise, and the man complies.
(As a parenthesis around this story, not everyone does choose to rise, to accept love. We
cannot make those choices for others, though we need never stop praying for them. It is
not our job or our place or our right to do this. All we can do, all God does, I think, is
offer that love.)
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The Rev. Julie Wakelee-Lynch
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Albany, CA
Sunday, June 5, 2016, Proper 5C
But Jesus does call us to rise: from complacency, from fears, from old hurts, from
whatever keeps us from being free to live our lives, free to love and offer love to others.
This past week, a bunch of folks from around the diocese, and in churches and
communities all across the country, spoke out and did various creative actions about
ending the public health scourge of gun violence in the United States. I am grateful that
I can only imagine how life-giving it must be to survivors and the families of victims of
gun violence to see and hear others speaking out, working to change and heal our
society.
On Friday night, I was blessed to hear the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra
perform Benjamin Britten’s stunning War Requiem at UC Berkeley. It was written for
the re-consecration of Covington Cathedral, but for him it was written with the stories of
four friends who died in WWII playing out in the background and foreground, and
spoken through the poetic words of wartime poet and soldier Wilfred Owen (who died in
WWI). So incredibly powerful—it speaks of the pain of war, the desolation, and weaves
in and out the words of the mass for the dead. May they rest in peace. Which is another
kind of healing.
Whatever modes we choose, and we all have different gifts, we can rise up: we can sing,
we can speak out in public, we can serve sandwiches, we can visit the sick, we can pray
for those who hurt us…we can be raised up by Christ’s mercy and be people of
compassion.
The people who saw Jesus act said that a prophet was being raised up.
You could read that either as the young man Jesus raised went on to be a prophet,
or that they recognized Jesus’ healing work as prophetic.
Either way, it is the act of compassion that opens people’s eyes to prophetic and healing
action.
Jesus is still calling us to rise up. Jesus is still calling us to compassion.
If the dead can hear and respond to the call of Jesus, it sure seems it should be within
our capacity, too.
May we be willing to be healed.
May we be willing to be those who are moved with compassion for others.
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