{"id":2103,"date":"2013-06-02T19:23:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T23:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=2103"},"modified":"2013-06-02T19:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T23:23:00","slug":"what-happened-at-nain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/what-happened-at-nain\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened at Nain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Jesus intervenes in death three times, according to the memories of his friends.\u00a0 All four gospels tell the story of the restoration of Rabbi Jairus\u2019 daughter.\u00a0 Only John tells the tale of the raising of Lazarus from his grave.\u00a0 And only Luke tells the story assigned for this week, of Jesus raising the son of a widow from the pall on which he is being carried to his grave.<\/p>\n

In each tale Jesus jars the sensibilities of\u00a0his witnesses, who are gathered for the rites, rituals and the responses people offer in times of death: solace; company on the journey to the grave; and mourning.\u00a0 The courtyard of Jairus\u2019 home is full of people offering tears and solace for the little girl\u2019s dying \u2013 Jesus walks through them all and raises her to life.\u00a0 Mary and Martha, Jesus\u2019 dear friends, are mourning for their brother \u2013 Mary beseechingly sobs, \u2018If only you had come sooner, he would not have died!\u2019.\u00a0 <\/em>In horror, Martha, seeing that Jesus means to raise Lazarus, protests, \u2018Lord, it is four days, and he stinketh. (KJV)\u2019\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

In Luke\u2019s tale, Jesus interrupts a funeral procession, which in any culture is a violation and in his culture was an act of uncleanliness,\u00a0a sacrilege in the midst of a ritual.\u00a0 Each raising challenges those who are prepared for, and in many ways have accepted, the death.<\/p>\n

The actions of Jesus come in response to the broken hearts of mourners.\u00a0 He does not raise the dea\"Repalce<\/a>d in response to the dead, or as a protest to death.<\/p>\n

Jairus\u2019 devotion and self-humbling, Mary\u2019s weeping, and the widow\u2019s desperation move Jesus to his interventions.\u00a0 So if it can be said that these tales hold out promise, the promise is for the grieving.\u00a0\u00a0But it is also true that many died and he only raised these three.\u00a0 There were indeed several whom he pulled back from the brink of death, and others whom he lifted from slow and lingering suffering.\u00a0 But only these three were brought back from the finality into which they had descended.\u00a0 Commonly, Christians have assumed that our role in the story is to\u00a0healed from death.\u00a0 But it would be unseemly and unfaithful for us to assume that we are all jockeying to be one of the few.\u00a0 And even worse to assume that Jesus picked favorites among the mourners.<\/p>\n

What, then,\u00a0is the meaning of the few, among the many?\u00a0 Is it perhaps the fulfillment of the promise of Isaiah, the giving of a garland instead of ashes, of the oil of gladness to replace mourning?<\/p>\n

Or does it show us how much our grief affects the heart of Jesus?\u00a0 Is he gathering strength from these events which he will need to raise himself at Easter?\u00a0 Is resurrection a response to the tears of those who loved him?\u00a0 Are the tears of our hearts the thing from which our God draws life, unlike all the other gods of this world, whose lives are fueled by warfare or offerings of riches, by subjugation of human will or adoration of divine power?<\/p>\n

The 70s film ET<\/em><\/strong> showed an extraterrestrial who survived on the strength of his heart, which glowed with fire when he thought of his home.\u00a0 Eventually he was raised to his spaceship on the beam of his heart\u2019s fire.\u00a0 Death, for ET, was separation from those he loved.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The current film of Henry James\u2019 century-old novella, What Maisie Knew<\/em><\/strong>, shows a child, caught in a bitter divorce, living through the death of her family, which occurs in a strange procession of events, comings and goings\u00a0in which her home life falls apart.\u00a0 She is carried around and buffeted by bickering parents and the\u00a0strange winds of chance.\u00a0 Maisie follows her heart to those who will protect and nurture her.<\/p>\n

A third film, Hannah Arendt<\/em><\/strong>, tells the story of a Holocaust death camp survivor teaching in New York City in the 1950s, who covers the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi leader and overseer of the camps.\u00a0 She worked at the meaning of all these deaths, and\u00a0of Eichmann as a man, and she worked at discerning\u00a0the nature of evil.\u00a0 Eichmann was accused of being an unfeeling monster of a man.\u00a0 Her report for The New\u00a0Yorker\u00a0Magazine, also\u00a0published as a book, raised\u00a0\u00a0howls of controversy, because she claimed Eichmann was an ordinary man with ordinary feelings, who did not engage in thinking about the morality of his actions.\u00a0 Arendt came to understand the crimes of Eichmann as crimes against humanity rather than crimes against Jews, for, she said, the essential point is that Jews are human beings, and an assault on any one is an assault on everyone.<\/p>\n

Arendt also made the point that evil is ordinary and banal, not extraordinary or radical.\u00a0 Only good, she said, can be both ordinary and radical.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It is the ordinariness of evil, the way in which it crops up in unthinking decisions, that is the root we need to be looking for.<\/p>\n

\"Replace<\/a>Her opponents\u00a0wanted\u00a0 to have an emotional response to evil, and\u00a0wanted\u00a0to see WW2 as Great Evil overcome by Holy Good.\u00a0 And they wanted to judge Eichmann for not feeling their feelings.\u00a0\u00a0 Arendt would not allow them, or any of us,\u00a0to be spectators, judging evil or good by its proportion, but insisted\u00a0on\u00a0their and our\u00a0involvement in discerning the ordinary actions of every day, and their accumulation of consequences.<\/p>\n

Jesus pushes us to see that death is not a Spectacular Evil.\u00a0 It is ordinary and banal.\u00a0 Indeed, the three whom he raises will have to die \u2013 again.\u00a0 And the next time, they will die for good.\u00a0 But in the meantime, the connection in which death\u00a0has been reversed is the connection of hearts.\u00a0 Love makes it possible for ordinary good to become radical, and extraordinary.\u00a0 He will make this point again, at the Last Supper, and again, on Easter Day.<\/p>\n

If we are to know the wonder of life in the midst of death, then we must be aware of this wonder in our transactions and our decisions.\u00a0 Our hearts must\u00a0move us to become more than spectators watching death and life, processing to the graveyards ritualistically \u00a0or gathering at the doorway to wail for what we have already accepted, seeing the dead as Not Us.<\/p>\n

If we are moved to becoming people who are diminished by the suffering of others, we\u00a0may begin to understand what it means to be human, as the children around ET, and the nanny of Maisie were moved and did learn.\u00a0 And we may also learn what it means to do good.<\/p>\n

Then we may understand the difference between good and evil at last, and we may understand which of our ordinary decisions increase the power of evil, and which\u00a0restore life in the valley of the shadow of death.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Illustrations:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 The Widow<\/strong><\/em>, by Ralph Hedley, 1848 \u2013 1913<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0Ash Wednesday. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>2006 photo. \u00a0San Francisco, CA> \u00a0Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 What Maisie Knew<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0film poster, Google Images<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Hannah Arendt<\/strong><\/em> film poster. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>En Wikipedia.org<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus intervenes in death three times, according to the memories of his friends.\u00a0 All four gospels tell the story of the restoration of Rabbi Jairus\u2019 daughter.\u00a0 Only John tells the tale of the raising of Lazarus from his grave.\u00a0 And only Luke tells the story assigned for this week, of Jesus raising the son of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Happened at Nain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jesus intervenes in death three times, according to the memories of his friends.\u00a0 All four gospels tell the story of the restoration of Rabbi Jairus\u2019\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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