We return again to Luke’s gospel, and let me encourage you this morning to be especially careful readers and listeners to this passage that contains two separate but interwoven stories.

• A woman who had been dying for twelve years. Twelve years is an awfully long time to die.
  
  
• A girl who had been living for twelve years. Twelve years is an awfully short time to live.

Before we go any further, we have to remember that these two stories in Luke, embedded into one another…are not the whole gospel. Not even the whole gospel of Luke. In fact, if we only look at these stories, then Luke’s gospel reads like a fairy tale, “and they all lived happily ever after.” But that is not what you and I experience every day. And we’ll have to grapple with that. Is our faith too small?

We need to ask some hard questions of this text: Is God doing more than what is first apparent here? Is this a story bigger than one or two people? Where is our hope? And the words that will be most helpful to us, I think, are these: relationship, restoration and resurrection.

Let me start two other stories for you, then come back to text:

In the mid-1970s, John Claypool, a pastor in Kentucky, found out that his youngest child, 8-year-old Laura, had acute leukemia. Laura was an artistic, musical, beautiful little girl, who thrived during two periods of remission, but died about two years after being diagnosed with the leukemia. Claypool preached a sermon about three weeks after her death entitled “Life is Gift.” That title reflected his grappling at that time with such a hard thing in his life.

A few years ago now, there was an article in The Seattle Times about a young girl named Carley who had disappeared while swimming in the Wenatchee River. They searched and searched for her, and eventually found her…but she had been under water for 45 minutes. She was, of course, dead, when they got her to shore. And then an astonishing thing happened. She came back to life, and not only came back to life but recovered very well. A newspaper reporter later interviewed one of Carley’s friends who had been there for the whole incident, and asked her what she thought. The friend said simply,

“She was dead, and now she’s not. What could be cooler than that?”

Who could be at further ends of the spectrum than Jairus, the synagogue leader whose daughter died…and this woman who had been slowly dying for so many years? They both appear to be Jewish, but beyond that, how much further apart could they be?

Jairus is a man, she is a woman.

She is unnamed throughout the story, he is named from the beginning.

Jairus is an important leader in his community, the leader of the synagogue whose job, among other things would have been to order the worship of the day. He picked the hymns, the praise songs, called out the worship leaders, called people in to worship, decided who would do the children’s sermon.

The woman…is not even welcome in the synagogue. The Old Testament law was quite clear that a woman bleeding in her menstrual cycle was unclean, forbidden from mixing with people until it was over. This woman had been unclean for twelve years because of a bleeding disorder. Twelve years, an outcast at the fringes of the community until she could get it together.

Jairus, as a respected leader of the community, would most likely have been quite well off financially.

The woman had spent all of her funds on doctors, trying desperately to find a cure…but now she had nothing. Nothing.

Jairus and the woman shared only one thing, really. They were desperate. They were at opposite ends of every other demographic you might want to think of except this one: They were in desperate need.

Faith is built…in desperate times. I’ve thought a lot about this. I wish I could say otherwise, but most of the time our faith is built…in the midst of difficulty. I wish I could say that my faith in Christ has been a smooth curve going up, and I’ve grown closer to Christ just because I decided I wanted to. But the truth is that much of my growth has come from being stretched, pulled and thrust into situations that are out of my control, full of dark nights and confusing days.

Walking with Jesus Christ is an exercise in weakness. It is most effective when we learn that we actually, really and truly are dependent on God. For wisdom, for discernment, for endurance…for life. We have to lean into Christ, and just hold on, and sometimes that’s all we can do.

That’s probably why I get so irritated at portrayals of what the media calls “the Christian Right,” because it so often comes across as a way of triumphant living that depends on our power…our voting power, our financial power, our moral power…instead of on Christ.

It’s probably why I get so irritated at portrayals of what the media calls “the Christian Left,” because it so often comes across as a way of trying to live compassionately…but forgets to cling to Christ.

This week, I perused the monthly newspaper of the ecumenical Council of Churches. Twelve full-sized pages that covered every topic from labor unions to gay marriage to ACLU advertisements to politics…and not one mention in twelve pages of Jesus Christ, or of a need to find him in the scriptures. Not one.

We are desperate people who, when we get desperate enough, remember our dependence on God…not generic god, but the God who has shown himself to us in Jesus Christ. And we must hold onto that relationship.

We see Him here, with these two people, Jairus and the woman, who reach towards Jesus…and he meets them both personally . There are crowds and crowds of people around. No doubt there are plenty in that crowd more worthy, plenty with stronger faith…But Jesus meets these two…personally.

Jesus knows when the woman touches him, knows something happens. He doesn’t embarrass her, but he waits until she comes forward, and she falls at his feet, trembling…and then declares to the whole crowd why she had touched him, and that it had healed her.

In Mark’s version of this, it says she came forward and “told him the whole truth.” Now, the whole truth, the whole story of why she would risk being in a crowd, risk touching him…the story of twelve years worth of shame, outcast status, the loss of her money, the hours spent in the waiting room of doctors’ offices…must have been a long story. But Jesus gives his full attention.

Jesus listened a long time. Listens so long, it sounds like he forgot that he was going with the leader of the synagogue to his house because of his little girl. Surely Jairus is going out of his mind over this delay, but what can he say? “Jesus, my daughter is more important than this person?”

But his worst fear is realized when word comes that his daughter is dead. His head spins, the roar of the crowd makes him dizzy, his heart is broken until one face appears in front of him and looks him in the eyes so deeply that his soul stirs:

“Do not be afraid. Only believe…she will be saved.”

In this case, I think “believe” has more to do with trust than it does with closing his eyes and trying to remove any shadow of doubt from his mind.

“Only trust.”

Trust what? Trust that Jesus will raise his daughter from the dead? It’s hard to imagine he could do that. Trust what? I wonder if he could even name it. Trust Jesus. Come what may. Trust him. Hold on.

Our faith is built in times of desperation…when Jesus personally meets us…so we hold onto him. And who knows what might happen? “She was dead, and now she’s not, what could be cooler than that?”

But this story is bigger than just two people. An entire community is knocked for a loop. Can you imagine what happened to these people? Some saw things happen. Others heard the stories. The woman who was healed gave her testimony to the whole group gathered there in the street.

The hired grievers over the little girl’s death had laughed at Jesus…but now they go home to tell the story of a little girl who is NOT dead at all. But the story is bigger than even all these people. The story is about a whole community, because the community of God has been changed. It has, in fact, grown. Two people, no three, have been restored to the community by Jesus. And that is part of the ministry of Jesus: Restoration.

When the great Reformers of the 16th century, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others looked at the ministry of Jesus, they sometimes boiled it down to three roles that Jesus took on: Prophet, Priest and King.

• As Prophet, Jesus was the ultimate Word of God, speaking God’s word to the people even when they were not ready or willing to hear it, bearing God’s Word without regard to His own safety or acceptance.
  
  
• As King Jesus was the ultimate protector, just judge, providing what the people needed and watching out for all the people, especially the least of these, the poor…as Luke shows us so well.
  
  
• But here we see Jesus in his Priestly role. The role of a priest in the Old Testament was to be a barrier-crosser. It was the priests who entered into the holy of holies in the temple, it was the priests who offered sacrifices and prayers to remove God’s disfavor, it was the priest who straddled the distance between human and God. And it was the priest who oversaw the restoration of people into community.

Many of the laws of the Old Testament were intended not as punishment but as the things which could bring about restoring those who were outcast…back into the community. And so if someone was healed of leprosy, they would go show themselves to the priest to receive the clean bill of communal health. The unclean are declared clean.

And so Jesus brings a little twelve-year-old girl back to the community. And so Jesus gently leads a tear-stained father whom people had kept a distance from to allow his grief to begin…back among the people of God.

And so Jesus brings a woman who for twelve years has not enjoyed the intimacy of conversation, the simple joy of shopping in the marketplace, has not gone to worship to join her prayers with those of her neighbors…because she is known to be unclean.

And if she had done those things, she would cause others to be unclean and so she has been on the outside looking in for twelve years. And now Jesus brings her back across this invisible but formidable barrier of shame and isolation and anonymity…into God’s community.

Jesus is the ultimate barrier crosser, the restorer. He is still at work. The barriers are all sorts of shapes and sizes. Economic. Racial. Gender. Jesus’ priestly work is still going on, and it’s one which remarkably, he calls us to partner with Him in building His community.

I see it in this community. I see upper middle class Christians sitting at Wednesday Night tables not to do a poor person a favor…but to make a friend. I see white Christians meeting with black pastors to learn about ways, conscious and unconscious, that we whites have been a closed community. I see American Christians meeting with Kenyans to learn to pray, to trust. I see people extending the hand of hospitality to make sure someone is welcomed.

Lord, we have a long way to go.

But when Jesus extended His hands on the cross to make sure that you and I were restored to God’s community…something big started.

And so we hold onto Jesus.

We’ve seen Jesus in relationship, seen him as a restorer…but there is one other piece we dare not miss. Resurrection.

Now I fully appreciate that there are plenty of skeptics who want to say “Well, the girl wasn’t actually dead, she was in a coma. She was actually asleep. She was unconscious and breathing so shallow it couldn’t be seen.” But let me tell you, Luke didn’t put this story in here because Jesus did a good job of waking someone up from a nap! The girl was dying, Jesus was delayed, the message came she was dead, the mourners and wailers showed up, and they laughed at Jesus for saying it was anything other than what they knew full well: final, total.

And I’m also aware that in the end, this story is actually not a resurrection story. It is a resuscitation story. The girl is dead and is resuscitated. She is brought back to life, but she will eventually die again. Like the widow’s son we read about in chapter 7. Like Lazarus in the gospel of John, they are dead and then given more time to live before they die again.

Resuscitation is an amazing gift of extra time. But Resurrection is a tearing apart of death, and the fear of death…forever. And this story is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ work of permanency. It’s a good one to read as we enter into Lent and come out at Easter morning.

One author imagines Jesus coming to this point in front of Jairus’ house and asking “Shall my ministry stop short of the final problem? Shall death be the only enemy I cannot conquer?” And a girl who only lived twelve years is given more time. And imagine, when her time again comes to die…how differently she will look at it, knowing that Jesus is in it and on the other side.

“Don’t be afraid!” Jesus says to Jairus. Don’t be afraid. Trust. Hold on to me.

John Claypool, after his daughter Laura fell sick again after some months of remission, said this:

“This is the bedrock of my own hope. What God could do for his Boy (Jesus) in the midst of suffering I dare to believe he can do for my girl. I am staking my life on the belief that our present calamity will not end in darkness. Laura may suffer, she may even die, but God will bring her through, and us also.”

Resurrection.

When times are hard, when answers are few, we hold onto Jesus. The one who calls us to relationship, who restores us to community and who in Resurrection…changes everything. We cling, we hold onto that Jesus. After all…

“She was dead, and now she’s not, what could be cooler than that?”