Two Daughters and One Interruption

Jairus is an important man in a hurry. He runs a synagogue, and his twelve-year-old daughter is dying, and he falls at Jesus's feet in front of everyone. Jesus goes with him. Then the story stops. A woman who has bled for twelve years, who has spent everything on doctors and only gotten worse, touches the edge of his cloak in the crush of the crowd. She is healed at once. And Jesus, with a dying child waiting, stops and asks who touched him.

The disciples think the question is absurd. The crowd is pressing on every side. But Jesus waits until the woman comes forward, trembling, and tells him the whole truth. Then he does something the healing alone did not do. He calls her daughter. He tells her that her faith has healed her, and sends her away in peace. She came for a cure. She left with a name and a blessing.

Meanwhile Jairus is standing there watching the minutes go by. Then the messengers arrive. The delay, from his side, has cost him everything. This is the one idea of the passage. Jesus is never late for the person he is walking with, even when his timing looks like neglect. The interruption that seemed to ruin Jairus's hope was the very thing that showed him what kind of faith Jesus was asking for. The woman believed in a crowd. Jairus would have to believe at a deathbed.

At the house there is wailing and then laughter, the mocking kind. Jesus puts the mourners out, takes the parents and three disciples in, and speaks to a dead girl in her own language. Little girl, get up. She does. Then he tells them to give her something to eat, because he is the sort of Lord who notices that a child who has been ill is hungry.

The turn toward life is this. You are probably either the woman or the father today. Either you have something you have hidden for years and are reaching in secret, or you are watching a clock and wondering why he stopped for someone else. To the first, he says come forward and say the whole truth. To the second, he says keep walking. In both cases the destination is the same: he calls you his own, and he is not finished.