2^nd Sunday after Pentecost/Lectionary 10.       Christ Church , York

The sound rises up from the depths of her being. From those deep dark places within her, the wail which erupts begins as a low sob and then builds in intensity until her whole body is wracked in grief, shuddering beyond belief. And to those listening, to those standing by, to those gathered around the bedside, there is no sound more gut wrenching to their emotions, no sound which cuts them to the quick more deeply, no sound which causes their own grief to also well up, wash over them and almost engulf them, no sound more difficult to grasp in all of creation, than the cry of despair and desolation which comes from a mother who has lost a child. 

And it is not just one mother who finds herself swallowed up in such grief this morning. Rather there are two of them – two women who are filled with hopelessness and despair; two women who are caught up in that most dreadful of moments when they face the reality of the death of their child; two women who, because they are widows, live in the shadows of their society; two women who cry out in pain at all that they have lost, striking out even against God for the injustice that they feel has been cast upon them. One is a widow from Zarephath, the other a widow from Nain. They have come from different cultures and places and even from different times. They find themselves in different circumstances and face different issues. But they are united in their common bond of grief at the loss of their sons and crushed by the abiding sense of hopelessness which now pervades their lives.

By her very status, a widow lived on the fringe of society. With no husband to care for her in that male dominated world, she subsisted only on what the family can provide. Now, with the death of their children, their only sons, these widows had lost the only male who could sustain them in their old age. Having suffered the loss of their husbands, they must now drink the bitter dregs that came with loosing their child. Facing them now was a life of utter destitution, for their was no Social Security in that time, no life insurance, no government policies or provisions for people left in such circumstances. Without a male in the household, the future was bleak indeed, a situation of seeming hopelessness without end.

And life was already difficult enough for the widow from Zarephath. She was not one of God’s people, not a Jew and therefore an outcast in the Jewish world. Faced with famine herself, she had however willingly given refuge to God’s prophet Elijah and fed him. Her kindness was rewarded by God with an abundance of food and things had seemed to be looking up. But then came the crushing blow of her son’s death and once again the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness engulfed her. And the widow of Nain was little better of. Although a Jew she had first lost her husband and now her only son. Treading the road out of town to the place of burial for her son, she also faces the burial of her own sense of hope in the future. The best she could hope for now was to try and scratch a living out of the dust of hopelessness which had enveloped her life.

It is into the midst of such hopelessness and even despair that God comes. Confronted by tragedy, faced with hopelessness, hemmed in by despair, God comes speaking a word to us, entering fully into the midst of human suffering, coming to us in the midst of human hopelessness, confronting us with the new reality of the life that only He can bring. We all know the reality of this human suffering and hopelessness among us. We have all stood at the hospital bedsides of those we love or grieved at the death of our beloved. We have all encountered the pain of life’s difficulties or walked on the path of spiritual confusion. But in all of this, even in the moments of darkest despair, the presence of our God is among us. In the midst of the pain, the sorrow, the grief, our God has not been absent from us but has been in the midst of us, comforting us with His presence and bringing among His life giving Word and grace.

Even as God is with us, however, this does not mean that our human situations will be changed. When all of this is over, even as the widows in our stories rejoice in the new life given to their sons, they remain widows, remain poor and remain in want for many of the things of this world. Although God comes to change their situations dramatically, this is not a rags to riches God that we have. What God brings instead is a renewed sense of hope and courage in the face of life’s troubles, difficulties, grief and pain. What God brings is a sign of that promise which is to come. For while each of these sons has been raised again from the dead, they have only been raised in the old body that they previously had. And in a greater or lesser time, that body will die again and this time it will be buried in the earth. But these stories of the dead being raised are the signs not only of God’s presence among us in our time of greatest need, but also of God’s promise that in the end the dead shall stand once more upon the earth to see God in a resurrection without end.

You and I live in the midst of a world of hopelessness where disease and calamity and despair are commonplace. These are part of our natural order, although not the order that God intended for us at creation. And in this order death itself is the greatest bearer of hopelessness among us as it cuts in a seeming arbitrary manner, taking the young and the old, the rich and poor, the loved and the unloved from among us. In war after war, in the natural catastrophes that have afflicted the earth one after another, in the random shootings and the senseless violence that afflict too many of our cities, we are all confronted with the hopelessness brought on by death. We have only to listen to the tears of family members as their relatives struggle with disease and death to feel how close the helplessness can come even to those of faith. Yet no matter what the situation, our faith affirms for us the presence of God in our midst, bringing to us a word of healing and forgiveness and salvation and pointing the way forward for us toward that life where there will be no more tears or crying, for the old things have passed away. It is into the darkest moments of our lives that the word comes to us through the mouth of God’s prophets or through the power of the divine healer Himself, Jesus Christ Our Lord. No matter how bleak the situation, no matter how overwhelming it may seem, no matter how difficult if not impossible it looks, God comes to take each of these situations and transforms them with the power of His life giving Word and the unending grace of His sacraments.

The stories of these two women do not promise then that such suffering, pain, anguish, grief or fear will be removed. The stories of these two women do not promise that the circumstances of our lives will be filled with all bliss and light in the future. The stories of these two women do not promise that everything will be alright from this point onward. What they do promise is that into the hopelessness that pervades our world, our society and even our lives at times, hope will come. They do promise that there will always be someone to speak those words of hope to those in need. They do promise that God will always be present in the midst of the inevitable human suffering that comes into our lives, pointing again to the sign of those things that are to come. For the stories of these two widows and their sons who are raised from the dead are a glimpse of that which will be given to each of us in the face of our deaths, for then we will know that hopelessness is transformed and that there is new life in the One who came to bring that life among us. Two women. Two sons. Two stories. But in these stories lies the hope and promise of nothing less than the resurrection unto eternal life for all those whose faith and hope rest in Christ Jesus Our Lord when all our mourning, all our tears, all our grief will be wiped away and the deepest of all grief will be replaced with the singing of great joy around God’s eternal throne. Amen