“The Princess Bride” was the 80’s movie that preceded the whole Shrek series in spoofing fairy tales. For light comedy, it’s an oldie but a goodie! The prince and princess of this film- Westley and Buttercup - endure crazy things like “scaling the cliffs of insanity, battling rodents of unusual size, and facing torture in the pit of despair,” for as they say in the tag line – “True love has never been a snap.” The villain of the story, the power-hungry Prince Humperdink kidnaps the princess, and while he tells her that he will search the entire kingdom to find her one true love, instead he locks up Westley in the pit of despair to be tortured to death. So much like Juliet pined away for her inaccessible Romeo, Buttercup would rather kill herself than marry the prince she doesn’t love. With Westley in the pit of despair and Buttercup contemplating suicide, it looks like the end is near in sight for these two star-crossed lovers. But no, Westley’s two friends pull his lifeless body from the torture chamber, and take him to Miracle Max – played by Billy Crystal – to see if he could be restored.

In the exchange with Miracle Max, they find out that Westley is not dead, but only mostly dead, so Miracle Max takes on the job of bringing Westley back to life with a miracle pill. Then after sending the trio on their way to save Princess Buttercup from marrying Humperdink, there’s a funny exchange that happens between Miracle Max, and his wife.

Miracle Max says, “Good luck storming the castle.” His wife says, “Do you think it’ll work?” And Max’s reply is, “It will take a miracle.”

We read stories of miracles from scripture much like we read the irony in the comment from Miracle Max. We’re pretty skeptical. Dead, mostly dead, it doesn’t really matter. We presume that we know when the story is finished. We’re more accustomed to real life mimicking a tragic ending like Romeo and Juliet than finishing on a hopeful, if not sometimes ludicrous, note like a fairy tale.

Is it possible to believe in miracles and live in the real world at the same time? Or is skepticism a pre-requisite for having a rational, logical mind? Looking back on the life of Jesus and the miracles he performed makes me wonder about such questions.

Today we pick up in Luke’s gospel where Jesus raised the widow’s only son in a town called Nain. Was he dead? Was he just mostly dead? Was it a miracle? What else does this story tell us?

Fairy tales, Shakespearian plays, and our entire corpus of movies and collected stories, whether they claim to be real life tales or fiction frequently teach us something about who we are and who we want to be. If we read only this part of the biblical narrative, we would find out that Jesus is compassionate. The only son of a widow was pretty important in the culture in which he lived. Who else would take care of and provide for this woman if her only son was dead? We also find out that Jesus can ask a dead man to get up, and he gets up and speaks and hugs his mother. That alone must have been amazing to see. But then we hear about the reaction from the crowd – both fear and awe. They were terrified, as well they should be when a dead man comes back to life, and then they proclaimed Jesus to be a prophet and praised God for showing favor on God’s people. Is this one of Jesus’ miracles? I would say so.

But as is the case with any good story, it helps to know what else has happened. What makes this particular event stand out? Why would people immediately jump to the conclusion that Jesus is a prophet? Stories about the dead coming back to life have been around for a good, long time. For our human condition, it makes sense. Death brings us loss, and grief, and despair. We can comprehend the finality of death, and it frightens us. We want to know that there’s something beyond those painful emotions that’s able to keep us going. We want to have hope, and faith, and trust that life is indeed good, perhaps even for the skeptics among us.

Luke is probably the best “storyteller” of the gospel writers. He understands that how the story is told is as important as any historical detail. So in my sermon preparation this week, I started flipping back through the chapters of Luke to put this story into its larger context. I found something interesting. In chapter 4, after Jesus has been tempted in the wilderness, he returns to Nazareth and goes to church in his hometown. He unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, reads a few lines, and begins to preach. People that knew him were amazed. He spoke with authority and grace. But those compliments didn’t hang in the air for too long before the criticisms began. “No doubt,” Jesus said to them, “you will say to me ‘Doctor, heal yourself.’”

They had heard about miracles he had done in Caperneum. Why Caperneum? Why wasn’t Nazareth a good enough place to start? Why did Jesus care more about outsiders than the people who knew him from the time he was being carried on Joseph’s shoulders? The folks in Nazareth were angry with Jesus. Furious really, and Jesus didn’t know any better but to fuel their fire. He reminded them that prophets would never be accepted in their own hometown, or their home church for that matter. He reminded them of their own history. He said, “Though there were many widows in Israel during the time of Elijah, Elijah healed the son of a widow from Sidon because of God’s judgment of Israel at the time. And the same was true with Elisha, the leper he cleansed was a Syrian.” Jesus didn’t intend to show off with performing miracles in front of a hometown crowd, but he did them to introduce everyone he met to something deeper about God’s love.

So in the next few chapters of Luke – Jesus heals a leper, a paralytic, a man with a withered hand, and now, he raises a widow’s son from the dead. With each amazing event, the love of God grows a little bit wider in the telling, but at the same time the anger continues to kindle against Jesus. In Nazareth, the crowd threatened to throw him off a cliff, in the synagogue they were filled with fury – and so began the desire to get rid of Jesus for good.

Yes, in today’s reading, Jesus is proclaimed a prophet, and praises are sung to God, but that identity as a prophet carries with it undertones of hatred and fear. Prophets were no stranger to conflict. In fact they seemed to welcome it. Then people wanted to kill them – particularly those people who thought they had all the right answers. Jesus got into more trouble when he went to church than he ever did speaking to the crowds on some mountainside somewhere. He did more ministry on the outside than he ever did on the inside. The religious insiders always seemed to want him shut up or dead.

In reading the longer story, we can begin to see that the miracle was not just that the widow got her son back. That’s just a small point in a much larger narrative. The miracle is that Jesus’ story survives the narrowness of the Nazareth congregation. It survives the snippishness of the Sabbath-keeping legalists who refuse to allow healing on a holy day. Through Jesus, God’s love reaches to the outsiders, the brokenhearted ones, and the untouchables – not really because of the church, but often in spite of the church.

I do use the word “church” intentionally here. When we say synagogue or use the term Pharisees because that’s what it says in scripture, it becomes easy to point our fingers at someone else and say, “Look how fundamentalist they are.” Or “Look at how those people have such a narrow view.” The hard part is looking at ourselves or examining our own beloved institutions and asking, “Where have we refused to be a part of the miracles of Jesus in our own lives?” Our legalisms, our traditions, our opinions and attitudes just as easily get in the way. When we look askance at healing, when we scoff at answered prayer, when we discount the miracles and snub the emotional intensity of deep faithfulness, we have joined the other side, the side that covets power and correctness over true love and God’s truth.

In the stories that we tell, it’s easy to identify right from wrong. The villains are clearly marked for us. Humperdink is a fearful jerk. The Pharisees are narrow and cruel. And we also know who to root for. When true love overcomes peril and adversity, we celebrate. When the outsider receives a moment of grace, we cheer. But in the day to day moments of our real lives, how good are we at telling the difference? Do the miracles give us reason to praise God or just another reason to wonder why we weren’t the recipient of those miracles this time?

For us to find the courage to stand on the prophet’s side, to stand on Jesus’ side, we have to believe, at least a little bit, in the miraculous. It’s all too easy to stand from the point of view of tradition, to side with “what has always been” and point out what’s different, or scary, or wrong from our point of view. To look up from that position, to welcome the stranger and celebrate God’s love in the larger context means that we make room for healing, and gratitude, and perhaps even giving life to what has been “mostly dead.” Life, it is a miracle in and of itself. Live. Be alive, and praise God especially when your voice trembles.

Amen.