NOTES for Luk 7:11-17

The evangelist Luke gives special importance to the healings performed by the Lord Jesus. For him, as a physician, perhaps better than for other people, the miraculous character of these healings is visible and important. All the more, the raising of the son of the widow of Nain could not fail to draw his attention, and he is the only one among the evangelists who reports it. It is therefore very important to read his account closely in order to understand what matters most to the evangelist himself.

Luke speaks of the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ over death, and we clearly see the divine character of this authority. Christ's words sound like a command: "Young man, I say to you, arise" (the Slavonic "arise" conveys much more precisely here the meaning of the Greek egertheti, which is the imperative form of "to rise"). This has nothing in common with what used to be called "galvanizing a corpse": the Lord is not commanding him merely to stand up, but to return to life from beyond the threshold of death. If we imagine ourselves in the crowd around the funeral, we can easily understand why the evangelist emphasizes the fear that seized everyone. In this raising, God Himself enters our life, and the evangelist deliberately draws our attention to this.

As we read his account, it is important to look closely at the individual details. The evangelist says that this young man was the only son of a mother who was a widow. Therefore, with his death this woman was losing everything. Not only had her son died, which is in itself an inexpressible tragedy for a mother, but with his death she was deprived of every legal standing. A woman at that time was not an independent member of society, as is still the case now in some Islamic countries. Without the protection of a father, husband, brother, or son, she was not considered a person at all. This is precisely why, in particular, the Lord from the Cross entrusts His Mother to the beloved disciple.

And here the evangelist Luke says that the Lord had compassion on the orphaned woman. The evangelist offers us three key moments: "a terrible tragedy; Jesus had compassion; rise!" Thus, together with His divinity and inseparably from it, we see in the Lord what is familiar to us and what we therefore call human. The old theologians of the time of the Christological disputes loved to separate the divine and the human in Christ's actions. Here we see how inseparable one actually is from the other.

And, of course, in our practical life it is enormously important for us how Christ acts. The Lord does not launch into explanations; He does not speak about the purifying meaning of suffering or the inevitability of death; nothing like our "God gave, and God has taken away" comes from His lips. After all, all these are words that cannot console a weeping woman. What does she care about those theological depths? Jesus pities her and her son, and His compassion overturns all the laws of this world. After all, the young man had perhaps been sick, or there had been some other "natural" cause of this death. But all of that proves insignificant, because the Son of God pities these people and grants them life. This, in fact, is what is central in the Gospel, the Good News of the Creator's mercy.