The woman came to her pastor, her whole being overtaken with a mixture of fury and grief as she proclaimed, “God killed my daughter last night.”  It was not until the woman had repeated that charge several times — “God killed my daughter last night” — that she was able to tell her pastor what had taken place.  What had taken place was an all-too-common scene of alcohol and carousing combined with fast driving and a mountain road, all of it ending in a car going off the side of a mountain, leaving the inebriated driver and his young female companion dead inside.  “God killed my daughter last night.”[i]  Perhaps few of us would charge God with the crime of killing that young girl.  We might accuse the girl, herself, who disobeyed her parents by sneaking off to be with a man who was reckless and far too old for her.  We might accuse the man, who chose to be with an underage girl, to drink to excess, then to exhibit his prowess by racing around some mountain curves.  Perhaps few of us would charge God with having killed that young girl, but we might accuse him of failing to prevent her death.  Of failing to protect her from all of the mistakes and misjudgments she and her date had made that night.  Of failing to get the paramedics there faster, or failing to step in and use his creative powers to keep the girl alive — or bring her back to life.

We have spent the past several weeks pondering the questions Jesus posed to the people who traveled alongside him or came out to hear him speak and watch him perform amazing feats.  Since you and I began this study, we have seen Jesus do some miraculous things.  He has enabled a paralyzed man to stand up, take his mat, and go home.[ii]  In the middle of a fierce storm, Jesus has rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace!  Be still!” causing the wind to halt and the sea to become a dead calm.[iii]  Jesus has been confronted by a man enslaved by his sadly deranged mind, then has set the man free from whatever illness or deprivation or cruel life experience had led to his torment.[iv]  One day, while walking along surrounded by a crushing crowd, Jesus has felt power go forth from him as a woman has touched his clothes and immediately been cured of a condition that had held her prisoner for twelve long years.[v]  In the midst of these events, Jesus has posed some questions, and as you and I have examined those questions we have taken note that they were designed to cause people to consider just who Jesus was and what power and authority he might have.  Today we recognize that those questions also were designed to cause people to consider what power and authority they wanted Jesus to have.  Did they want him to have only the power and authority he might need to cure them of illness and solve their dilemmas?  Or did they want Jesus to have the power and authority to change their lives?

To begin looking at Jesus’ questions from that perspective, we need to back up a little, to the passage we examined this past week.  Recall that Jesus and several boatloads of his disciples had traveled from their home territory on the western side of the Sea of Galilee over to the eastern side, where Jesus had encountered the man with the deranged mind.  Then, the group had gone back across the Sea of Galilee and, as we read this past week from the Gospel of Mark,

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea.  Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”  So he went with him.  And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

At that point, the “woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years” touched Jesus’ cloak.  Jesus interrupted his walk to the home of Jairus, the synagogue leader, so that he could meet the woman who had touched his clothes, talk with her, and tell her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”[vi]  Jesus is still talking with that woman as our Second Lesson begins.

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead.  Why trouble the teacher any further?”  But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”  He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.  When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.  When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep?  The child is not dead, but sleeping.”  And they laughed at him.  Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.  He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”  And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).  At this they were overcome with amazement.  He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Over the centuries and throughout many cultures, we humans have devised a myriad of words and expressions to indicate death — the physical death that all living things undergo.  A very common way of describing death in our own culture is to speak of death in terms of sleep.  Instead of saying that we have asked a veterinarian to euthanize a beloved pet, we say the vet has put our pet to sleep.  We describe death as an “eternal rest” and might comment that the reason someone is no longer with us is that he or she went to sleep and did not wake up.  Even our word cemetery provides us a way of speaking of death in terms of sleep.  The word cemetery is derived from the Greek word for dormitory — a place for people to sleep.[vii]  But Jesus was not employing a euphemism when he addressed the people inside Jairus’ home.  He was not saying “sleep” as way to avoid using the word “death,” but was drawing a distinction between the two states, saying, “The child is not dead, but sleeping.”  You and I hear this statement through the filter of history.  You and I know that the man Jesus who denied the finality of this young girl’s death would go on to call his friend Lazarus out from a tomb in which he had been buried for four days — and Lazarus would, indeed, walk out.[viii]  You and I know that this same Jesus would later be put to death on a cross, but would conquer death by being resurrected three days later.  And so, when you and I hear Jesus say, “The child is not dead, but sleeping,” we know what happens next, but the people inside Jairus’ home that day did not.

Back when Jairus first came to Jesus, when Jesus had just gotten out of his boat, what did Jairus want?  What did he expect?  We asked this same question a couple of weeks ago, when we considered the disciples who were out on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus when a great storm came up.  The boat was filling with water, the disciples were filled with terror, but Jesus was sleeping through the whole thing.  The disciples woke him up to ask, “Teacher, do you not care that we are about to die?”  They did not ask Jesus to intervene, they did not ask him to somehow change the course of events.  They asked only whether Jesus was at all concerned that their boat was about to go down, taking all of them down with it.  And Jesus answered their question of, “Teacher, do you not care?” with a question of his own:  “Why are you afraid?”  Jesus followed that question with another one:  “Have you still no faith?”  When we look back at our passage for today, we notice that Jesus has again brought together these two elements:  fear and faith, fear and belief.  When some people from Jairus’ house come to tell Jairus, “Your daughter is dead,” Jesus tells Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.”  When they do reach the home of Jairus and find a group of people standing outside, in full mourning for the dead girl, Jesus poses our question for today:  “Why do you make a commotion and weep?”  Jesus follows that with the statement, “The child is not dead, but sleeping.”  You and I know what is going to happen next.  The people standing outside the house do not.  They laugh at Jesus’ declaration that the girl is merely sleeping — and why not?  That statement flew in the face of reality, the reality of a young girl lying dead inside that house.  “Do not fear, only believe.”

What did Jesus want Jairus and his family and friends and everyone else who witnessed this event to believe?  What faith did Jesus want to give them in place of their fear?  Did Jesus want them to believe that he would always be there to bring their dead children back to life, to resuscitate their loved ones so that they could continue to live as they always had?  As much as you and I might wish that to have been Jesus’ promise, we know that it was not.  That was not even the promise that Jesus made for Jairus’ daughter.  Yes, Jesus did go into the women’s quarters, back to the place where the child was.  “He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum,’ which means, ‘Little girl get up!’”  And she did get up — this time.  But, someday, either while she was still young or after she had reached an old age — someday the daughter of Jairus would die the physical death that all living things undergo.

“Why do you weep?”  The question Jesus posed that day stands on its own.  The answer to the question, “Why do you weep?” does not depend upon a miraculous resuscitation.  Christ today does not ask you and me “Why do you weep?” based upon a promise that he will reverse whatever illness or crisis or death is now confronting us, that now has us in tears.  When Christ tells you and me, “Do not fear, only believe,” he is not promising — as we said a few weeks ago — that our finances will always be secure, our broken bodies will always mend, that our loved ones will always come home to us, that no catastrophe will ever startle us awake in the night.  What Jesus offered Jairus 2,000 years ago and Christ now offers you and me is not a promise that nothing painful will ever again bring us to tears.  Christ is offering you and me the promise that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God – “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[ix]  The love that you and I have in Christ is perfect love — complete and pure and lacking nothing.  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”[x]

When Jesus went in to the daughter of Jairus, took her hand, and told her to “get up,” he performed a miracle.  The literal meaning of the Greek word that our Bibles translate as miracle is “act of power.”  Jesus performed a miracle — an act of power — that demonstrated not only that he had the power and the authority to give life to a child who had been given up for dead, but that he had the power and authority to give life to all.  The power and authority to give you and me and every person on earth a full, authentic life as a person created in the image of God.  Christ is calling all of us to, “Get up!” and begin living this life right now.  Today.  Because, the question, “Why do you weep?” should not merely cause us to consider what power and authority Jesus had 2,000 years ago, but also to consider what power and authority we want Jesus the Christ to have in 2008.  Do you and I want Christ to have only the power and authority to cure our illness and solve our dilemmas?  Or do we want Christ to have the power and authority to alter the course of our lives?  Do we want — will we permit — Christ to replace our fear with belief, and then call us forth to rise up and live out that belief?  Until her death in 2006, Verna Dozier was a prominent Christian educator who challenged Christians around the world to be faithful to the prophetic call of scripture.  In her book The Dream of God, Miss Dozier wrote, “Doubt is not the opposite of faith:  fear is.  Fear will not risk that even if I am wrong, I will trust that if I move today by the light that is given me, knowing it is only finite and partial, I will know more and different things tomorrow than I know today, and I can be open to the new possibility I cannot even imagine today.”[xi]

Moving from fear to belief does not mean an end to our tears.  When Jesus asked, “Why do you weep?” he was not commanding us never to cry, never to be sad, never to miss a person who is now gone from our sight.  He was calling us to know that there is more for us to anticipate.  He was calling us to look forward into the new possibilities that he has for us — new possibilities that we cannot even imagine today.  Again, in the words of Verna Dozier, “The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’”[xii]  God in Christ wants you and me to accept from him the perfect love that will cast out whatever fear is preventing us from enjoying his grace.  God in Christ wants you and me to accept from him a supporting, sustaining love that will propel us to rise up from our slumber and join him in helping the world come nearer to the dream of God.[xiii]  And so Christ continues to implore us, “Do not fear, only believe.”  Amen.

Copyright 2008 © Leslie R. Stacks. All rights reserved.