There are three parts this time. In the first, Jairus speaks as a Father, in wonder and gratitude. Then he thinks twice in his role leader of the synagogue.

Each part may stand alone, but all three could be used the same act of worship, interspersed with hymns and prayers

Full of the Joys of Life

Just look at her!  I can hardly believe it!   All I want to do is to take hold of her and feel the warmth in her body and the strong beat of her heart (just to be sure, you know?).  But not a chance!  Look at her, running and laughing and shouting and playing, just like any other child of her age.  Full of the joys of life!   Life, can you hear yourself say that, Jairus?  She’s full of the joys of Life!  Oh, I can hardly believe it!  I can hardly believe it!

Yesterday…  Oh, I can hardly think of yesterday! 

The coldness… the stillness…

Now that’s all in the past, thank God. That dreadful, threatening cloud has moved on.

And today the light of life shines brighter, I’ll tell you, than it ever has done before!

The light of life shines brighter!

I think that some will be persuaded I acted rather foolishly.  For sure, I’m in the black books of some of my colleagues at the synagogue.  It’s not quite ‘dulce et decorum’, not quite ‘right and proper’ for a man in my position to make such a public spectacle of himself.  Especially when, in doing so, he draws attention to and gives credibility to a ‘pretender’ such as Jesus!  (Not that I care about that. Look at her!  Listen to her; she’s singing now!  Jesus didn’t pretend when he gave her back to me. And what could they do to help, eh!?)

Mind you, looking back, I really did think some foolish things yesterday. Be honest, Jairus; more than foolish, I thought some really terrible things. I got so impatient and so … angry.  First there was the crowd pressing in from every side. Couldn’t they tell we were in a hurry?

Couldn’t they just hold their curiosity for once and let us get on and get home!?  Then there was that woman who had the audacity to steal his power away from Him.  And then there was Jesus.  I mean, why did he have to stop and make a scene of it just then of all times?

He was carrying on as though we had all the time in the world.  He stopped and insisted on

calling that woman out, waiting for her to respond and … oh, it’s awful to remember what I thought in those few moments!  He gave her time.  My time!  My so very, very precious time!  To be honest, I was furious.  A stillness and a silence may have descended on the crowd, but my heart was racing and my mind urging him to hurry.  Hurry!  ‘Come on man, don’t you know that she is dying?’

‘No master, don’t you know that she is dead?’

I didn’t want to see the messengers.  But as they came pushing through the crowd I knew, even before they told me.  And for a moment my world stood still.  Then the crowd and all around me began to spin.  I saw it again and again in repeated slow motion: Jesus (back to me) talking to the woman, them pushing through the crowd, my servant’s voice taking on haunted tones as his lips became larger than life and everything else span out of focus, those lips intoning time after time after time: ‘she’s dead … she’s dead … she’s dead!’.

Then, all of a sudden, I was back in the crowd again. And for an awful moment I felt terribly afraid.

‘Do not be afraid’, a tender but authoritative voice was saying, ‘Only believe and she will be well.’

‘Only believe’, huh?!   And did I?  Who can tell?   Was it resignation – one last clinging after hope – or was there something in his voice that spurred me on?  Either way, it was quite clear that Jesus was with me, and he had now taken control.  I had the fullness of his attention at last.  I needed it, because I don’t believe I could think nor do anything for myself.  And one thing’s for certain; if I wanted anyone to be around when I got home, then it would have had to be Jesus.

Oh, and I was so glad for his sensitivity!  I don’t think that I could have borne it if he had made a public show of things like he did with that woman.  But no, He sent them all away, even most of his disciples. Except Peter, James and John, I think. Yes, just the six of us; that’s all he would allow into the house.

And, in the house, there was that terrible show. The widows! The professional mourners!  Hard away at it, they were. You could hear their penetrating wailing all the way down the street. Those cries practised to be so perfect; so full of pain, hopelessness, and despair. I resented them being there.

And then the showdown that sealed it all: ‘Don’t cry!  The child is not dead. She is only sleeping.’

If I have ever felt stupid and embarrassed, it was then, when Jesus said that!   I would have readily joined in their laughter if it hadn’t been my child lying there, lifeless and still.

But when Jesus moved so purposely towards her, I was presented with a choice. Believe them and their hopeless and wailing despair, or Him and his power, authority and love?

It was then that I remembered the woman. So desperate and so afraid, she had reached out to him.  In that moment, Jesus had given himself to her and she had been healed.

The decision had been made.  I gave him his way as he took my daughter by the hand.

Again, that voice, so authoritative, so sure: ‘Get up, my child!’  

Can you believe it? Something so simple!  Just that: ‘Get up, my child!’ and she did! 

Then the laughter stopped, I tell you!

But not for long! There she goes again!  Listen to her; full of the joys of life!  The joys of LIFE!  I could sit here all day simply looking and listening and enjoying her!  

And … oops! … I think that’s what I’d better do!  I’ve just remembered something else that happened yesterday; Jesus told me not to tell anyone about all this!   

Well, my friend, I am sorry!  I’m afraid I just couldn’t help it!

That woman!

There’s something I should tell you about that woman I mentioned.  I quite forgot about it in all the excitement, but suddenly it dawned on me; I knew her.

Of course, in a small town such as this, this should be no surprise; everyone knows everyone!  But, if I put it slightly differently and say ‘this woman was known to me,’ then you might begin to understand what I mean.  I know her professionally.  I am the leader of the synagogue, after all, and this woman is one on the barred list.  It’s the bleeding, you see; it makes her unclean. Laid down in the Law, it is.  Leviticus 15, if you really must know.  And it is my duty to uphold that law.  In this case, to make sure she is refused entry to synagogue and kept out of society.  No one else, after all, wants to be made unclean by any contact with her.

Normally, you know, it’s only a short-term thing.  When a woman has her monthly bleed, she is ‘unclean’ for seven days.  If she bleeds at any other time, she is unclean for seven days from the time it stops, so on the eighth day she can take an offering to the temple and be declared clean again.  In the mean time, no one can touch her, or sit on a bed she has slept in, or even eat food she has prepared.  She is barred from all public life and places… but as I said, it’s usually only for a short time, and then the woman is welcome back.

This woman, however, has been an untouchable for years. 12 years to be precise. And don’t I know it well.  It all came flooding back to me when I remembered what happened yesterday.  The two scenes formed an almost perfect mirror image in my mind.

My servants were at the door (the same ones, only looking at lot younger then!). I had been expecting them, and my heart soared with joy and excitement when I saw them trying to get my attention. The poorly concealed smiles on their faces said it all. ‘Come home master!’ they were there to say, ‘You’re a dad at last!’

How I longed to leave straightaway, but as I made my way across to them, with the all-important question (‘Boy or girl?’) on my lips, I was stopped in my tracks when the woman stepped between us.  She stood there with a pleading look in her eye. So silent and so tragic, I just simply just could not ignore her.  She didn’t have to explain much before I knew what I must do.  Can you believe it?  On the very day that I celebrated the new born life of my child, I had to condemn this woman to nothing less than a living death!  I declared her ‘untouchable’ and then rushed home to hold my new born child! 

I see the tragic irony of it all now.  Of course, it was not my fault; I had no choice.  I knew it would be hard for her, but no-one could have expected it to last.  But it did. And no intervention from any doctor could help.  She kept bleeding, so she remained an outcast and it was my job to enforce that.  Everyone accepted it. Those who didn’t condemn her, assuming it was some divine judgement for hidden sins, took it as a hard luck story, that’s all.  No-one questioned it.   No-one cared.  Why should I feel guilty? 

And how ironic it is, that all these years later, as I sought to take Jesus to my dying daughter, it was this same woman who stood in the way once again!

To be honest, I didn’t recognise her immediately.   I didn’t see her in the crowd and, to be honest, I was so distressed at the time I couldn’t have said anything any way.

Not that anyone would have seen her at all, if Jesus hadn’t called her out.  Most people I know would not have made a spectacle of this, if they could have helped it. They would have kept quiet and hoped for the best.  Ritual impurity is very contagious, you see.  It only takes one touch from an untouchable and you are persona no grata for the day as well!

So, Jesus could have got away with it. And if you had asked me at the time, I would have said he jolly well ought to have ignored her and come away immediately.  My daughter was dying!  Only twelve years old.  Still a child.  Her future stolen away far too soon.  Surely, he could see my daughter was far more important? Why choose now to bother with an unclean woman such as this?

But he knew what he was doing, didn’t he?  He knew that she had touched him, and if he hadn’t read my mind exactly, he knew exactly what I was thinking!  ‘My Daughter’, he called her.  And If I had been more able to listen at the time, I should have heard what he was saying; ‘My daughter!’  This woman too was his daughter.  While my thoughts we so wrapped up in my poor child, his heart was breaking for a child of his own; the one who, twelve years ago, I had sentenced to a life less than life. The one who he was insisting should be acknowledged, and recognised, and restored to health and community (to life) as well.

I can’t feel it was a personal attack.  If it was, why then would he have come to my home and restored my daughter to me as he did?  No, Jesus is not vindictive like that!  This was not an attack on me personally.  But it was a challenge to my position, and to the system, and to the uncaring law that I upheld.

As I care so much for my daughter, he cares for all his daughters and sons; even those on the margins, who we choose to exclude or simply to forget.  And he wanted this daughter of his to be healed – to be welcomed back into the life of the community and to be fully accepted.  He wanted her to be hugged and loved and cherished, just as I wanted to hug and love and cherish my own daughter.  For the twelve years of my child’s life, this woman had not been allowed to know any of that.  And I had been the one to enforce it.

But now things are changing round here. Today I am forced to do something else.

Today I will take two daughters by the hand and lead them into the synagogue and welcome them back!  As a community, I can guarantee, we will celebrate the restoration of two daughters of Israel.  And perhaps, yes perhaps, we’ll think twice before excluding anyone ever again.

Barred?

Do you know? I have just had another thought!

If Jesus came to the Synagogue today, should I let him in?

Don’t be absurd, you say!  How, after all that he has done for me, can I even think like that?  Surely, there is no question?  You must delight to welcome him! 

And doesn’t my heart say just the same?  But my head says something different.

I am the leader of the synagogue, after all, and rules are rules, aren’t they?

How can I ever justify letting in someone so unclean?

Don’t you see?  Jesus is unclean!   ‘Not his fault’, you might say.  And if he had kept quiet about that woman touching him, no-one would have known anything about it.  But now the law is against him. Touched by the untouchable, he is deemed unclean as well.  He is barred until evening.  (And anyone who touches him will be barred too!)

But that is not all, is it?  And the rest was no accident by any count, was it?  

I saw him do it. He sat on my dead child’s bed and touched her. Quite deliberately, he touched her.  But touching a dead body makes you unclean too!  For a whole week this time!  Forever, if you do not wash properly!  Jesus must be one of the dirtiest people around! 

Not that he cares. He’s obviously not afraid of getting his hands dirty; not afraid of what others may think.  Instead, he reaches out to embrace the bleeding woman and the dead child.  His heart motivated by love not law; respect not respectability; compassion not compliance.

In doing so, he challenges everything, doesn’t he?  Without hesitation, he sweeps away our cherished beliefs and practices.  It is obvious that he has little time for religion, but all the time in the world for relationships.  And he challenges us to think the same.  For, how dare we call ‘unclean’ what God has declared ‘clean’?  How can we refuse to embrace those who he embraces?  Mustn’t we include them and be willing to share the fullness of life with them?

But it leaves me with a dilemma, doesn’t it?  What will I do?   He stuck his neck out for me; will I stick my neck out for him?  Will I follow his example and welcome the unwelcome, touch the untouchable, embrace the ‘unclean’ with a healing, restoring love?  Am I prepared to be tarred with this brush and get my hands dirty while embracing others in his name?  Will I truly welcome this man who breaks all the rules and who, in love, takes all our dirt upon himself?                             

copyright (c) Nick Stanyon. Permission is given for free use in acts of Christian worship. Please acknowledge nickstanyon.com