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“My daughter has just died.
But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
What profound faith from one who seemed, in virtue of the fact that he was a "ruler", to be less likely to demonstrate such faith! To some extent it must have been desperation that drove him to it. There were after all no longer any feasible alternates for a daughter that was already dead. No doctors could help. It seemed beyond the reach of any typical healing ministries. In modern times, no matter someone's reputation for charismatic gifts of healing, one still would no typically bring a corpse to a prayer meeting and ask for help. And yet this man was moved to do something analogous because of what he believed about Jesus. The desert of earthly loss allowed God to speak to his heart and open this dimension of faith within him. The false and partial promises of earthly happiness had left him in a state of sorrow in which he was allured by the greater promises of God, promises with eternal consequences, after which there need no longer be tearful goodbyes, when he would gladden his people after their sadness (see Jeremiah 31:31).
When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand,
and the little girl arose.
The raising of the daughter of Jairus was a preview of what was to come when the resurrection on the last day would be the beginning of the final and irrevocable stage of the history, in which God espoused humanity to himself, just as he promised through Hosea. His own life became new life for the daughter of Jairus. And it has become our life through baptism. And it will be our life in fullness on the last day when all who hear the voice of the Son of Man rise from their graves to live in his presence forever more. But for us, as for Jairus, the path to life and to the marriage feast passes through the desert of earthly sorrow. As it did for his daughter, it will probably path through the desert of death, unless he returns during our lifetime. But all of this is precisely so that the bridegroom can demonstrate his unshakable fidelity to his bride, even in spite of the bride's tendency to be unfaithful to him. The desert is not in and of itself a good or desirable place. It was not on the original itinerary for the human journey. But God has made all things beautiful in their time (see Ecclesiastes 3:11). He not only makes them work together for the good of those who love him (see Romans 8:28) but himself draws us into that love when we stray.
Jesus turned around and saw her, and said,
“Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”
And from that hour the woman was cured.
Part of the purifying journey for Jairus was learning to allow his own needs and desires to be interrupted by those of others. He could not ask for love to be demonstrated at his request and on his behalf while rejecting the claims of others to that same love of Jesus. Obviously his whole world was tied up in helping his daughter. But this was just one piece of the larger plan to unite heaven and earth in Jesus Christ. And he needed to be open to all of it in order to receive any of it. To his credit, we do not hear him telling Jesus to hurry because there was no time to waste, or that the woman had recovered so he might as well keep moving. It is unclear how exactly he interpreted the event. But he may have recognized it as a sign of the power of Jesus. Since the woman had been suffering for a number of years equivalent to the age of his daughter it seemed to imply that even his daughter's death would not be a problem for Jesus. The healing power that flowed from him was sufficient even unto the raising of the dead.
A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him
and touched the tassel on his cloak.
We can truly sympathize with the desert of waiting, and the cycles of hope and disappointment with which this woman had to contend. She spent all she had on doctors hoping for a cure but never found reprieve. Yet, from that perspective, when it would have been easy to give up and despair she instead heard the alluring words of God directing her to hope in Jesus. The bridegroom had such a superabundance of blessings for the bride that even his touch would be enough to change her life forever. It was not obvious that twelve years of hoping and being disappointed would lead anyone to such faith. Not everyone chooses to listen to the voice in the desert, for it speaks quietly, while our pain and sorrow shout. The longer we endure those voices the easier it is for us to believe that we are a hopeless case. But in the desert, free from other distractions, we may learn to hope as the woman hoped and to believe as Jairus believed. When we have such faith we can, even here and now, begin to experience the blessings that will be ours in fullness when Jesus consummates his marriage with humanity at the end of time.
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