First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

1Kings 17 and Luke 7

“A Sign of Freedom”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

June 10, 2007

Near the end of her life Ann Laputz began to slow down as did her husband John. Although most take such a development as a natural course of things, they were the children of Ukrainian immigrants. This meant life was long days of hard work. One job was what you did during the day, the evening, perhaps the night or morning was time for another job.

These were Kathy’s grandparents. I can remember how fate gave me the upper hand into their good graces- I was studying Russian in college. Such a choice somehow qualified me as a good addition to the family. A few years ago they were visiting us in Washington. By this time in their life, John and Ann, if left with a newspaper or the television remote, they would soon be dozing. Again this isn’t strange for normal people, but for John and Ann it was always seen as a kind of curiosity as if people didn’t believe they actually slept.

During this visit, Ann’s napping was starting to take on a life of its own. She was starting to doze in mid sentence, with no aid of book or television. Out she would go with the drop of a hat. The naps, it would become quickly apparent, were brimming on the verge of a question of consciousness, so she was taken to the hospital. Yet even at this point, there was a sense that this was somehow expected, she was “old.” This was bound to happen.

At the hospital tests were run and a diagnosis was determined with great speed. Indeed Ann was old, but this was not the source of her napping. The battery in Ann’s pace maker had run out. She literally didn’t have any juice. I was in Seattle for the day when this was all happening so I came to the hospital straight from the ferry. Walking down the hall I could hear Ann. It was as if she had been re-charged. Her voice was hers again: peppy, quick, laughing and ever creating new words. As it should be, the story she was telling the nursing staff ended with the Rockettes and Coney Island of her childhood. I paused outside the door just to take it in. She had come back to life.

I have to admit a certain amount of shame. It wasn’t right to simply assume her condition was age. With growing frequency we are going to face this issue as people live longer. To simply consider their inactivity or disconnection from life as an issue of age should be the last thought, not the first.

Yet, and this is a strange truth, for Ann it wasn’t as if she were done living and wondering and growing; it was, though, as if we believed she had seen all that is good in life. So there was a kind of acceptance. And it could be said that no one was really expecting a next chapter for her, another phase in her life. When you are eight, people wonder what your adolescence will look like; when you are eighty there is often less wonder of what will come next.

I known this sounds rather morbid, but, at least where Ann was concerned, it was more of a sense of gratitude that her life was full and blessed and the seasons of her day were well nigh complete. Should you expect something more when life is full?

The opposite of this is what I encounter when a young person dies. A teenager who is killed in an automobile crash, the young father who dies in combat, the mother in her fifties who cancer steals away are grieved not only for their passing but for what was left unseen, undone- what was not yet. Their life was not yet full, or complete.

All funerals are a challenge, but these are tough. I have walked out of many hospital rooms where a person has died, but I stagger out of the ones where there is a still born. Both life, both death: but with the one who is ninety and has seen life come and go there is a sense of propriety; with the newborn, death makes no sense at all.

This seems to be what Jesus stumbled into at Nain. The critic in me doesn’t like the fact that this is the city where Elisha raised a widow’s son much in the same fashion, but I am willing to concede coincidence may have created such a neat parallel of events. Whatever the case may be Jesus enters as the funeral procession is making its way to the grave. Moved to compassion, a new translation suggests “his heart was broken,” when he stopped them and told the widow and grieving mother not to weep. Calling the dead from his slumber, Jesus raises the man back to life.

Biblical scholars have been quick to deduce the point of the healing. Laying aside issues of compassion or a moment of tenderness, commentators have suggested Jesus did this simply to make a point, to show the power he possessed, to convince a wavering John the Baptist.

Truly the next thing Luke recounts is the arrival of John’s disciples to say, are you really the Christ or should we wait for another? The healing at Nain, indeed the raising of the widow’s son, provided a very nice object lesson to demonstrate Jesus indeed was the messiah. And while this sounds harsh and emotionless, it is consistent with the way we need to interpret all the healings. Jesus was not the messiah so no one would die, nor was he the messiah so all would live to see ninety; Jesus was the messiah so all could have eternal life and freedom from sin. Although the raising at Nain was a blessing to the widow, plenty of people died that day in Palestine.

The healing, again a true blessing, a real restoration, was at its deepest level purely a sign. It was an image meant to direct, to convince, to show. A number of people right now are reading the Church History of Eusebius. One thing that leaps off of nearly every page is the importance of the faith of those who are going to face persecution, how important their steadfast faith was. John the Baptist, on his way to death, was struggling with whether Jesus was the messiah. Did he really believe this? It could easily be said that the life restored at Nain gave the Baptist the strength to go to his death with faith.

I am not sure why, but such an image- the power of the sign- doesn’t make a lot of sense today. Perhaps we are too pragmatic; perhaps we are just convinced that each must come to terms with the meaning of life on their own and thus the faith of another, while nice, doesn’t count somehow.

This is why I balked at the story of the slave auctions at Plymouth Congregational in the 1850s. This was the most famous church in America at the time with its renowned preacher, Henry Ward Beecher. And one of the notorious things they would do is from time to time they would auction the freedom of a slave in the church; during worship they would auction a slave who was about to be sold. Critics at the time thought this was ridiculous and a waste of money and simply playing the heartstrings of the wealthy and worst enflaming an already incendiary national crisis.

Historians will note that the real work of Plymouth Congregational in terms of slavery happened in their basement as a stop along the way of the Underground Railroad, but on the chancel they would auction the life of a young slave unto freedom. The price would be fixed coming in and Henry Ward Beecher would work the crowd, explaining the life that would face a young girl once sold to New Orleans, how she would be “brood mare” and then a servant. Her life would be one of sexual violence and exploitation and unending humiliation and indignity. "Are you willing to save her?" was the question. "Can you meet the price of freedom?"

One such auction was recorded this way. Beecher brought a pretty young woman with light brown skin and long wavy hair to the platform and said, “And this is a marketable commodity. What will you do now? May she read her liberty in your eyes? Shall she go free? Christ stretched forth his hand and the sick were restored to health; will you stretch forth your hands and give that without which life is of little worth? Let the plates be passed, and we will see.”

Debbie Applegate resurrected the words of one present. “’Tears of pity and indignation streamed from eyes unused to weeping. Women became hysterical; men were almost beside themselves.’ Coins, banknotes, rings, bracelets, and watches poured into the contribution boxes, and some people threw money directly onto the pulpit.” Several well to do men agreed to make up the difference and a great cry went up in the sanctuary. There was freedom found; they had raised the widow’s son at Nain as it were.

The newspapers went wild with this account. For those on the side of abolition this was a triumph, for those trying to keep the south in the union and for the pro-slavery folks this was just blasphemy or worse. Yet, no matter what it was a sign of freedom; it was a healing and one life at least restored. It wasn’t the end of slavery or a reasonable way to free all the slaves; it wasn’t meant to be such; it was meant to be a sign to the church that they needed to get in, to free those in bondage. Even more, it was a moment where the church saw itself as one that possessed the power to bring life from death.

The raising of the widow’s son at Nain doesn’t make a lot of sense to the church today. It doesn’t make sense because we don’t see ourselves as having power, and certainly not the power to bring life from death. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because we don’t see this as our job. We see this story in Luke as an act of Jesus, not what we are supposed to be doing. But we keep forgetting this was recorded not to describe the life of Jesus, but to call the church to do likewise. Remember the gospels are God’s word to the church, for the church, a call to the church to be the body of Christ, to be his hands and feet, his presence in the world. Here we are being called to raise the widow’s son at Nain. Not to wonder if it happened, but to make it happen again.

Sometimes I think we look at the church the way I did with Ann. The church is old and tired, it doesn’t have to do much anymore and if it seems like it sleeps a lot, well what can we expect? There was a time when the church worked hard, but now it just rests a lot, and we need to use a quiet voice lest you wake her up.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the church got a new battery. The world is in desperate need of signs of power, of redemption like the slave auctions on the pulpit of Plymouth Congregational, just as it is in desperate need of a church who would risk its very life to fight oppression where it exists, to demand slavery cease where there is bondage, to give up life where death is ready at hand.

Just before Pentecost Jesus promised his disciples power. He said you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Today we have reduced this power to what can be had by one person, but I believe the power was not meant for one person, but one church.

In two weeks time there will be group of Malawians in our midst. The cost of bringing them here could have been used to build schools or equip hospitals. Yet, instead the cost was offered to create a sign of freedom. Like Beecher’s auctions of slaves, it is not meant to eradicate extreme poverty or end malaria; it is meant to be a sign of freedom. I didn’t see that at first, just as I didn’t understand the church as sleeping a bit too much.

Don’t get me wrong. This congregation is alive and well and I believe our battery is being charged, but is that how we look at the church at large, how we see the life of the church in the world? Chances are good we are ready for the church to sleep more than we are wondering what will come next. We are the body of Christ; we are the ones who are supposed to be raising the widow’s son at Nain. Really. That’s a lot of power.

It’s time for us to get a new battery. It’s time to be a living sign of freedom to the world. It’s time to get a little entangled and a good deal involved with bringing down the kingdom of God. Amen.