[AI translation] There are two stories woven together here, but I want to talk about just one of them, the one about the resurrection of Jairus' daughter. Although what is described here happened before the resurrection of Christ, it already shines with the projected rays of the light of Easter, with which, on Good Friday and Easter, the greatest human misery, death, was triumphed over! The path of our life is now illuminated in all its glory by the glory of Christ who has conquered sin and death. And what I want to talk about now is the encouraging light of the power of the living Jesus on the dark passages of our lives.The journey of our lives sometimes turns into a very dark valley, as we have just sung. In fact, not sometimes, but very often, there are such dark, hopeless stretches of road, much more often than bright, sunny, sunny landscapes. Oh, how many secret or no longer concealable troubles, sorrows and sufferings there are in people's lives! In one place the turmoil of a family life falling apart! And how happily it began. But suddenly the sky overcast, a storm arose, as if an earthquake had shaken the house, and now the wounded souls among the ruins are mourning: where have we come to, what has become of us?! Family life is sick! In another place, the memory of an old sin casts a dark shadow on the road. A secret infidelity against a spouse: no one knows, yet it hurts, its bitter poison can corrupt even pure family joy. The soul is sick! Or the great disease of the 20th century: fear. The anxious feeling of walking on undermined ground: you dare not rejoice in anything, everything you have lived for, worked for, could be blown up at any moment. Sick age! Or that a member of the family is ill, suffering, in danger, as here in Jairus. The others don't like their lunch, the joy has left the house, sleep is not restful. Shadows of fear and worry are everywhere you look, for there is trouble, there is death sneaking around! Though Jairus has a high and noble position, what is he worth now? Even though he is surrounded by respect and esteem from people, they cannot help him! He has no money, no wealth: the trouble is greater than the power of money! Someone is dying. The road is getting hopelessly dark! Oh, if only it were not for this dreadful darkness, but life could be lived happily!
And yet this trouble is good for something! Jairus, at any rate, it was this trouble that brought him to Jesus. Behold, we read, "And, behold, one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, came, and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, and besought him, saying, My daughter is at the point of death, Jer, give her a start, that she may be healed and live." For this to happen, for a rich, distinguished ruler, the head of the synagogue, to give up the opposition he had, almost by virtue of his office, to Jesus, and to be forced to kneel and acknowledge the divine power of Jesus, it was necessary, I say, for his only child to be in mortal danger. She had to come to a point in her life where authority, power, wealth, no longer help, where all pride is broken, all posturing is gone, where it no longer matters what people say; where there is only one option: to bow down and beg! Beg!
But is it not the same with us? In order to seek the living reality of Jesus Christ with a truly longing heart, in order to have our prayers to him heated, in order to truly find God at all: we too must always, again and again, first reach the ultimate limit of our own human efforts and abilities. Just as we need to be able to appreciate and rejoice in a street lamp that burns in the daytime, we need to be able to be overcome by the darkness of the evening. There is nothing in the world that draws a man to Christ as much as trouble, physical or spiritual suffering. For we all know our human wretchedness: as long as everything is going well, as long as the sun is shining brightly in the sky of our lives, we do not need the nearness of Jesus, the helping grace of Jesus. Time and time again we find ourselves caught in the fact that God is indifferent and very much indispensable to us at certain stages of our lives. And we only call on Him when we urgently and indispensably need Him.
There are modern people who are also somehow vaguely ashamed of this attitude towards God, and it is from this secret shame that they make this defiantly proud statement, "If I didn't seek God on good days, I didn't come to Him, and I don't want to come on bad days!" And yet those "bad days" in our lives are precisely the ones that are meant to amplify, like a loudspeaker, Jesus' sometimes so quiet call, "Come to me, all you who are burdened." The tangled web of all kinds of troubles is like a net, a web of God's saving grace that he casts out for us into the world. Let's not escape from it! The rod whose stroke sometimes cuts so painfully through our lives is really a shepherd's crook, the rod of the Good Shepherd, with which He draws His own into the safe fold! Behold, what an obstacle that disease has broken down in Jairus' life! God sometimes stirs up the earthly nest in which his children are nestled, lazy: he stirs it up, he allows even Satan to shake it, but only to force its inhabitants to spread and use the wings of faith and prayer.
There are many in heaven who would never have got there if God had not sent storms upon them. Does God not do good to a man when he breaks his pride, his resistance, when he brings a man, a church, to his knees before Jesus Christ? Many times I have seen that God is able to do everything out of His infinite love, so that those for whom He gave Jesus Christ to die may not perish. He is able rather to cause great sorrow, to strike terror to death, only to go so far as to fall on his knees before the Lord Jesus Christ. For once one kneels at the feet of Christ, there is no more trouble! This is what happened to Jairus. And since then, many Jairus has blessed Him for the trouble in which he has truly found God the Savior!
It is undoubtedly our great affliction that it is in trouble that we truly turn to God, it is in darkness that we seek the power of Jesus. But the consolation of this story is precisely that Jesus accepts us in such times. He doesn't say to the biblical Jairus, or to the Jairus of today, "Well, it's only at times like this that you find me, and now you beg me to help you, don't you?" He does not ask: who were you, Jairus, how have you lived until now, are you worthy of my speaking to you? No! None of that is in the story. But what did Jesus do? Here we read, "He went away with him...!" You see how true it is what He Himself once said: "He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Let us not be ashamed, then, if some trouble in our lives drives us to Jesus, but let us see in Him the diverting love of our Lord - but we may be ashamed if we stay with Him only as long as the trouble lasts! I don't know how Jairus' household went on in life, but I do know, sadly, that the desire for fellowship with Christ in our hearts very soon fades as soon as the trouble is over and the heavens are revealed again! It is no shame if the members of a family are brought together in fervent prayer, in daily prayer together, because one member of the family has been troubled. Thank God that they have at least found each other in the presence of the Lord! But it's a shame when, in the same family, the family devotion ceases as soon as the trouble is over. Do you know what this is a sign of? That maybe the trouble was not yet so bad that it really brought you to your knees before Jesus! Maybe it will take an even bigger blow to bring them to the living reality of Christ. Go to Jesus! He won't send you away. He'll accept you!
Look, if Jairus, a stranger, was free to flee to Jesus with his troubles, so are we!" - "My dear friend," said the pastor, "there is no way to Christ. But he is standing right here beside you! Just bow down before him and tell him everything that is in your heart! Remember: at Easter I said that the resurrection of Jesus means that Jesus now belongs to an invisible world that surrounds, carries, permeates and permeates this visible world of ours on all sides; that Jesus is now equally close to each of us from a life form of an intangible dimension. To you too! You do not need to look for Him, for He is there beside you. Fall down before him, like Jairus, lay your burden, your sin, your disordered family life, your fears, your sickness, your fate, your life, in his hands, like Jairus his daughter's trouble. And leave the rest to Him, like Jairus with his little girl.
And yet, as if it were all in vain: the prostration, the prayer of supplication, the help and love of Jesus! Here's how the story continues: 'While he was still speaking, they came from the head of the synagogue, saying, "Your daughter is dead; why do you trouble the Master any longer?"- So it seems he had tarried too long on the road. He shouldn't have stopped, he shouldn't have stopped to think about something else, he was on the point of her death, there was no time to waste! Why did Jesus not hurry, why did he not get there before the child died? Why?! Well, this terribly painful why, which struck such a chord in the father's heart, will be solved if we read the story through. Jairus doesn't know why now, but he will in the end. Yes, it is always like that: at the end of a very painful, difficult journey, the many whys are revealed! The whole journey from the end to the end is made clear in reverse. Yes, so it may be that it is in walking in closest communion with Christ that the most serious calamity, like Jairus on the road, will strike him. It may be that the cruel facts cut off the last vestige of human hope, so much so that the ground almost runs out from under you. There really remains no realistic, no rational basis for further hope. When the aching heart is overcome by the feeling that it is over, that it is too late to make any effort, then Jesus speaks to you: do not be afraid, just believe. Sometimes there is nothing and no one left but Jesus! But only Him! But He remains! And perhaps it is precisely in such hopeless darkness that He wants the only real basis of hope to remain! Only His presence, only His nearness, only His grace and power, only His encouraging word: "Fear not, but believe!
And I would like to reassure now all those who are desperate, who have reached a dead end, who have come to the end of all their efforts, who have come to such ultimate darkness as Jairus, that indeed: fear not, but believe! Christ is Lord! For I am encouraged by one in whose presence even death is no longer death, but only a temporary, passing dream. "The child is not dead, but sleeps." Let us believe Him that our Christian friends and loved ones who have died: they have only passed out of our sight, out of our perspective, but they have not ceased to exist, to live! Even their bodies, however buried, are only asleep. Sleeping is not a bad thing, there is nothing frightening about it. In sleep the tired body is renewed, strengthened. The sleep of death is also a precious time of rest and renewal. And just as I nurse my sleeping children in the morning, so the dead will wake at the wakeful voice of Jesus. The calling of Jairus' daughter back from the dead and giving her back to her loved ones is a foreshadowing of what Jesus will do on the last day. He will restore the relationships that death has torn apart. But there is one point in which this scene does not illustrate the final resurrection. For this little girl has been resurrected to this life on earth: a state of suffering, temptation, trouble and hardship. To a life beyond death. But at that final resurrection, to a new, glorious, immortal life beyond death, a life free from sin and sorrow, full of joy and blessing, are those who have fallen asleep here in Christ resurrected!
Such a Saviour is our Lord! Can then any darkness, hopelessness, trouble, suffering, be saved?! Is it not enough that He says: Fear not, but believe!
Amen
Date: 5 May 1957.
Lesson
Mk 5,22-43