The Widow of Nain

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

Luke 7:11-17, NIV

We were on our way back from a walk on the beach, and Sarah was driving; which left my mind free to wander a little. Suddenly I said, “hold on, Jesus raises the dead son of the widow of Nain: where is the ‘point of faith’?”

What I meant was, in every single episode where Jesus heals (or indeed, does any other ‘miracle’), there is always a point of faith, where someone other than Jesus is finding agreement with what He, and therefore Heaven, says. Whether at this point you believe me or not, please read through the Gospels and see how true this is. Famously, the one time we hear about Jesus unable to work miracles (Mark 6:5-6, Matt 13:58), it was because of the lack of faith of the people of his hometown. He was amazed because faith isn’t the macho, self-conscious thing we often portray it as: it just means being even the slightest bit persuaded that Jesus can and will do what He says; and the people of Nazareth mostly couldn’t even produce that – despite their need for healing.

And this matters because the same applies to us – we are meant to do the same works as Jesus did, and greater; but we need to learn to see this ‘point of faith’. It may not be the person who needs healing who has it, but someone who has authority in their life needs to have even the smallest mustard seed of agreement with us and heaven for healing to happen.

And in the car, I ran the reel of memory covering the widow of Nain story. Jesus comes to a village, meets a procession where the only son of a widow is being carried out to burial; Jesus goes to the bier, speaks to the young man and raises him.

No ‘point of faith.’

Maybe it is the exception, where Jesus just raised the dead, because He felt sorry for the already-widowed mother? But this is about law: there are no exceptions. If there are exceptions, then there is no law. If the law of gravity worked most of the time, but once in a while you could just float up into the trees, then it would no longer be the law of gravity. At best it would be a tendency. But kingdoms run on laws, not tendencies, and the Kingdom of Heaven most of all.

As soon as we got home, I grabbed my bible, found the passage – and let out a shout. There are actually two points of faith in our passage. One follows on from the other. In this sense the lesser ‘point of faith’ is that those bearing the dead man stopped when Jesus put His hand on the bier (they could have shaken Him off and kept going).

But here is what I was looking for:

“When the Lord saw [the Widow],… he said, “Don’t cry.”

How have you been hearing that “Don’t cry”? Like Tom Hanks telling Meg Ryan “don’t cry, little shop girl…” in “You’ve got mail”? That would be “don’t cry, we are happy, right?” I don’t think so. What about like someone who finds emotion expressed too hard to handle and just needs to shut it down? (“How can I solve this problem when you are crying like that and making all this fuss?”) The verse says that He felt compassion for her (ὁ κύριος ἐσπλαγχνίσθη ἐπ’ αὐτῇ) so: also “no”.

Jesus always spoke with authority. Remember, He was the one who said “let there be light”, and there was. We aren’t told exactly what happened, but you can be sure that if the Widow had merely wailed all the louder, we would never have heard the story, nor would she have received her son back alive. And that matters because, with her son dead and unable to respond (and, being dead, legally unable to respond to any instructions given him in the earth realm), she was the person with the authority over his dead body. If her response to Jesus was “no, he is dead and I will never speak with him again…” then Jesus would have had to turn away. As Jesus well knew, if He had simply spoken to the dead man and instructed him to get up – nothing would have happened.

No, when Jesus spoke “don’t cry” to her, something happened: she stopped crying and believed that somehow Jesus could fix this. That is the “point of faith”; not necessarily knowing what can happen next, but trusting that Jesus is going to do something and changing her posture in obedience to His command.

And in case it isn’t clear, this is a million miles (or further) from what most of us do when faced with a life-threatening illness or situation – which is to say “God knows what He is doing, and He can heal if He chooses.” That is philosophic resignation, and results in healing exactly 0% of the time. (If you think you know an example where God healed anyway, trust me, you just haven’t identified the person who exercised faith, and how. This is law!) What the Widow of Nain did was hear a word from Jesus, receive and believe that word, and obey it. I suspect the bearers stopped when Jesus touched the bier because they already knew something was up: the chief mourner had stopped mourning, and, we can guess, everyone else quietened down as a result. Despite the circumstances, there was a sudden air of expectation.

So what Jesus said to her – “don’t cry” – wasn’t polite convention, or frustration, or consolation or any other irrelevant thing. Like everything God speaks to us, it was a life and death instruction, and obeying it changed everything for the Widow of Nain – and her son.

(PS – in case you think Lazarus responded directly to Jesus without the involvement of another living person, look at what Jesus says to Martha in John 11.40: “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” And all that was required of her was to allow the removal of the stone from his tomb; very like “don’t cry” in terms of how hard it was. Hard emotionally, but practically, not so much!)