Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 9, 2013: I tell you, arise!

I tell you, arise!

How can we proclaim the good news to a broken and hurting world?

The widows we hear about in two of this Sunday’s readings are unlikely heros (or heroines!), marginalized women whose very identity depends on the male heirs of their late husbands.  Their sons dead, they have lost everything. The widows’ stories are scriptural mirror images, depicting the role of God’s compassion in healing our brokenness, and calling us in turn to exercise our own compassion in our response to the brokenness of the world.

Anyone hearing the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son would have thought immediately of the story of Elijah resuscitating the boy in 1 Kings.  The widow of Zarephath blames Elijah for her son’s death:  Why have you done this to me, O man of God? she asks.  Surely shaken, Elijah takes the widow’s son and prays over him, asking, O Lord my God, will you afflict even the widow with whom I am staying?  But God hears Elijah’s prayer, and the widow is happy to acknowledge the sovereignty of Elijah’s God (who has not been her god), and can make the leap of faith necessary to trust in His saving action:  The word of the Lord comes truly from your mouth. It is an efficacious word of divine origin.

Similarly, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is moved with pity for the widow of Nain, and says to her, Do not weep.  His word, however, is not one of petition to God, but an imperative speech act:  Young man, I tell you, arise!  Jesus’ power over death identifies him as prophet; his deep compassion distinguishes him as divine, and witnesses to the event will report that God has visited his people.

Like the psalmist, we have doubtless benefitted from God’s compassion – I will extol you, O Lord, for you drew me clear – and we, too, must thus celebrate God’s reviving action in our lives, action that changes our mourning into dancing.  Even St. Paul underwent a resurrection of sorts:  having been a zealot for his ancestral traditions, he tells the Galatians, he experienced radical conversion, new life, and went on to make the proclamation of the good news his life’s mission.  Given new life with the flames of Pentecost, we are all summoned to deep and radical change, called to exercise kindness and generosity, rejoicing, like the psalmist, in the new life we now know, and doing our best to convey God’s life-giving compassion to the world.  I tell you, arise!

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