You see when I read over the gospel passage in preparation for this morning I was struck once again by the story. It is a painful and incredibly difficult story that is presented with little or no emotional description but merely the facts. There is no way this could have been how it happened. No way. I have seen it too often from the other side and it is painful, difficult and entirely gut-wrenching. One does not go through this and not be deeply affected, scarred and touched for life. I am speaking of course of the illness and then the death of Jairus’ daughter. Let me tell you a little bit about the story just to remind you. It is not easy to hear so please pull out that shopping list if need be.
“When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea,” was how the gospel began. Fairly benign. “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.”
I hope that none of you have had to face the death of a child in your family but sadly I know that many of you have. I have walked this terrible journey with a number of people throughout my ministry and it has greatly affected me, my theology, my path as well. I know too many stories about this deeply gut-wrenching and tragic time that pulls hard at all the foundations of life. To say that it can rip the rug out from under you is a huge understatement. Many questions arise often starting with Why. But many others quickly rise to the surface as well. What could I have done to stop this? Where is God in this? How can you believe in a God of love in this? I don’t think I can get through this. You can probably fill in your own words.
Now let’s go back to the gospel passage. I want you to try to imagine with me Jairus coming to Jesus. I can see Jairus watching his daughter get more and more ill. Starting from a happy and healthy young gir,l an illness has suddenly gripped her and clearly will not let go. It is so hard to watch, Jairus would gladly take her place but that is not an option. He can only watch in fear and horror as the one who was so full of life gradually seems to be slipping away from him. He is a person of great faith but this is severely testing that faith.
Now some might say that this was all part of God’s plan. That this illness of Jairus’ daughter was just about proving a point. That it was about God sending a message. That it was about showing that we should not move away from trusting God. That we must simply have faith and all will be fine. This is nonsense to me. As I said I have walked this path too often. It would be a cruel God who insists that it is important to have a child die to prove a point. That theology makes no sense to me at all. It is a poor theology. So what do we people of faith do? Simply shrug our shoulders and say that we do not fully understand all the actions of God and leave it there? Hardly.
Jairus pleaded with Jesus, if you know the scene in your own life you know the depth of urgency that Jairus is pleading from: “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So off they went. They arrived at Jairus’s home they discover that Jairus’ daughter has died. They were too late. I can only imagine how these words hit Jairus. He had failed. He had hurried but was too late. His worst fears were now true, his daughter was dead. Jesus moves to see the child and takes her hand and whispers, “Talitha cum!” “Little girl, get up!” and immediately the girl got up.
Again some people might tell us that if only we have enough faith or believe in God in a certain way or offer our prayers in a certain way then this same result will be ours. This too is nonsense and even downright abusive placing more blame and guilt on the parents. God’s love upon us is not contingent on us, God’s love is upon us always and without question. That is what we believe and know through the resurrection of Christ. It is not only limited to a small few. God’s grace is vast and overarching all.
So what are we to do with all of this? Just again throw up our hands and say that there just is nothing to this faith thing. It has no bearing on our lives at all. Absolutely not. Miracles do indeed happen, there is a great power to prayer, there is a whole other dimension to life in which God’s presence is seen and known and felt, of this I have no doubt. But the results of prayer are not always so obvious and measurable as we might desire. This is true now and has always been true even in the time of Jesus and Jairus. So what do we do with all of this?
Well the answer is found in the passage about Jairus as well. The name Jairus when translated means: “My light who diffuses light” or “God enlightens” and this is important. For Jairus that day discovered the holy presence of God shining in his life not just in terms of the miraculous curing of his daughter but just as much in the response of Jesus where the love of God was clearly shining. Jesus walked with Jairus from the other side of the lake to Jairus’ home. He walked with Jairus. This is the promise of God over and over and over again that God will not leave us and will not abandon us and will certainly not test us with the death of a child. God sheds tears just as we do at the death of a loved one. The promise of God is that God will be there with us walking with us, holding us, blessing us, leading us from the incredible darkness of grief to a new light, a greater light, a broader light.
Just a few days ago a young man with a gun wandered into Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He spoke to a group at a Bible Study and then proceeded to kill them. An outrageous and horrific crime that is hard to imagine and hard to understand at any level. He killed nine people. What has amazed so many outsiders is the outpouring of forgiveness to Dylann Roof, the alleged killer. Karl Aquino wrote in the Globe and Mail this week: I have been doing research about forgiveness for more than 20 years. I have published numerous academic papers, read hundreds of forgiveness stories and lectured on the topic at the Sauder School of Business. I confess that although I study forgiveness, I do not always understand how people like those in Charleston can do it. Forgiving seems so antithetical to the demands of justice and our experience of moral outrage toward those who do us wrong. Yet people sometimes show that they can forgive even those who seem most undeserving of this gift.
He wrote that he and some colleagues did a study a few years ago in which they asked participants to watch a video about the parents of Amy Biehl, a young woman who was murdered in 1993 by a group of South Africans, people whom she had been trying to help. He wrote, “In the video, her parents forgave their daughter’s killers. Their forgiveness went so far that they set up educational programs in the neighbourhood where her killers were raised and acted as surrogate parents for two of them. What we found, wrote Karl Aquino, was that after seeing the Biehl’s example, study participants said they wanted to become better people, felt more motivated to help others and had more positive views about humanity. These findings tell us something about why, despite its maddening irrationality, forgiveness remains part of our repertoire for responding to those who trespass against us. Punishment, revenge, and sanctimonious condemnation many be satisfying and even just, but it is forgiveness, by showing us what human beings are capable of in their finest moments, that will always be divine.”
Herein lies the point I am wanting to make. That even in the death of a child, the murder of a friend, the killing of people at a Bible Study where do we find God? Right in the midst leading to hope and new life. Our response can be a holy thing. We may not get there quickly we might need much time to see it, we might need a lot of prayer and direction but when we too, like Jairus, can plead with God we will discover God willing to walk with us and calling us to offer forgiveness to God and all others. We will see that God is with us no matter what and while miracles do abound they do not always happen in the way we want. Sometimes the miracle is found in the response, the forgiveness, the new vision adopted but always, always, always God’s love, God’s grace, God’s holy presence is known inviting us to a deeper love for ourselves and one another and God. We are called to the divine life and Jairus was able to reveal this in the divine light he discovered in the person Jesus and his own response to his daughter. God’s hope is that we too see this divine light diffused in our lives as well no matter where our pilgrimage takes us.
That’s it, for those who chose to tune me out, welcome back.