Back when I was in seminary I did some hospital chaplain work and my
instructors told us to be aware that people of different cultural and ethnic
backgrounds handle the news of death quite differently than what we are accustomed
to seeing. For example, one of my
colleagues was with a family from a different background than him when they got
the news of death. It was about twenty
members of a big extended family packed into this small little family waiting
room outside the ER. As soon as the
doctor said, “I’m sorry…” they all started screaming and most of them just fell
to the floor and rolled around wailing loudly and then the whole thing spilled
over into the hallway. My colleague had
no idea what to do. I was once with a
young woman when she got the news that her father had just died on the
table. Sadly, they had only recently begun
to mend years of estrangement. As soon
as the doctor walked in, she saw it in his face and started screaming “No. No. No.”
Then, she started bouncing against the
walls. She was big; well over 6’ tall
and pushing 230lbs. A sizable orderly
managed to get himself between her and the wall. Those folks don’t get paid enough. It took over a half an hour for a
well-experienced nurse to talk her down.
Looking at our passage, if you can imagine the most of a small
village caught up in grief in a way similar to what I’ve just described, well
then that’s the situation we’re talking about Jesus walking into. Mark calls it a commotion, a commotion of
people weeping and wailing loudly. The
Greek word for commotion there is pretty potent. It means a great disturbance, like a riot.
These people were very broke up over the death of this child. A little twelve-year-old girl had died. Children aren’t supposed to die. She was also the daughter of a well-respected
leader of the synagogue. That’s just not
supposed to happen either. This was a
terribly unfair, unjust situation that forces one not simply to question but to
challenge the steadfast love and faithfulness of God. One should fully expect there to a
“commotion”.
Jesus arrived on the scene and he aced the pastoral care exam (yes,
that’s sarcasm.). Jesus said to the
people, “Why are you making such a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” That’s like beaucoup notches worse than
saying to your significant other who is a bit upset about his or her weight,
“Ewe’s not fat. Ewe’s fluffy.” These
people would have loved to believe him but like Sarah laughed when she heard
that she would be bearing a child in her nineties, they mocked Jesus even
though they knew he had done some pretty remarkable things. This was just not the time and the place to
be hoping against hope. They knew the
child was dead!
I wonder what the disciples were thinking about all this. They had been on a boat with Jesus that was
being waved swamped during a windstorm that seemed to be after them
personally. Jesus spoke against the wind
and it stopped and there was a great calm, not a ripple on the water. They were filled with fearful awe. Immediately
after that, they watched Jesus cast 1,000 demons out of a man and restore him
to his right mind. People were afraid
and amazed. Just an hour or so before
this commotion, they were in a crowd of people and a woman simply touched his
cloak and was healed of a menstrual haemorrhage that she had suffered from for
twelve years and wasted everything she had on useless doctors. She got her life back - Salvation. But, it was just at that moment that people
from the house of Jairus came with the news.
“Your daughter is dead. Why still
bother the Teacher?” Uncanny timing, don’t
you think? For the disciples, Jesus had
proven more powerful than chaos, evil, and incurable disease. How would he fair now against death?
Looking at what Jesus said to Jairus upon hearing the news his
young daughter had died, I once again say that Jesus aced the pastoral care
exam, “Do not fear, only believe.”
Faith? Believe? Believe what? Jesus had just told a woman that her faith or
rather her faithfulness had made her well from twelve years of suffering;
faithfulness she demonstrated by sneaking up on Jesus to touch his clothes in a
desperate attempt to be healed. Jairus
had made his desperate attempt at faithfulness by him, being a synagogue
leader, even coming to Jesus in the first place. What was left for him to do?
Let me take a brief excursion and talk about faith for a
minute. Faith in the Bible isn’t just
the mental act of believing something or the emotional act of trusting
someone. Faith is our active
participation in the reality where the hidden reign of God is becoming manifest
in and around us. It’s like taking a
glass of pond water and letting it sit. The
water will seem clear but after a couple of days there will be sedimentation in
the bottom of the glass. Hidden stuff
you couldn’t see before become visible.
Sometimes if you let pond water sit long enough, little living things
will start to appear. Faith is being a
part of what God is doing to manifest his hidden reign and bring new life into
this corrupted creation that is threated by chaos, evil, disease, and death. Jesus told Jairus, “Don’t be afraid only be
faithful.” All Jairus has to do to be
faithful is keep walking Jesus to his house, take him in, and let Jesus be
God.
So, against the reality of his peoples’ advice, Jairus takes Jesus
to his house. Jesus then clears the
house and takes Jairus, his wife, and Peter, James, and John to the little
girls room. Mark says they “went in where
the child was.” In Greek what we
translate here in English as “went in” does not accurately reflect what’s there
in the Greek. The word that is there is
the word that gets used for when people metaphorically talk about taking that
journey into death, like crossing the River Styx. Going into where the little girl was here means
Jesus by touching her entered into her death, the realm of death where she was and gave her the
command, “Little girl, I say to you get up.” The
command to “get up” is the command to get up from the dead. It’s resurrection language. I like how Mark ends this. A literal translation would read, “They were
immediately overcome with great ecstasy (of the experience of God kind).” A death riot turns to spiritual ecstasy,
that’s what happens we Jesus comes against death.
So, what to say about all this? Jesus, great winds and stormy seas
obey him, evil flees before him, incurable disease turns to restored life,
death is undone, great calm, amazement, sanity, salvation, spiritual ecstasy –
and he did it all by touching people whom the religious authorities labelled
unclean and unwelcome in the presence of God.
Jesus goes to the root of everything that’s twisted and diseased in
God’s good creation and sets it right. So,
what about us when it seems life is personally out to get us, or when evil has
beset us, or incurable disease strikes us, or death turns our lives upside down,
or when our little Cooperative of churches faces a leadership challenge? Jesus’ command to Jairus – “Don’t be afraid
only faithful” – may not top the list of best things to say in a pastoral care
crisis, but it works. In all things we
must not let fear rule us, but instead keep walking Jesus into our house, our
lives, and let him be God and in time the hidden reign of God will become
evident. In time there will be calm,
amazement, sanity, new vitality, new life, and that peace we get from being in
the presence of God. Amen.
