The Funeral Jesus Stopped

There was a town called Nain. It had a wall around it, and a gate where the road went in and out.

And out through that gate, one afternoon, came the saddest sound in the world.

It was a funeral.

A funeral is when someone we love has died, and we carry them out, and we cry. There were so many crying people that day. And in the middle of all of them walked one woman, and she was the saddest of all.

She was a mother. The one they were carrying out was her son. Her only son. Her husband had died long ago, so now her boy was gone too, and she had no one left. No one to hold her hand. No one to come home to.

When you lose someone you love, it feels like a hole has opened that nothing can fill. Like a light went out and won't come back on. That mother knew that feeling. Her feet kept walking, but inside her, everything had stopped.

Now, coming up that same road, toward that very same gate, was Jesus. And a big crowd was with him. The happy kind of crowd. The kind that follows along when wonderful things are happening.

Two crowds, about to meet at the gate. One full of joy. One full of tears.

And Jesus saw her.

Out of all those people, all that noise, he saw the one mother with no one left. And the Bible says his heart went out to her. That means his heart ached. Right there, in his chest, he felt her sadness like it was his own.

He walked straight up to her, close, and he said something you would only ever say to someone you loved very much.

"Don't cry."

How can you tell a mother at a funeral not to cry? You can't, unless you are about to do something only God can do.

Jesus reached out and touched the wooden bed they carried the boy on. The whole sad parade stopped. Everyone went quiet.

And Jesus spoke to the boy as if he were only sleeping. "Young man," he said, "I tell you, get up."

And the boy sat up. He sat up, and he opened his eyes, and he began to talk.

And Jesus gave him back to his mother.

Back into her arms. The one she thought was gone forever, breathing, warm, hers again.

The people remembered the old stories then, like the day long before when the prophet Elijah had given a widow back her only son. "A great prophet is here!" they said to one another. "God has come to help his people!"

Jesus stopped that funeral because of what is inside him. His heart cannot bear to leave you crying. And he is not finished. One day he will walk up to every grave the way he walked up to that one, and say, "Get up." Every tear wiped. Every loved one given back.

But that afternoon, a mother and her son walked back through the gate of Nain together, holding hands the whole way home.