Why, indeed. The door has been shut and our limits have been reached. There is nothing to be done. Dead is dead and that is the end of the story. The usual litany of hopeless talk in the face of life’s most brutal fact: the world is a graveyard. This Jesus is quite a fellow, an excellent teacher to be sure, but let’s not ask Him to do what we all know cannot be done. Let’s not trouble him.
Actually, troubling Jesus is precisely what we may do. For we are dealing here with far more than a teacher, even a doctor of medicine whose limited powers are all too obvious in the face of death. Faith always knocks, sometimes pounds, on Jesus door in the name of hope.
“She is not dead but sleeping”, He said. And they laughed. They laugh, and they still do, because they do not see that in Jesus the future breaks into our present, a present that always ends at the mortuary, and brings the living Word of a new creation from God’s future.
Therefore, trouble him, my friend in Christ. Trouble Him in all manner of grief and loss, in the midst of dying and death. Trouble him with every fear and longing, in tears and turmoil, in every moment of despair and sorrow.
Remember Jairus, the dead girl’s father? He did not laugh, but listened and heard and dared to trust to Christ’s hope-filled words: “Do not be afraid, only believe”.
“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
-Pastor Mark Anderson
Filed under: Uncategorized |
The Old Adam Lives! 
Leave a Reply