The miracle worker summary act 111/10/2022 The way we would react as eyewitnesses is conditioned by our experience, upbringing, education and beliefs. There are obvious pitfalls in transplanting a modern sensibility into a resident of Nain two thousand years ago. Only by understanding the audience can we hope to understand the message they received when Jesus healed the widow's son at Nain. To answer that question, the focus has to shift from Jesus, the widow and her son, to the bystanders. Raised on the Jewish scriptures, taught to revere Elijah as the greatest of prophets, everyone who saw or heard about Jesus and the widow of Nain would make the link with Elijah.Īccording to Luke's Gospel account, one of them even shouts, 'A great prophet has appeared among us.'īut what does it mean, this copycat miracle? If it was more than an outlandish coincidence, if Jesus was acting out a 'sign' in public, then what was the message of the sign? What was he trying to convey by drawing this parallel with Elijah? The original Greek phrase at the end of the story, in which Jesus 'gave him back to his mother' is identical with the phrase used of Elijah after his miracle. Jesus' miracle, which looks at first glance like a spontaneous act of compassion towards a grieving mother, was at the same time the spitting image of Elijah's miracle. The similarities between the two miracles are clear: a widow's only son, a premature death, a distraught mother met at the town's gate, a restoration of life by a holy man. The widow was desperate, consumed by grief. The woman - though poor - had been generous in her hospitality to Elijah, so he was distressed to see her son grow worse and worse, and finally stop breathing. The story - as told in the book of Kings - goes that Elijah was staying with a widow in a small town when her son fell ill. If you look closely at the biblical account you find that this miracle reminded them of another miracle that took place a thousand years earlier, performed by one of the holiest men in Jewish history - the prophet Elijah. No wonder they were 'filled with awe'.īut the triumph of life over death was not what really got the crowd going. To those people who saw it happen there was no doubt - Jesus had brought the widow's son back to life. There will never be an answer to satisfy everyone. Or perhaps the boy wasn't dead in the first place, merely in a coma. It isn't hard to picture the scene: the distraught mother weeping and wailing, supported by friends on either side the confusion and unease as this stranger Jesus approaches the coffin, telling the mother not to cry the shock and sheer incredulity of the crowd as the boy sits up in his coffin and talks the boy himself, blinking in the daylight.īut what are we to make of it? Maybe Jesus really did bring the boy back from the dead. It's a captivating story - Jesus interrupting a funeral cortège to bring the deceased back to life.
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