June 6, 2010 - 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

If You See Something, Do Something
Luke 7:11-17
Pentecost +2 – June 6, 2010

“If you see something, say something.”

Anyone who's lived in the New York area or visited for even a little bit knows this public safety slogan – that if we all work together, we can catch something bad before it happens. It's easy enough – if you see something, say something – but it implies that we are all paying attention. And of course, sometimes we are – the attempted car bombing in Times Square from not too long ago certainly shows that seeing something & saying something can avert tragedy.

But more often than not, we are not paying attention. We are too busy, too caught up in our own lives, not noticing – on purpose. You see it everyday on the subway – people keep their eyes down, noses tucked into newspapers or books, earbuds securely tucked into ears that do not want to hear what is going on with the people around them. It's a survival mechanism, a defense against the overwhelming-ness of the world around us. Because the world is filled with hurt and need: the homeless person sleeping in the cardboard box, standing on the corner asking for money; the little kid who goes to bed hungry because mom or dad or grandma or grandpa has to choose between paying the rent or buying food; the oil spill going on in the Gulf right now, with its horrifying pictures of oil spewing into the ocean, the birds and animals and seashores coated with its deadly slickness – and if you are like me, it is all too tempting to look away, to change the channel, to surf to another website – because there's so much bad news in the world, and only so much one person can do. And if you don't see something, then you have no responsibility to say something, to do something. With all that's going on in the world, it just seems easier & safer – emotionally, physically – to keep our eyes closed.

We might have expected Jesus & his entourage to do just that on their way into the town of Nain. Jesus has already been on a preaching & teaching & healing tour throughout the countryside. In the previous chapters, Luke tells us about how the people mobbed to see Jesus, to hear him teach, to be healed of their diseases – and how from time to time, Jesus had to take a time out, to go away by himself to a deserted place, to rest and pray, to close his eyes, just for a minute to a world filled with people and their never-ending needs. And here, Jesus is just arriving from Capernaum, about 25 miles away. They walked the whole way there, of course. You know how tired you are when you get to your destination after a long journey, even if it's just in a car. You want to get in the house and put your feet up with a cold drink and order food that will be delivered to your door. You don't want to be bothered – right? It would have been so easy for Jesus to see the funeral coming out the same gate he was going in & just to step aside & let it pass. He could have averted his eyes, remained anonymous. No one could blame him – the people at the funeral would hardly have noticed or known that it was Jesus.

But here we are in the season after Pentecost, this long season of the church year after the Holy Spirit has come in and blown everyone away, the time when the church moves out of all the big events of Jesus' life that we celebrate from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter to Pentecost Sunday – and into what we call ordinary time. It's the half of the year when we look to the stories of what Jesus did in his day to day life, in the ordinary course of the years of his public ministry, stories that are meant to open our eyes, to teach us about what it means to be disciples – followers of Jesus in our own day-to-day, ordinary existence.

And what we see in this story is that Jesus doesn't step aside at the town gate. He doesn't just get out of the way and let the funeral procession go on by. He doesn't close his eyes. Jesus sees something, and it prompts him to say something, to do something. Jesus notices the widow, who has lost her only son, who today will bury her only hope of support – financial, physical, emotional – with her only boy, whose situation as a widow is now more precarious than ever. Jesus sees her; he feels compassion for her; and he says to her, “Do not weep.” And then to the dead man, “I say to you, rise!” And just like that, the only son comes back to life, life is restored, the family is restored, hope is restored - the crowds are amazed!

This is what followers of Jesus are called to do. Not to raise people from the dead with a word – I think Jesus cornered the market on that one – but to see something – and when we see something, not only to say something, but to do something! Because the world is filled with an overwhelming amount of pain and need, but we learn from Jesus that we don't have to close our eyes to it. We may not be able to do everything for everyone, we can't fix every situation, but that doesn't mean that we are powerless to do anything at all. Because the Holy Spirit that was set loose that Pentecost Sunday is still on the move today. I said it a few weeks ago on Pentecost, and I'll say it again – the Holy Spirit is still at work among us, breathing in us with God's own compassionate breath, opening our eyes to see with God's eyes what otherwise would be be hidden & invisible, moving us to reach out and touch a hurting world with the love of Jesus. And when the Spirit moves in us, we realize that each of us has the power to make a difference for someone.

I was reminded of that at that confirmation dinner I talked about 2 Sundays ago. One of our families was telling me about how they have their kids go through their toys every so often and pick some out to give away – and then they take them to the neighborhood where the dad works and open up the trunk and give them away to people with children passing by. I'm reminded this power to make a difference when I talk to the women in our sewing group, who for years have gathered on Tuesday mornings & bags that go on the back of wheelchairs along with other items that they give to the residents at the Holly Patterson nursing facility. And this past Friday night, when the Junior Girl Scout group who has been meeting in our church for the past year had their Bronze Award ceremony, I was reminded of it again, as I listened to these young girls talk about the service project they had done – which was not just to collect food and baby stuff for the same New LIFE Center that we support, but also to go there, and sort the food and the baby clothes and talk to the volunteers. While they were there, they saw the clients coming and going, clients who weren't much different than them, realizing how hard it must be to not have enough food or clothing. I was inspired to hear them talk about what a difference it made for them to know that even as kids, they could make a difference – because on that day, they saw something, and they not only said something, they did something. They, like the family giving away toys on the street corner, and the sewing ladies sewing away, saw something, and saw that they could do something about it. They got involved. They made a difference. They didn't change the whole world, but they changed a little piece of it. That's what followers of Jesus do. That's what the Holy Spirit inspires and empowers us to do. Imagine what the world would look like if we all saw something and then did something about it! We could change the world! May God use us this week to see something and then move us to do something.

Amen.