Whenever we hear about Jesus and the disciples in a boat, we think of the church – sailing along together in a ship.  Inviting others to get in the boat (another way to hear Jesus’ invitation “Follow me” – “Get in the boat!”).  Get in the boat.  Stay in the boat.  Look at the sail and let’s imagine Jesus words from today’s story painted in large letters across the sail as the wind carries us along.  “Do not fear, only believe.”  Present continuous imperative.  Only be believing.  Keep on trusting.  Keep holding fast to faith as sailors hold fast to ropes in a storm.  (I love this image.)  Hold on to fearless faith.  Trust in God with abandon, no matter our circumstances. When seas are calm and placid.  Sun shining.  When the way ahead seems clear.  When the waves are breaking over the bow of the boat, threatening to swamp us.  When the way ahead is not at all clear.  When we are faced with an incurable illness.  When we are faced with death.

“Keep on believing,” says Jesus, and calls us daughter, son.

In this case, a daughter or a little girl.  A term of endearment.  Talitha.  Same root in Aramaic as the word for lamb.  Get up, little lamb.  Words this dear daughter would have heard every morning of her life, before she sprang out of bed to begin her day with a family who loved her.  Before desperation set in.  We will all know desperate times.  We may be living in them now.  We will know situations that are beyond our ability to control.  This is difficult because we like to be able to control our situations.  We invest money in RRSP’s and TSFA’s.  We try to eat well and exercise.  We send our kids to Kumon.  We buy a car with a high safety rating.  There’s nothing wrong with any of these things in and of themselves. It is important to know, however, that the control we may seek to manufacture is an illusion.  We’ll know desperate times. 

The good news is that we needn’t fear desperate times.  We are dealing with matters of life and light here – not falsehood and not escapism.  We’re not dealing with fiction.  Having said that, I do like good fiction and what it can teach us about life and the human condition in general.   Clare Messud is an American/Canadian/Australian author who had this to say about fiction – speaking out against fakery and falsehood in fiction. Speaking against fiction as escapism.  In an article entitled “Life is Damage – A Conversation With Clare Messud,” she said this: “Life is damage. Isn’t this true? An infant is born in its unique, idiosyncratic perfection, trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth put it, and life will batter like a relentless storm against that perfect being.”  Life will batter like a relentless storm, and if we haven’t yet known this, we will.

We don’t want to be about fakery, falsehood or escapism.  The word of God is not about fakery, falsehood, or escapism.  The ship of Life in which followers of Christ sail along together is not about fakery, falsehood or escapism.  Desperate times call for what?  In Jesus, we may even be bold enough to say that desperate times can be a gift. Desperate times may be the thing that makes us recognize our own inability to manage outcomes.  Desperate times call for reckless faith.  This response is not automatic, of course.  While we see people in Mark’s Gospel respond to Jesus in need and in trust, we see others who treat Jesus with indifference, rejection, scorn, even.  There are four miracle stories in Mark 4 and 5.  We looked at Jesus calming the sea back in Lent.  These stories take us to places beyond which it’s a matter of help from within ourselves.  They take us to places where only God could make the difference.  The power of the sea.  The power of demons.  Incurable illness.  Death.  How do we respond?  How do we go on?

How?  How do you go on?  It’s a good question.

In our story today, we are presented with the response of reckless faith.  The faith of a synagogue leader who sends for the man who has been performing acts of power in his town.  Jairus is willing to take the risk on a man who has been stirring up opposition, despite what this might mean in terms of his position and his rank.  Synagogue leader.  A man of some prestige and authority.  We tend to care about those kinds of things.  How people view us, etc.  We tend to care less when a child is dying.

You learn something about desperation and the lengths to which parents are willing to go in a children’s oncology ward.  I don’t know the experience as a parent of being desperate on behalf of a child but I experienced it as an uncle when our nephew was being treated for leukemia.  The feelings of helplessness.  The urgent prayers.  The parents who would go to any length just to be with their children.

“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 might be made well, and live.”  Jairus is desperate.  It’s been said that when you reach desperation, humility comes naturally.    C.S. Lewis said, “Pain plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”  This surely has something to teach us about prayer, too.  Jairus has fallen at Jesus’ feet and begs him repeatedly, “Lay your hands on her, so that she might be made well, and live.” Lay your hands on her, so that she might be saved, and live.  There is something going on here beyond a healing.  There is something going on beyond bringing back to life.  Again, we are dealing here with more than a healing.  There is a deeper truth about Jesus going on here, which we read in the repetition of this phrase “be made well,” “I will be made well,” and “your faith has made you well.”  The verb is Sozo, and it means more than being cured.  It’s often translated “save” in our Bible and speaks to the truth that, at times, is expressed by two words – “Jesus Saves.”  This word for saved speaks of healing, rescuing, preserving, delivering, making whole.  Jesus makes whole.  Jesus rescues.  Jesus delivers.  Jesus makes well.   Do we believe in new life?  Are we desperate enough to come to Jesus often and meaningfully and plead, “Give me new life?”  “Give us new life?”  trusting that we may know life no matter our circumstances?

Jairus falls at Jesus feet and pleads with him.  “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.  We don’t know what Jairus knew about Jesus.  We don’t know what Jairus believed about Jesus.  Now it is important to understand who Jesus is.  The life of following Jesus is one of coming to an ever-deeper heart understanding of what kind of King Jesus is.  It starts, though, with faith.  Simple trust.  Like a child.  A child can trust.  It starts with trusting that in Jesus, there is life.  Trusting.  Listening.  Watching.  Following.  An audacious faith that keeps on believing when we don’t have all the answers; when the way ahead is murky.  An audacious faith that has us continually throwing ourselves down at Jesus’ feet, pleading repeatedly.

Speaking of audacious faith, Jesus is about to be interrupted.  It’s amazing how much of Jesus’ ministry happened in the interruptions.  How much are we called to serve others – to show the grace and mercy of God – in interruptions?  Henri Nouwen quoted some wisdom he heard from a professor at one point – “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.”  “Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better, but rather grew worse.”  This is no knock on the medical profession.  It’s a mark of this woman’s desperation.  Her financial resources are gone.  Constant bleeding would have left her ritually unclean, as every woman was ritually unclean during menstruation. (Someone has said that this is what happens when men make the rules. I will leave that with you.  She was an outcast socially speaking.  Others would need to avoid touching her, a bed where she had slept, a chair where she had sat.  She couldn’t take part in any religious ritual.  She was cut off in every way and without hope.   

She’s not without hope, though.  The thing is, you see, she had heard about Jesus.  “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”  If I but touch his clothes, I will be saved, healed, restored, forgiven, delivered, made whole.  Read v29-30.  “Who touched my clothes?” asks Jesus.  The disciples do not acquit themselves very well here.  What are you talking about?  Look at this crowd!  “He looked around to see who had done it.  But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling.” Why such fear? Awe and wonder in Jesus’ presence? Fear of disapproval from this teacher at what she had done?  She couldn’t go around touching people after all.  Disapproval from the crowd who might find out that an unclean woman had been in their midst, jostling them and so on?  How many others had she touched?  Why is Jesus so insistent on making this woman’s healing public knowledge?  Someone has put it like this: “What she has done needs to be exposed in the crowd, not because it was wrong, but because it was right. The crowd has not become unclean by her touch; instead, she has become clean by touching Jesus. The crowd needs to know that… This woman’s humiliation has been public knowledge; her healing must be public knowledge as well. Her public confession in the crowd and a pronouncement of full healing by Jesus facilitates a healing far beyond the physical problem. It has a social and spiritual dimension as well.”

Jesus calls her “Daughter.”  It’s a term of acceptance and endearment.  This woman, who has been cut off from a relationship, has been restored to a relationship.  “Your faith has made you well.”  Your faith has saved you, delivered you, healed you, restored you.  Her faith was the conduit through which Jesus’ saving power flowed.  “Go in peace.”  Literally “Go into or towards peace.”  And be healed of your disease.  Hopelessness is turned into wholeness.

Speaking of hopeless – “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.’”

Do not fear.  Keep on believing.  We’re reading this story on the other side of Easter.  We are Easter people in Christ.  We are resurrection people in Christ.  Even death, the last enemy, has been overcome.  What have we to fear? 

Jesus comes to the house, and the professional mourners laugh when he says, “She’s but sleeping.”  We can laugh, or we can get behind this man who is now saying “Talitha cum” or “Little girl, get up.”  We can get behind this man who brings new life.  “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.”

Don’t tell anyone about this new life yet because it couldn’t be fully understood until after Jesus is crucified and raised.  This is not simply Jesus as a wonder worker.  This is a prelude to a resurrection that will come in Mark 16 that we celebrated on April 5^th and that we keep before us every day.  New life and Jesus’ presence with this little girl, and Jesus’ care, too. “Give her something to eat,” says Jesus.  Jairus’ daughter begins to participate in the new life that will come about in Jesus’ resurrection, just as followers of Christ begin to participate in the new life that is to come when all things are renewed. 

So we keep on listening to those words that are painted on our sail.  Do not fear, only believe.    Keep on trusting this Jesus whose authority is over all. Keep on trusting in full assurance that even in the face of death itself, the last word belongs to Jesus.  There’s a wonderful picture here of what every follower of Christ will experience.  Opening our eyes to Jesus’ face.  Family behind him just like these girls’ mother and father.  The communion of saints behind him, just like Peter, James and John in our scene.  Jesus’ voice saying, “Little one, get up.”  “My lamb, get up.”

This is our risen Jesus who is in the boat with us even now.  What then shall we fear?  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Amen 

There’s an Emily Dickinson poem #32 that goes like this:

It was too late for man, but early yet for God; Creation impotent to help, but prayer remained on our side.

How excellent the heaven, When earth cannot be had; How hospitable, then, the face Of our old neighbour, God!