Dead Woman Walking

“11 Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”” (Luke 7)

Before the gecko, before you were in good hands, before the corporations were on your side, before we made a profession of caregiving, before we expected the government to take care of us there was another system in place to insure people would be provided for in adversity, illness and their elder years…

It was called a family.

You didn’t have to find one; God had set it up so you were in one at birth.  A boy would be schooled and cuddled and scolded and trained up until the age of thirteen in one and then he’s ready for the workforce.  He would be apprenticed, either to his own father in the family business or farm or possibly to another man in town who needed a helper or in whose trade the boy had shown a talent.  Perhaps he may be a scholar and continue his education with the scribes, still a form of apprenticeship.  After a time, say five to seven years, he should be established.  He would now know his trade and be ready to take the next step of adulthood: to establish a family of his own.

For the daughter it would begin very similarly.  In the home, some schooling but mostly spending time with her mother and sisters and aunts and grandmother and cousins until she too reached the age of around thirteen.  By this time, she knows her trade; she has spent the last thirteen years learning the ins and outs of the household.  Her body has now told her she is able to bear children and so her father finds for her a suitable husband if he hadn’t had the lad picked out already or he and a friend hadn’t made arrangements much earlier.  This lad is most likely, or ideally a fellow around eighteen to twenty who has recently completed his apprenticeship for you see, the main point of the family unit is to provide!  To insure that his little girl is taken care of.  The cynic, the feminist may bemoan the patriarchal, archaic, authoritarian yea even despotic system that subjugated the will of the woman (remember, she may be thirteen but her body betrays her as an adult now), but if the father loved his little girl (and what kind of real father doesn’t?) and we see in the Bible many instances of fathers who doted and loved their little girls, he would obviously be trying to find the best man he could for her.  Someone from a good family, a hard worker, a lad going places.  This is the ideal of course, towns were small and so selection was most likely limited.  Some years there may be a good crop of raven locked, ruddy rascals to pick from and some years there may just be little Moishe the meager fishmonger.  Oy vey!

To our coddling culture that has extended adolescence right up to the Mid-life Crisis, full of boomerang kids playing videogames in their mommies’ basements and producing a generation of men who not only expect women to take care of them, they are so emotionally handicapped, they need them to, this ancient system sounds strange.  Regardless of how we feel about it, it had merits and it worked much of the time.  A woman was in a system of provision initiated by her father, was handed to her husband and in her declining years would be the purview of her children, most notably an eldest son.

But what if the woman were a widow?  What if she only ever had one son and then he died too?

It doesn’t take even much of a search of the Bible to see God the Father takes a serious view of how sojourners (aliens, immigrants, homeless), the fatherless and widows are treated.  Without even going into Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and those guys affectionately known as the minor prophets, we have God’s original manifesto given in Exodus….

“21 “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.”” (Ex 22)  Pretty straight forward, pretty cut and dried.  God may or may not help those who help themselves but He most certainly saves the helpless! 

“5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows


    is God in his holy habitation.” (Ps 68) 

And God has come in the flesh to Nain.  A city where a widow follows the bier of her only son.  A young man on whom all her protection and provision and hopes lie dead.  She wails.  Does she wail the words of this very Psalm?  Does she wail the words of Exodus and Deuteronomy to her neighbors on whom she must now trust for aid and alms.  Can she trust them or will she have to resort to the only two trades now left open to her: begging or prostitution?  Both of which will cut her off from community and communion with God!  Her wail, whether of words or guttural howls, is not a request for aid; it is the last cry of a woman at the end of her means looking over the precipice of her doom.  She is undone.  She is a dead woman walking.

Except, God does see.  God does hear.  God is moved!  God does ACT!  In this case, He acts in a way no one could have predicted, no one could have believed, no one could have been praying for.  He stops the funeral procession.  The perfectly pure touches the unclean corpse and says to the mother, “Do not weep.” 

“3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”” (Rev 21)