Luke 7:11-17

After the Cumbrian Murders…

There are no words we can say that will make any sense of the Cumbrian tragedy
this week. We want to avoid theological clichés. We want to avoid developing a
theology that seeks to defend God in the light of such horror and tragedy. We want to
avoid saying anything that, in an attempt to comfort, will only serve to bring more hurt
and misunderstanding.
For many of us here this morning, we simply want to stand in solidarity with the
people of Whitehaven and the surrounding villages.
But perhaps for others of us, the unfolding of events this week has raised the
spectre of past hurts and memories of personal experiences of tragedy or sudden
loss or violence.
Each of us comes here this morning with our own personal history and we need
to be mindful of that. We need to realise that our personal histories are sacred space;
a place, a history, a journey, where we have walked with God and often experienced
what we have thought is the absence of God.
So this calls for great sensitivity, not just from me in the next few minutes, but
from each one of us, one to another…
The experience of loss is common to us all and so we bring that with us as we
reflect on the events in Cumbria. And perhaps, when we think about the horror of 12
people dying and another 11 suffering terrible injuries, there is a certain absurdity
about the Gospel reading we have just heard read: the raising from the dead of the
widow of Nain’s son. Here we have a story that will bring into sharp relief the
experience of the Whitehaven community this week.
There is a town called Nain and a large crowd has gathered because there is a
funeral – an untimely death of a young man – and the whole town has come out to
mourn and stand in solidarity with the boy’s mother. And the grief is tangible. The
crowd would have been crying out in anguish, as is the way with Middle Eastern
funerals, and there would have been hundreds of people crushed in close to the
coffin; jostling the procession along with the sheer weight and energy of grief. And
we are told that the boy who had died was the woman’s only son. The anguish of a
mother compounded with the reality that, with his death, the family name would come
to an end and her own future, as a widow, was now unsure. Where would she live?
Who would care for her? This untimely death had, literally, destroyed her world.
There was only confusion and darkness and despair.
Then Jesus approaches through the gate of the town and, seeing what is
happening, is moved to act. He touches the bier, the coffin in which the boy is laid,
and orders him to rise up. Immediately, the dead boy is awakened and begins to
speak and, as we read, ‘Jesus gave him to his mother.’
How many families in Cumbria right now wish that Jesus would come into their
town and give their son or daughter, husband or wife, mother or father back to them?
We think too of the agony of Mrs Mary Bird, Derrick Bird’s aging and sick mother,
who has not lost one son but two. The agony of knowing that one of her beloved
sons slaughtered his twin brother before going on to become one of Britain’s most
notorious murderers must be more than she can bear right now. How she must be
wishing that she could have her sons back. How she must long for the days when
they were happy children, playing together in the sun as they grew up.
So the Cumbria tragedy, and this passage from Luke, leaves us with the
inevitable question: “Where is Jesus when we need him?”
If he can raise the widow of Nain’s son, why doesn’t he raise the Cumbrian dead?
If he is so miraculous and all-powerful, why did he allow our loved ones to die?
Why does he allow us to suffer ill-health and mental anguish?
I don’t know.
I really don’t have an answer to that.

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 The truth is that life can be terribly, terribly cruel and there are no easy answers.
There is no sense, no rhyme, no reason to so much of what we experience. And if
someone says to you, ‘It’s all in God’s plan’, then that can make the bitter pill of
suffering even harder to swallow, can’t it? There have been experiences in my life,
and yours too, I am sure that I just don’t want to believe have been part of God’s plan
for me. To believe that some of my grief and my suffering has been God’s plan would
suggest to me that God can be cruel indeed – and I don’t believe that for one minute.
The truth is that our lives can be filled with inexplicable suffering and pain,
random events that happen for no real reason other than the fact that that is how life
is…
But that doesn’t necessarily point to a cruel and vindictive God. He is not a Genie
in a Lamp who can magic away pain and suffering.
It is more important for us, when we face times of suffering and trial, to seek the
Divine Presence with us in the midst of our pain. And that is what this story from
Luke 7 offers us: a glimpse into the truth that, when we suffer the most, the Divine is
present with us.
There are just two points I want to bring out from this.
The first is that this passage reminds us of the heart of compassion that God has
for each one of us when we suffer. We read these words: “When the Lord saw [the
widow], he had compassion for her and said to her ‘Do not weep’”. Jesus was
gripped by compassion for the woman.
Compassion – the word comes from the Latin – meaning ‘to suffer with’. It’s not
just that Jesus felt sorry for the woman: the whole town felt sorry for her. Jesus was
moved with compassion. He genuinely suffered with the woman when he saw the
depth of her anguish.
Such is our experience of God when we suffer; that he is a compassionate God.
He doesn’t just feel sorry for us when we hurt. He is moved with compassion to suffer
with us.
When you hurt, God hurts…
And, out of compassion, he says to the woman, ‘Do not weep’. Perhaps that
sounds like a weak response. We might have the image of when one of our children
is crying about something and we say to them, ‘Don’t cry, darling’, and gently wipe
their eyes. That isn’t what these words mean. When Jesus said, ‘Do not weep’, he
was saying that the woman had no cause to weep.
There is a beautiful phrase in Revelation 21, describing the New Jerusalem,
heaven, where it says that God will ‘wipe every tear from out of our eyes’. For me,
the ‘out of’ is really important. It’s not that God will wipe away tears from my eyes but
that he will wipe away tears from out of my eyes, which is to say that I won’t even be
able to cry any more because I won’t need to because there will be nothing to cry
about! And so Jesus, as a foretaste of that heavenly reality, says to the widow, ‘Do
not weep’. You have no reason to cry because Jesus gives us a very real hope for
the future that can transform our present experience.
The hope is that Jesus will remove all our pain and our mourning and, as we
begin to live in the light of that hope for tomorrow, so we begin to see our Today
transformed and light breaking through the darkness. When we begin to experience
the light of Christ breaking through into our darkness, we can testify that Christian
Hope is not just pie-in-the-sky, it’s not just wishful thinking or a fairy tale or a myth or
story, a Happy Ever After. No, Christian Hope is much more than that. It is much
deeper and more profound than that. Christian Hope is a Present Experience of the
Divine-With-Us. It is a transformation of our perspective in the Present that gives us a
firm foundation through which to anticipate the future.
‘Do not weep’, says Jesus. The present is a moment to anticipate the future with
confidence and peace, even in the midst of our pain and anguish.
So, first, then, this passage from Luke reveals to us the compassionate heart of
Jesus and assures us of the eternal presence of the Divine, even in the midst of our

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personal sufferings.
But just as profoundly, I think that this passage has something to say to us when
we suffer as a community.
It is not just individuals who are suffering in Cumbria today. It is not just families
who suffer. Communities are suffering too. There truly is the possibility of community
suffering in the face of tragedy that is somehow greater than the sum total of the
individual parts.
Communities are scarred by tragedy just as individuals are scarred by tragedy.
That is what we see in this passage from Luke 7. We read that there was a large
crowd from the town in mourning; the community was in mourning. So it is no
accident that Jesus walks into the middle of the community to work his miracle of
resurrection.
Just as the woman celebrates the return of her lost son, so the community
celebrates the healing presence of the Divine in their midst. We read Luke’s words:
“They glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has
looked favourably on his people!’ Notice that the crowd didn’t say, ‘God has looked
favourably on the widow’ – they said, ‘God has looked favourably on his people!’
They knew that a miracle performed for an individual in their midst was a miracle for
the whole community. The tragedy of this young man’s death was a tragedy for the
community so his resurrection from death was a community miracle too; the
compassion and love of God was extended to them all.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the people of Whitehaven and Lamplugh,
Egremont, Frizington, Wilton, Gosforth, Seascale and Boot: 8 communities ravaged
by senseless death. We pray that God will bring healing and renewal to those
communities in the fullness of time.
Today is not a day for trite theology. Today is not a day to try to explain away
suffering. Today is not a day to even begin to look for a reason ‘why’.
Today, the people of Cumbria are in anguish and suffering. Today, communities
in Cumbria are feeling violated and scourged by evil.
Today is a day for us to sit with them, in silence and in prayer.
As we reflect on their pain, many of us will become more aware of our own pain
and the ambiguities of life that we have suffered; the ambiguities of life that, perhaps,
we continue to endure.
No answers to the question ‘why’.
But we do gain some comfort, some context, some perspective, from our Gospel
reading…
That Jesus is here with us in the midst of our agonies and that he meets us with
deep compassion and suffers with us and gives us a hope for the future that has the
power to transform our present experience.
That Jesus is here with us in our community sufferings too; that as any one of us
hurts, so we all hurt and the miracle of resurrection and renewal and new life is a
miracle for the whole community, not just the suffering individual.
Our God is a God of the individual.
Our God is a God of the community.
And to the people of Cumbria, to our communities, to each one of us, he stands
here today in our midst and says, ‘Do not weep!’ Because the hope we have is that
God will wipe every tear from out of our eyes, and we can move forward confidently
through today and into tomorrow in the peace and love of a Saviour who says to us,
‘I will be will you always, even to the end of the age’.
May God bless the people of Cumbria and each one of us, this day and in the
days to come. Amen.