As we travel to Luke’s house for the summer, it is clear in this story that Luke would have us focus not on a dead young man, but on his grieving mother. This woman, known only as the Widow of Nain, is found in no other biblical account, and is immediately placed center stage.
      As Beverly Gaventa says, this is a story about the restoration of a vulnerable woman and Jesus’ compassion for her. The sorrow of the scene is gripping because it’s about a widow left in a man’s world, without her only son, and is a vivid picture of destitution. Her future without the son’s support and security is grim; her circumstances dire. And her grief is compounded by the dim prospect of what lies ahead.
      And yet, Jesus sees this woman, has compassion for her, raises her son, and then gives him back to her. As professor Gaventa says, she is restored and returned to a place of protection and security.
     Our daughter Josie had her first ballet recital a few weeks ago. She’s been taking a ballet classes at the YWCA with other 4 and 5 years olds and it is so sweet to watch these little ones skip and prance and frolic. They have no sense of being inhibited or subdued or reserved. It’s all about freedom and play and flouncing around.
      In Josie’s class they’re learning the basics of ballet through storytelling, dance and music. And although at the recital we were the proudest of parents watching these little ones interpret Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, as only very little ones can do, it was another group of dance students who took our breath away.
      To the strains of Vivaldi’s Spring, the stage curtain opened and from stage left, a young dancer, very physically-challenged, quite possible with spina bifida, and certainly confined in a wheel chair, breezed across the stage. She literally took the heel of her hand to the electric wheelchair’s controls and swept across the stage.
      I could not breathe. It was so stunning. This young girl dressed in full ballet costume, flowing blue skirt, beaded bodice, hair in an up-do and she flew across the stage on four wheels with grace and poise and dignity.
      Standing up on the back bar of the wheelchair, another girl, her partner in the dance, hands placed on the handlebars and striking a pose, an arabesque, breezed along with her.
      Then from stage right, another dancer in an electric wheelchair, this girl with an oxygen mask, took flight and wafted across the stage like a fairy, lifting her arms in an arc, tutu fluttering behind her.
      More girls entered the stage, all with partners who could guide them and hold them up, and it was the most beautiful sight; so poignant and so moving.
      These were girls, some of whom could not walk, but could dance. These were girls, some of whom could not talk, but could express themselves so brilliantly. These girls, all who needed physical support, ended up supporting the dance and each other artistically, creatively.
      As we left the recital hall, one parent said to another wasn’t it wonderful that these girls had such able-bodied partners who could lead them in the dance with so much compassion. But another parent stopped and said no, it was the girls in the wheelchairs who had the compassion, and taught not only the able-bodied girls, but all of us, compassion; a consideration from deep within the soul.
      For Christians, we are called to a compassion that comes deep within our gut. The biblical word for compassion comes from the Greek word splagcna, literally meaning to have tender mercy straight from the bowels, to have affection from the gut, to have heart from the innards. The root of our compassion comes straight from our deepest nature, from the very pit of our being.
      It’s like experiencing that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach; that plummet in your gut when you hear really shocking or dreadful news, about an accident, a tragedy, a death; something so terribly unexpected that your heart drops into your stomach. We’ve all been together in this sanctuary when a death is announced and a collective gasp goes up. That’s the root of compassion’s action.
      That’s the root of Jesus’ action with the Widow of Nain and his compassion is more than an understanding look and a sympathetic word; more than complacent pity.
      Walter Brueggemann says that compassion should completely undermine the world of competition; that acting out of compassion is the essential way to rid ourselves of our numbness; that it’s not triumphant indignation that will help us, but passion and compassion. Compassion is perhaps the only thing that can save us.
      Jesus’ acts of compassion are threaded throughout the Gospel of Luke. A woman draws near to him at a dinner party and pours perfume on his feet. Another woman battles through a crowd to touch the hem of his robe and right before today’s story, a centurion sends word that his servant is ill. Jesus’ compassion is sure and certain and he notes the subsequent healings to their faith.
      But the widow of Nain doesn’t ask Jesus to raise her son. The mother didn’t have to act faithfully. The son didn’t have to live gratefully. She doesn’t fall on her knees and beg for her son’s life. All she does is weep. There’s no word about faith or gratitude or praise; just a mother’s tears.
      So, maybe this story isn’t about faith. Maybe it’s not about gratitude. As one preacher puts it, maybe it’s about the Kingdom of God as pure, unadulterated, undiluted, unbidden, unearned, un-asked-for grace.
      Brian Blount, a New Testament professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and our preacher at the opening worship service at McCarter Theatre as we launched our 250th celebration with the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church – you remember Brian Blount, the preacher who hated lima beans.
      Well, Brian Blount has been called by Union Theological Seminary and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, to be their next President. He will be the first African American to serve as president of Union / PSCE.
      Just a few weeks ago, by way of introduction, Gary Charles, a board-member at the Seminary and friend of Dr. Blount’s made the announcement of Blount’s presidency and he made reference to Robert Louis Dabney who taught for decades at the seminary about 150 years ago. Dabney published a book, A Defense of Virginia and the South, in which he offers an extended biblical and common sense defense of the institution of slavery.
      Gary Charles goes on: “As we gather on this glorious day, then, we gather in humility and confession for the damage done to countless people by a dead-sure theology emanating from our school’s past. We also gather in hope for the liberating power that comes when we study and proclaim the truths of Scripture as best we can, aware of the context in which it was written and the context in which we live. We gather today in great joy and celebration that, Brian Blount, distant ancestor of a Southern slave family has been called by the will of God to serve as President of our beloved school.”
      In response, Brian Blount said, it is for me a special moment because I realize that this is something new in the life of the Seminary, of all seminaries, and in the Presbyterian Church, the church as a whole…and it is a special opportunity for me because it means the church is living out God’s vision.
      When our Lord restores to a widow her son, he restores her world. He returns to her no less than her very life.
      When our Lord helps the church, through a Seminary, live out its vision, it restores the world.
      That’s what the kingdom of God does:
                  restores us,
                              raises us,
                                          resurrects us.
      The kingdom of God bursts forth when we least expect it.
      It breezes across the stages of our lives with the heel of a hand to the controls,
and lifts us into a dance we couldn’t even fathom we could do.
      Thanks be to the God of all compassion.

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