“My daughter has just died.
But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
This man believed is daughter was beyond human hope and yet in Jesus he found hope. We know from the account in Luke this the girl was twelve years old, "when the flower of youth begins", as one of the fathers wrote. It was right at the moment of promise and potential that tragedy struck. But the official was not crushed with despair. Rather, the wrongness of the tragedy propelled him to Jesus, made him bold with faith to ask for and to hope in his help.
A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him
and touched the tassel on his cloak.
This woman had been prevented by her illness from becoming all that she was meant to be. Her potential, like that of the girl, had not been allowed to flower. She had spent twelve years trying to find a doctor who could treat her, but had only been the worse for it. It would have been twelve years of isolation in which she was ostracized from the community for ritual impurity. In short, it would have been almost unbearable. It would have been understandable if she had by that point abandoned hope. But just as Jesus inspired in the official a hope that made him bold, so too in the woman.
Jesus turned around and saw her, and said,
“Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”
And from that hour the woman was cured.
Rather than contaminating Jesus with her ritual impurity the very cause of that impurity was cured. The grace that flowed from Jesus was so strong that, the purity that filled his own heart was so great, that he was not only immune to external contamination, but he himself reversed the usual direction of the flow, his purity healing what would normal have been the cause of impurity in others. It was as if to say that he was so great that it was easier for miracles to happen than for him to be made impure. We saw a similar flow of grace when Jesus touched lepers, lepers who would have such great stigma and seemingly insurmountable ritual uncleanness. Jesus was not made unclean by them but rather they were healed (see Matthew 8:1-4).
“Go away! The girl is not dead but sleeping.”
To the power possessed by Jesus death was no more permanent than sleep. The crowd ridiculed him because they thought he didn't understand the situation. They believed his hope was a naïve hope based on a perhaps willful ignorance of the circumstances. But it was Jesus rather than they who truly understood. He put them out so that the girl could be surrounded only by an atmosphere of faith.
he came and took her by the hand, and the little girl arose.
The girl that had been dead rose up as if she had merely been asleep. Normally contact with the dead would have made one ritually impure. But when that one was Jesus the direction was again reversed. The dead would rise to life again rather than make Jesus unclean to the slightest degree. Rather than death or contamination flowing into him life and healing flowed forth.
Are we more like the official and the woman or are we more like the ridiculing crowds? Do we allow Jesus to inspire us to hope or do we insist that nothing more can be done? What potential has been waiting twelve years to be unleashed? Has every year along the way been one of frustration? Or was it all taken suddenly and by surprise, leaving no sign of hope? Any of this would give us good cause, from a worldly point of view, to despair. But perhaps Jesus had a reason for allowing it. If we learn the faith in him that allowed this girl to be raised and this woman to be healed it will certainly be a greater good than whatever hardships led up to it.
I will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.
She shall respond there as in the days of her youth,
when she came up from the land of Egypt.
Sometimes we need to experience a little bit of the desert so that we can hear Jesus speaking. We have idols that promise us what only Jesus can provide. It is in the desert that we learn that only he can help us. Our idols are lifeless and powerless. The only power that is truly real and absolute is the power of the love of Christ. And it is all we need.
I will espouse you to me forever:
I will espouse you in right and in justice,
in love and in mercy;
I will espouse you in fidelity,
and you shall know the LORD.
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