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JESUS PROVES HE’S CONCQUERED DEATH

Yesterday, while exploring in the Gospel of Mark, we noted the request of the leader of the local synagogue in Capernaum, Jairus by name, to come quickly, for his little-12-yer-old daughter had become deathly ill, and Jairus and his wife were filled with dread that she might die at any hour. There was not a moment to lose. So Jarius gained Jesus’ assent to come and see his little daughter. But along the way, they were constantly delayed by the milling crowd that Jesus attracted almost everywhere he went.

Jairus had begged Jesus to come, because he believed Jesus could cure the illness of his daughter. He believed Jesus could heal a member of his family as completely as Jesus had healed a mad man in his synagogue. And after the woman with a very serious hemorrhage had been healed on the way to his home, Jairus took this as an added confirmation of the power of the Great Healer.

It was at this point in the story that a friend of the rabbi came to report to Jairus the tragic news that his daughter had died. At that moment something in Jairus died too. Everything had been working out perfectly. He’d found Jesus, Jesus had agreed to come, but along the way they were held up by the crowd by a poor woman who had spent her life savings fruitless searching for a cure. And right in the middle of this maddening interruption, Jairus got the word that all this effort has gone for nothing. He precious little daughter was dead. And how did Jesus react to that news? He told Jairus: “Just keep on believing.”
Fear and Faith are the twin themes of this story. This is a really tough part of the Christian life. Fear is complex, difficult to understand. So Jesus tells the distraught father to face his fear, and act despite it. If we allow fear to have free run in our lives, it will act like acid and corrode our hopes.

No Christian can live so much in the clouds that fear will never show its ugly face. That's unrealistic. Fear is a spontaneous reaction to a threat. Lose a job, experience a sudden unexplained sickness, be forced to move from among friends, lose a loved one in death, experience conflict in a relationship, and of course we’ll experience fear. That's natural. It puts the entire human system on alert. It motivates us to take some positive action.

But if we allow fear to become the operating premise in our lives, we're sure to go down hill. It’s as if Jesus is saying to Jairus, "In the face of this fear, let the belief you had as you panted up the hill take precedence. Trust me. I can handle this. You believed I could handle the sickness, trust me to handle the death!" You see, as we trust Jesus in the smaller trials, our faith grows, and we'll be able to trust Him in our greater trials.

I heard a story from New Zealand recently, about a remarkable therapist, David Epstein, who travels the world with a message about how to face your fears. One of his young patients suffered severe episodes of breathing disorder. The lad had seen every pediatrician of note in New Zealand, but no one could do anything for him. Now an early teen, his physician and his family expected he would soon die. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, the doctor brought David into the case to use a visualization technique. He had the boy visualize himself being free from the asthmatic attacks that shut down his wind pipe and threatened his life.

Soon after, while in the Operating Room preparing for yet another surgery, the lad suffered an attack and his pediatrician thought the end had come. David had been invited to be present and the pediatrician told him “to take over.” David talked to the lad in O. R., the way they’d talked in his consulting rooms. He told him to use the visualization technique they’d been practicing, of seeing his windpipe strong and clear, allowing the air to flow freely. And in those next few minutes, while lying on the operating table, miraculously the boy’s attack stopped. Since that day, the young man has enjoyed a normal, healthy life.

If you heard David speak, in his quiet, very low-key, convincing way, you’d become a believer that it’s possible to take your fears and turn them in faith!

Visualizing a positive outcome gives a center on which to focus your faith. That’s what I imagine Jesus was saying to Jairus. “Visualize the realization of your hopes, your dreams, for your little daughter. Hold on to that. Don’t falter. Have faith. You came to me because you believed in Me. Don’t throw that aside. I’m still here. I haven’t changed.” This is no New Age visualization in which you create your own reality—this is a visualization based on faith in a Man—a Savior whom you know has the power to change things in the world.

Jairus must have felt embraced by Jesus’ love, sufficiently to face his fear, and to exercise his faltering faith, for ultimately, it’s love that casts our fear.

In anticipation of the little girl’s death, the servants had hired official mourners and sorrowful flute players. They’d been standing by, and the moment they got the word, they came to the front gate and began the official din that proclaimed a death in that family. The wealthier the mourning family, the more mourners and the louder the noise they made. And Jairus had money!

A short time later, Jairus led Jesus through his front gate. Jesus selected just three of His disciples to accompany him, and Peter’s Gospel names Peter first. But as they turned to go inside, Jesus asked a startling question of the paid mourners. “Why are you making all this noise, the lass is just sleeping; I’m going to wake her up.” At those words, the professionals turned decidedly churlish.

But Jesus’ question and comment to these contract workers became another evidence of faith for Jairus, another peg on which to hang his slender, growing faith within the glow of the love and personal acceptance He felt. In a strange, longing kind of belief, desperate for the life of his only child, he and his wife led Jesus and the three disciples into the back bedroom. The still, pallid form before them, left no doubt in the minds of these six people that the little girl no longer lived. Speaking in the Aramaic vernacular, Jesus said simply, commandingly, “Little girl, get up!” And from the sleep of death she stirred, looked around her, and saw her mother and father and four strangers in her bedroom—and all but one of them had a look of amazement written on their faces. O my, my, my! What a story!

As Mark tells records it (and he tells it in more detail than the other two Synoptic Gospels) our very human Jesus said to the parents, as the slender lass stood before them in complete health and wellness, “Give her something to eat, she’s hungry!”

In the previous days she’d eaten less and less, until her worried mother couldn’t get any food through her pale, but pretty-shaped lips. But they are no longer pale, they’re now touched with the bright blush of color.

Don’t fear, have faith, friend. You’re being held tightly within the circle of the love of your very human Jesus, and that love will cast out the draining, debilitating fear that ruins our lives. Faith faces reality. It admits the ways things are. But even in the face of the ultimate dilemma, the loss in death of loved ones, we can hold on to Jesus’ words that this is just a “deep sleep,” from which they will rise to robust physical life at the last day, in the full bloom of physical health at the voice of the same One who said to this diminutive 12-year old, “Little girl, Get up!”

In closing, I want to remind you of the three resurrections recorded in the Gospels, which demonstrate Jesus had conquered death even before His own resurrection. First, is the daughter of Jairus we’ve described today. In this case, we learn she had just died, and was not yet cold.

Then there’s the widow’s son at the village of Nain. This boy has been dead a short time, and Jesus caught up with the pall bearers as they carried him out for burial.

And the third case is Lazarus, who had been dead and buried in his tomb four days when Jesus arrived to raise him from the dead.

In these three stories, the Gospels make it clear that Jesus has the power over physical death no matter what the circumstances. Just as He has the power to revive us at any stage of our spiritual lives.

If you’ve just recently felt your spiritual life slipping (reminiscent of the experience of the daughter of Jairus), there’s hope, His love can revive you!

If you’ve given up faith a short time ago and maybe left the church, (reminiscent of death of the son of the widow in Nain), Jesus loves you and He can revive you!

And even if you consider yourself long spiritually “dead and buried” (reminiscent of the experience of Lazarus who had been dead for some days when Jesus raised him) Jesus can revive you. There’s no circumstance, that’s beyond hope, beyond revival, beyond resurrection. Jesus can restore spiritual life in you. You can walk with Him again. You can have a vibrant experience with Him again, if you choose to.