“I say to you, arise”

Read Luke 7:11-17

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Our great and final enemy is death, which is why victory over death is an essential part of Jesus’s saving work (1 Cor.15:20-22,56-57). So all four gospels include a story of Jesus raising someone from the dead, as another sign of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom (Mt.9:23-26; Mk.5:38-43; Lk.8:51-56; Jn.11:41-44). Luke alone tells this further resurrection story. It prepares the way for the reply which Jesus will give to John’s messengers (Lk.7:22).

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Large crowds followed Jesus to Nain, a remote place a day’s journey from Capernaum (11). There they met another large crowd, going with a local widow to her only son’s burial. Without a provider and protector her need was as great as her grief. Moved with deep compassion (13), Jesus intervened without any invitation, bringing her son back to life (14-15).

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It’s noteworthy that the awe-struck crowd “praised God” (16). They recognised that in Jesus God was at work and had come to help his people. Jesus was more than a prophet, of course, as Luke recognises: “For the first time in narrative Luke calls Jesus the Lord (13). It has undoubted fitness in this scene in which Jesus shows he is Lord over death itself” (Morris).