Who Are the Widows?

What do you do when you see a funeral procession? The Ohio Revised Code requires the cars in a procession to have their headlights on and carry purple or orange identifying pennants. The ORC allows the procession to travel through intersections regardless of stoplights and requires the rest of us to yield to the procession. So what do you do when you see one of these processions, or when you wait on the other side of the intersection while the procession crawls through? Do you fret and fume, “Just my luck to get stopped by this?” Do you say, “I wonder who that is?” If I can remember to do so, when I see a funeral procession, I offer up a prayer for the soul of the deceased and ask God to comfort his or her family and friends.

In this country, we put the dead away in coffins and hearses, while the mourners hide themselves from passersby in their cars. In India, in contrast, you could often see shrouded bodies being borne on handcarts along the streets, the Hindu dead to the riverside cremation grounds and the Muslim and Christian dead to their respective cemeteries. Whichever faith community, lines of chanting or wailing mourners would walk behind the carts. Oxcarts, bicycles, trucks, country busses, and cars would grind to a halt, while pedestrians respectfully acknowledged the dead person’s family. Those Indian funeral processions came to mind as I confronted today’s Gospel story. Can you picture all those people clogging the narrow streets of Nain? There’s Jesus followed not only by his disciples but also by a large crowd of curious wannabes. Coming towards him is the bier with the dead man, the grieving mother, clearly a widow, and the large crowd of mourners. For a few seconds time stops as the two crowds face each other.

This is the second of a pair of stories of unexpected healing. We heard the first one last week, in the story of the sympathetic centurion who sought Jesus’ help through religious leaders and friends. Actually, much of Luke’s Gospel presents us with the unexpected. Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear God’s Son, Mary’s hymn of praise in Elizabeth’s house, and Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth all hint that God is doing a new thing.

Now surrounded by the crowds, Jesus does something totally unexpected. As the chattering of his disciples and the wailing of the mourners dies out, Jesus stops the funeral procession. He sees the mute and grieving widow, and he has “compassion for her.” Without having to be told, Jesus understands the desperate straits this widow is now in. Already without the support a husband would have provided, and now deprived of the safety and support that her son would have provided, this woman now has absolutely no livelihood. Without handouts from grudging relatives or struggling friends, she is herself in danger of dying. No wonder the Hebrew prophets – whose writings Jesus would have known well – constantly shouted out that care for the “widows and orphans” was a mark of the nation’s holiness, a reflection of the nation’s mercy and justice.

As the onlookers on both sides hold their breaths, without being told, without even being asked by the widow, Jesus does something else unexpected. Risking ritual defilement by touching a corpse he touches the dead man and calls him back to life. In so doing, not only has he resuscitated the dead man, but, what is much more important, he has restored the widow to life, to the prospect of having the support of a son and her proper place in society.

What are we, as Luke’s readers and hearers, to make of this story? We hear the answer in the reaction of the crowds – on both sides. At first struck dumb with holy fear and awe, the people then realize that they are in the presence of a great prophet. Shouting, “God has looked favorably on his people,” they acknowledge that God has begun to fulfill God’s promises, and that their world has begun to change. God has come to God’s people. The Kingdom of God has broken into this world in Jesus, who is both prophet and king, who is God’s anointed one. Most important, we hear this: God comes first and most mightily to those on the margins of society. God has compassion on those who are discarded and despised by polite society. God does not come first to the rich and powerful. God does not come first to us respectable and pious middle class folks. God does not come first to the scion of a patriarchal house or the beautiful, jet-setting entertainer. God comes first to those who are desperate, to the poor, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the least, the lost, and the left behind. Make no mistake. Luke’s message throughout the Gospel is this: we see God most powerfully at work – and others can see God most powerfully at work through us – when the needs of the most neglected and vulnerable people among us are being met.

Which leads me to ask myself who are the neglected “widows” among us? Certainly, there are still many parts of the world where the situation of widows is scarcely better than it was in Jesus’ time. Traditionally among Hindus in India – and probably still in many places – widows were expected to dress in plain white clothes – the color of mourning – for the rest of their lives, wear no jewelry, eat once a day if that, and spend their days in prayer, secluded in their husband’s family’s houses. In Italy, Greece, and other parts of the Mediterranean world, you can still see older women, widows presumably, dressed all in black.

But you don’t have to go to South Asia or Europe to find women in desperate straits. In this week’s very issue of the Christian Century, in an article entitled, “Poor and Unwanted,” Amy Frykholm describes the work of sociologist Susan Crawford Sullivan.1 For a recent book entitled Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, Sullivan interviewed a diverse group of poor women, asking them about the challenges of raising children, working, and getting by on a meager income. Although many had strong religious beliefs, they seldom went to church. How come? The simple answer, Sullivan found, was that they felt “unwanted.” If they did venture into a church, they felt looked down on because they smoked, or they didn’t have the right clothes. Some were ashamed of being on Medicaid or using food stamps. Some had been in jail – most for using drugs – and were sure no church would welcome them as felons. And truth be told, many church members, though good-hearted people, didn’t quite know how to relate to women living at the poverty level. Speaking to pastors, Sullivan tells the story of “Rebecca.” A religious woman, Rebecca lived in a shelter. She was dependent on public transportation – such as it was. She prayed and read the Bible. On the few occasions when she went to church, she knew she didn’t fit in. Without a family and permanent home, she had no community, and the churches seemingly had no way of helping her to find one. Sullivan wonders: is there a better way?

I don’t have an answer to Sullivan’s question. However, I myself recently had an experience that perhaps is pointing me towards an answer. As part of my Wellstreams program, this past semester I’ve had a class on the practice of prayer, which was an introduction to all different kinds of prayer. The best part of the class was the requirement to actually practice every day for the two weeks until the next class the form of prayer learned in a session. One week the topic was prayer on the outer limits, i.e., praying for those on the margins of society. As part of the class, we went to actual places in Columbus where people were ministering to those in need. I went to a recovery meeting in a Methodist church. The meeting began with a hot dinner. The clientele looked like most of the folks who come to Loaves and Fishes. I took my dinner to one of the tables, told the other diners my first name, and learned their first names. One woman and a couple of the men shared their stories with me. During the recovery meeting, they all shared something with the larger group, either something for which they were thankful or something for which they needed prayer. As part of my prayer practice for the next week, I prayed intentionally for all the people at my table. In one way, it felt odd to pray for them, since I didn’t know much about them besides their names, and obviously I was in no position to materially help them. Indeed, I ran the risk of doing what the writer of the Letter of James warns against: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (2:15-16). Even so, it felt important to pray for them. And it’s possible that I was one of the few people in their lives actively praying for them. Would any of those folks have felt welcome here at St. Peter’s? I don’t know.

If God truly comes first to those on the margins of society, if Jesus ministered first to widows, prostitutes, and task collectors, as his disciples where are we? Are we out there with him? If not, why not?

1. 130, 12, June 12, 2013, 10-11.