ON BEING IMPORTANT [M, 9-19-21]

 

I was thinking this morning about the daughter of Jairus. She was twelve. She was dying. Jairus was a synagogue leader, and he begged Jesus to come to his house to heal her. So, Jesus did. Start out, at least. [1]

A whole crowd went with him. Maybe not as many as wanted to see the corpse of Queen Elizabeth, but this promised to be a pretty good show. On the way, that woman with “the issue of blood,” who had been made worse by many doctors rather than being helped [2], reached out to touch him, to receive healing power just from that touch, or so she hoped. And so she did.

It stopped Jesus in his tracks. “Who touched me?” In a crowd. Everybody was touching him. But this one was different. So he has a chat with the woman.

Can you imagine how Jairus felt? Nobody ever mentions that. He must have been beside himself. I’ve finally gotten someone to come to my house to heal my daughter and he stops to talk to this… old woman. We don’t know how old she was, but it had to be more than 12. This little girl, the one Jesus calls Tabitha--which simply meant “little girl” and surely was not her name, although I do know girls now who have that as their name—she had her whole life before her… and Jesus was wasting time…

Jesus and his entourage finally got on their way again, but as they got close, folks came from Jairus’ house to say, “Don’t bother. Too late. She’s dead.” Imagine how Jairus felt now. If he hadn’t stopped for that woman… Like Martha said to Jesus when her brother died, If you’d been here… Jesus had the potential for a lot of guilt over arriving too late. That happens when people have reason to expect a lot from you.

Jesus, however, figured, Well, I’ve come this far… When he got there, he said No problem. She’s not dead. It sounds a bit sacrilegious now, but they laughed at him. Remember, though, he wasn’t the Savior of the World then, just that guy with the messiah complex, from Nazareth, of all places.

But he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up,” and she got up. The writers point out that she walked around, to make sure we get the idea.

Everyone else went from laughing at Jesus to jumping around with joy. Probably yelling, “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!” That’s what people do and say at such a time. But Jesus said, “Give her something to eat.”

Of course. After that time of coma, or death, or whatever, she had to be hungry. These days, he’d probably tell them to give her some orange juice or Skittles. That’s what we do when we need a quick blood sugar jolt. But basically back then what they had, without running outside to the fig tree or firing up the oven, was fish, so that’s what he told them to give her.

Everyone else was focused on the miracle. Jesus was focused on the girl. That was the real miracle.

I heard of a man who read the New Testament for the first time. The missionary asked him for his reaction. “Jesus never met an unimportant person,” he said.

That’s the point of the resurrection, I think. The spirit that indwelt Jesus, the Christ spirit, the Holy Spirit, is no longer confined to the time and body of Jesus. That Spirit is available to all people, at all times. That Spirit that says, “Get up. Walk around. Eat something. You have a life to get on with… You’re important to me.”

John Robert McFarland

The painting is by Gabriel Von Max, 1881.

1] Matthew 5, Mark 9, Luke 8. Each one a bit different in details.

2] Medical historians estimate that it was along about 1900 when doctors began to do more good than harm.