Jesus is having an emotional time. Yesterday he was struck with amazement at finding faith in the unexpected place - behind a Roman soldier's gnarled and leathery breastplate.
Today, he has come to pay his respects to the saddest of sights - a woman burying her son.
Old man Simeon warned Mary that a sword would pierce her heart, and here and now a sword is laid to her son's heart, and he is caught up in the grief of a woman who has lost her one and only.
I suppose this is the clearest example yet that Luke has give us of how Jesus feels what we feel. He empathises with the unnamed woman who has lost her husband, and now her son.
Uniquely, of course, Jesus can do something about this. Propelled by his feelings, he acts. He interrupts the funeral procession, he stops the progress of the young man's body downwards to the earth. He speaks to the corpse, tells it to get up. It obeys, as everything has to obey Jesus ... everything that is, except blind, disobedient people.
And Jesus gives the boy back to his mother, to the fear and amazement of all.
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