Two crowds meet at the gate of Nain, moving in opposite directions. One follows Jesus into the town, full of whatever hope or curiosity had drawn them after him. The other is leaving, following a coffin toward the burial ground, and Luke tells us exactly who is inside it. 12"the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." In a world with no pension and no safety net beyond family, this woman has lost her only child and her only means of support in one blow. Her grief and her future are carried out through the gate together.
She asks for nothing. Jairus will soon beg Jesus directly, and the woman with the flow of blood will push through a crowd to touch his robe, but this widow simply walks behind a coffin. Then Luke says, 13"when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her." The word behind it is strong, a gut-level pull and not a polite sympathy. Before she has said a word, before anyone has asked him for anything, Jesus is already moved.
13"Do not weep," he says, and then he does something that would have startled everyone watching. 14"he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still." Contact with a corpse or its carrier brought ceremonial uncleanness, and the bearers halt at a stranger's hand. 14"Young man, I say to you, arise." There is no ritual and no long prayer. 15"the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother." Anyone in the crowd who knew their Scriptures would have thought of Elijah raising the widow of Zarephath's son and delivering him to his mother (1 Kings 17:23). Elijah had to stretch himself over the boy and cry out to the Lord. Jesus speaks once to a corpse already on its way to the grave.
The crowd reads it as they should, so far as they see it. 16"A great prophet has arisen among us!" Their very next words reach further than they know. 16"God has visited his people!" That word has already run through Luke's Gospel. Zechariah used it months before this widow's son had died, in the prophecy that opens with "he has visited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68) and closes with the promise that "the sunrise shall visit us from on high" (Luke 1:78). Now at a funeral in a town most of Israel had never heard of, a crowd speaks that same word without any idea that they are fulfilling the prophecy that first used it.
God has visited, in person, walking through the gate at the moment a grieving mother needed him. He has done more than send a prophet.
What sets this miracle apart from the others so far is that no one asked for it. Jesus simply saw a widow's grief and moved toward it, uninvited. That is what visiting has meant in this Gospel from the start, a God who comes looking for his people before they have found the words to call out to him.
Some of us are walking behind a coffin today, and the coffin may be a marriage, a plan, a person, a season of life. You do not have to compose the right prayer. He sees the procession, and he is already close enough to touch it.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a compassion that moves before we ask, the way your Son moved toward a grieving widow who had said nothing. Meet us in our own processions of loss, uninvited if we need you to be, and speak your own "do not weep" over whatever we are carrying out today. You have visited your people before. Visit us now. In Jesus' name, amen.