Pentecost 5 July 1 2012 - 2 Daughters

"My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live." Could those words be your words? Imagine yourself in Jairus' shoes. Daughter on the verge of death. Only hope for life is to lay her at the feet of Jesus, to have Jesus lay his hands of mercy and healing on her dying body. If only we were so desperate for Jesus. Jairus was desperate for Jesus. His little girl was sick. On her death bed. Breathing her final breaths. At any moment the end could come. Imagine the heartbreak as a parent watching your daughter suffer with an illness. Imagine the feelings of helplessness knowing that nothing you could do would change her predicament. You were watching her slip away from you moment by moment. Imagine the heartbreak. But then hope. Jesus was in town. He had gone across the lake earlier that day and was nowhere to be found, But someone ran in to the house with a report that His boat just landed and he was walking down by the shore. Leaves you with a predicament - what should you do? Do you leave the side of your dying daughter. Do you miss the chance to see her through to her last breath and comfort her as she passes, or do you risk going to find Jesus on the chance that Jesus might come, that Jesus might heal. The possibility of the positives outweighed the definitiveness of the negatives and so Jairus went, frantically in search of the Lord. If only we were so desperate for Jesus. Jairus was a good man. He did everything right. He always did. You didn't get to his place in the community by doing the wrong thing, by doing things the wrong way. Jairus was successful. He was well off. His contributions kept the synagogue running. We know men like that - serve on every board the church has to offer, sometimes twice. Sometimes two at a time. The first to show up on a Sunday morning, the last to leave. Helps the pastor, visits the sick, cares for the needy, active in the Lutheran Layman's League, visits with those who haven't been to church in a while to gently encourage them to return, adopted an orphan in Africa, even has plans to go on a mission trip. A real churchman. And as a man of faith, when his daughter got sick he did the right thing. He prayed. He went to the one who has the power and the ability to help. Jairus had faith. His faith was active and involved. He believed not just in word but also in deed. Someone for us to look up to. And Jairus was desperate for Jesus. If only we were so desperate. Jairus found Jesus, explained to him his need and Jesus came. Imagine the relief at finding Jesus. Imagine the frantic rush that must have ensued as Jairus would have hurried Jesus through the streets on his way home to the bedside of his daughter. But then Jesus stopped dead in his tracks. "Who touched me?" Jesus asked. Well, that's a dumb question, you think. Who didn't touch you? Everyone touched you. It's a crowded street. There are people pressing in all around you." The disciples say what you are thinking. But Jesus persists. He scans the crowd, while precious seconds tick by, looking for that phantom of a person who Jesus insists touched him. And then she emerges. Jairus barely even knew her name. But everyone knew who she was. Probably crazy. No one ever saw her at church. People said she had some sort of a disease - made her bleed a lot. Her skin was always pale and gaunt. Kept to herself. You just ignored her, passed to the other side of the street when she came by. Everyone did. And now this was the woman taking Jesus away from the task at hand. Your daughter lay dying. You were close now, just around the next corner. You were almost there. If only this woman would wait her turn. You did not know this woman's quiet suffering. Your daughter lay with death a moment away threatening to rip her from the prime of her life. This woman has been dying every day a quiet, lonely death for the past 12 years. Her sickness made her an outcast. the Law of Moses said that because of her flow of blood she was unclean. Even if she wanted to go to church she could not. And so she stayed home when God's people gathered. Overlooked and ignored and quietly judged by the every sunday crowd. She could feel their stares and hear their comments muttered under their breath. So instead of going to church she looked for a cure, hoped for a cure, followed every lead to every new doctor and every new treatment. Each one promised a cure but delivered only a bill that she couldn't pay. She spent all she had and now had nothing. She too heard Jesus was in town, just back from his trip across the lake, and she thought to herself, "This is my chance. If only I touch his garment I will be healed. If only I touch his garment - that way I can sneak up behind him, quietly, unnoticed, outside the judgmental stares of the crowds." She could be free from this quiet, lonely and painful hell that she had been living for these 12 years. Desperate for Jesus she reached out her hand to touch his cloak. If only we were so desperate for Jesus. She touched the cloak of her Savior and in a moment her suffering ended. she felt it immediately. No waiting to see if this treatment would work, no need for multiple treatments. As soon as she touched him her sickness was gone. And her plan had worked. She found Jesus, touched the hem of his robe, received what her faith was seeking and could go back to her quiet life pain-free and whole. She could start again, start over, start fresh. But then Jesus stopped, right in his tracks. She only wanted a quiet exchange, no confrontation, no face to face meetings, just back door and behind the scenes. But Jesus stopped. Dead in his tracks. And turned around. And so did she. She knew what she had done. She knew she had been caught. She hoped the urging of the disciples would distract him and get him off her trail but he insisted. "Someone touched me. I felt power go out from me. Who? Who touched me?" The game was up. She turned herself in. What would Jesus do? Yell? Command? Curse? Would he give her back her illness? Would her new hell be worse than the first? No. "Daughter." said Jesus. "Go in peace. Your faith has healed you. Be free from your disease." In a word and in a moment Jesus restored her. Her body had been healed, but now also her soul. In front of everyone. All the crowds. The disciples. Jairus. Jesus restored her. If ever there was "a moment" this was it. But it was a moment Jairus couldn't spare to lose. In the next breath someone came from Jairus' house. This one Jesus had called "daughter" would cost you your daughter. "Don't trouble the teacher any more. Your daughter has died." Your worst fear has just come true. Overwhelmed with grief, you turn your head and your eyes fill with tears. You know you shouldn't, but you can't help feel in your heart anger at this woman who stole from the Healer those last precious moments. Now it is too late. This daughter is healed. Your daughter is dead. But Jesus turns to you. "Do not fear" he says. "Only believe." With that he presses on. When you round the corner to your street you see exactly that scene you have been dreading. Your front yard bustles with commotion and none of it is good. These days we would see an ambulance, a stretcher, rescue workers. Not one of them going in to help, all of them coming out the front door with heads down knowing that day they failed to save a life. As they exit, they are passed by the coroner ready to claim the body and take it away to be prepared for burial. Thoughts of a funeral, feelings of emptiness fill your head and your heart. You barely even hear the cries of the mourners. It's like you are in a dream. But Jesus pushes past. "She isn't dead." says Jesus. "She's only asleep." This is a cruel game. One that you have no stomach to play, but you follow. The professional staff treats your little girl with the coldness of their professionalism. They act like Jesus had never seen a dead person. But they knew. What's dead is dead. There is no going back. And so they laugh. Their laughter stings. But Jesus insists. With quiet authority he dismisses "the professionals" and he takes over, almost as if he were the professional, almost as if he was the authority when it came to matters of life and death, and he walked up to your daughter. Your broken and beloved daughter and he picked up her hand and he looked into her still, lifeless stare and he spoke to her. He said, "Little girl, I say to you get up." The blank stare on your dead daughter began to change. The eyes that had been fixed somewhere in the distance on nothing in particular suddenly came into focus, first on the face of Jesus. Then her eyes looked around. First to your wife, then to you. Then she sat up. You are filled with disbelief. It's like a dream. That disbelief quickly gives way to joy. Your daughter was dead. No breath no life in her young body. Jesus brought her back. Jesus made her alive. Jesus healed not just a disease. Jesus cured death. This is what Jesus does. Jesus heals. He undoes those things that take away from us our life. Jesus heals the sick. He raises the dead. He comforts the grieving. He gives hope to the hopeless. He hears and answers the call of those who are desperate to receive him. Dear friends and fellows saints, learn here what it is to believe. Learn here what it is to have faith. We live in a world that is so enthralled with its own ingenuity. that is so convinced of its own ability to find and discover and create solutions to any of life's problems. But for every solution, life creates a bigger problem, a problem for which there is no solution. Every promise only fills or fixes "for now" and never "for good". But Jesus fixes for good. For real. For ever. Because Jesus treats not just symptoms, Jesus treats sin. He pays for it on the cross. He overcomes it in the empty tomb. He gives life that lasts forever. Two daughters. One poor and at the end of her rope, one privileged and at the end of her life. Both healed and restored. Both loved and cured by Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Amen.