Isaiah 51:9-16/Colossians 1:9-14/St Matthew 9:18-26
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
For twelve years the woman had suffered. St Mark describes her body as a being a fountain of blood. She had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had on her medical treatment; yet it did not make her better. Just the opposite - her condition grew worse.
For twelve years she had suffered. And her suffering was magnified by her isolation. She was driven to aloneness because the fountain of blood coming from her sick body made her ceremonially unclean. She could not go to the Temple and eat of the peace offering; for her there was no peace. Those who were clean would avoid her. And it must have seemed as though God was avoiding her too.
During those same twelve years a man named Jairus had a daughter. Some things have changed in the two millennia since Jairus’ wife first learned that she would have a baby, but more things have not changed. It’s probably safe to assume that Jairus was overjoyed when he learned he would be a father. As a ruler of the synagogue he surely had sung the Psalm, Behold, children are a heritage of from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward (Ps 127:3). And he would have received that little girl as a gift from God. He must have looked at his wife with joy - bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh - and thanked God that for them the Psalm had been fulfilled: Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table (Ps 128:3).
But now after twelve years of joy, his little olive plant was withering. Jairus’ little girl was on the brink of death. The physicians that could not help the woman who body was a fountain of blood also were no help to Jairus’ little girl. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do,” said the doctor.
Where is the joy now? Where is God now? Which Psalm shall Jairus now sing? Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! (Ps 130:1-2). And with that Psalm he went off to the Temple. Not the Temple on Mount Zion, but to the Temple made without hands: to the Lord Jesus.
Jairus threw himself at the feet of Jesus. He has come to Jesus, the true Temple, and he worships. His prayer is fervent, urgent, incessant: “Come and lay your hand on my little girl and she will live!”
On His way to the twelve-year old girl, Jesus passes the woman with the flow of blood. She could not go to the Temple, but the Temple had come to her. God had not abandoned her! She was not alone. No physician could help, but the Divine Physician had come. Not daring to speak, her prayer is her outstretched hand, reaching out for the tassel hanging from Jesus’ garment. The tassel was a reminder to the Jewish man that he must remember the commandments and do them. The Pharisees made their tassels large, flaunting their so-called obedience to the Law.
But only Jesus was truly obedient. Only Jesus fulfilled the Law in its completeness. The tassel which reminded the Hebrew man to obey the Law - that tassel on Jesus signified the perfect obedience which God demanded. And the First Commandment of the Law began with the promise: I am the Lord Your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Ex 20:2). He wants to be your God. He wants to help and rescue you from death.
And so when that woman - that tearful, bloody, shamed, miserable, alone woman - reaches for the tassel on Jesus’ garment, she reaches for the God who helps in time of need, reaching His perfect righteousness, His perfect holiness, His sheer grace and mercy, which is the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Her empty hand is the picture of faith reaching for that which she does not have. It is not a faith that things will get better. That hope vanished lone ago. It is not a sunny disposition, a be-happy attitude that reaches out to Jesus. It is despair, grief, shame, pain that reaches out, knowing their is nothing in her that can make her well. In a sermon on tis text CFW Walther preached, “From today’s Gospel reading we see what faith can do, what wonderful workings it produces, and what incomparable power it demonstrates” (God Grant It, p867). This is precisely because faith must and always have an an external object, and there was faith’s object walking by - Jesus - and faith lays hold of its object, never letting go, and says, Lord, have mercy on me!
He does. And the fountain of blood stops instantly, for she encounters He who is the Fountain and Source of all mercy. Jesus draws her out of the crowd, not because He does not know who has touched Him or why, but because He wants us to know. He wants you to have faith like this woman. In other words, by holding up this woman as an example, He is inviting you to do the same thing: to fix your eyes and ears of faith only and completely on Him, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He wants you to know that He wishes to help. He promises to help. To help where the physician cannot. To say to you, “Take heart, dear child, your faith which clings alone to Me has saved you.”
But the help Jesus gives this woman delays Him from reaching the home of Jairus. Some messengers come: “Don’t bother Jesus any more. The girl is dead.”
Is she? Some people that seem alive are really dead. Some people that seem dead are alive. She is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at Him. Not the kind of laughs that comes from a good joke. The kind of laugh that mocks, ridicules. The kind of laugh the world still laughs at you and the Christian Church for your wrong-side of history beliefs regarding marriage and sex, life and death. They jeered at Him.
After all the dead stay dead. Look - the funeral has already begun! The girl lies on the bier, the pallbearers are ready to take her to the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So it has been for a very long time. No one has been able to undo the greatest enemy of man. No one has been able to stop death or to reverse it. The flute player plays and the women wail for all it lost, who can untangle death’s deadly grip?
But Jesus is right. She is sleeping. Oh she was dead all right. Dead as the world counts dead. Dead as far as we can determine death. But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God is still her God. And so nothing is dead that God declares alive. And so Jesus silences the dirge of death. He will pipe His own tune. He will pipe a victory tune over death, for to Him she is sleeping.
And that is all the death of the body is for the child of God - sleep. After my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, said the prophet Job (19:26). The Lord will swallow up death forever said the prophet Isaiah (25:8). And now the Living Redeemer whom Job saw by faith had come, standing at that little girl’s coffin. The Lord of Hosts whom Isaiah saw had come to remove the veil of death hanging over all mankind. Talitha cumi, He says to her in Aramaic. Little girl, I say to you, arise.
And she did. Not all that is dead is dead to God. Not all that seems alive is alive to God. Why do you walk in the things of death when God has already spoken His Word of life to you in Holy Baptism? And again and again in the Holy Absolution? Why keep on staring at lewd images like a spiritually dead man? Why keep on harboring grudges as though you were unforgiven? If God has made you truly rich, why keep worrying about the riches that moths eat up and rust destroys? If God has promised you eternal life, why be in so much anxiety over this short life which must end? Be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
For you were once dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved you, even when you were dead in your trespasses, made you alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised you up with Him and seated you with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:1, 4-8).
You are not dead, but alive. The Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die. You already died with Christ in Holy Baptism. Your life is hidden with God in Christ Jesus in whom you live. When you breathe your last in this mortal life, it shall be but a sleep. Going to sleep, then, each night is a drill for death - confessing sins, commending yourselves and all you love into God’s gracious keeping. And at the last the Lord will come to your grave as He came to this little girl’s, and with a word He will raise you up. And so you shall ever be with the Lord, free from sin, free from sorrow, free from death.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
For twelve years the woman had suffered. St Mark describes her body as a being a fountain of blood. She had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had on her medical treatment; yet it did not make her better. Just the opposite - her condition grew worse.
For twelve years she had suffered. And her suffering was magnified by her isolation. She was driven to aloneness because the fountain of blood coming from her sick body made her ceremonially unclean. She could not go to the Temple and eat of the peace offering; for her there was no peace. Those who were clean would avoid her. And it must have seemed as though God was avoiding her too.
During those same twelve years a man named Jairus had a daughter. Some things have changed in the two millennia since Jairus’ wife first learned that she would have a baby, but more things have not changed. It’s probably safe to assume that Jairus was overjoyed when he learned he would be a father. As a ruler of the synagogue he surely had sung the Psalm, Behold, children are a heritage of from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward (Ps 127:3). And he would have received that little girl as a gift from God. He must have looked at his wife with joy - bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh - and thanked God that for them the Psalm had been fulfilled: Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table (Ps 128:3).
But now after twelve years of joy, his little olive plant was withering. Jairus’ little girl was on the brink of death. The physicians that could not help the woman who body was a fountain of blood also were no help to Jairus’ little girl. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do,” said the doctor.
Where is the joy now? Where is God now? Which Psalm shall Jairus now sing? Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! (Ps 130:1-2). And with that Psalm he went off to the Temple. Not the Temple on Mount Zion, but to the Temple made without hands: to the Lord Jesus.
Jairus threw himself at the feet of Jesus. He has come to Jesus, the true Temple, and he worships. His prayer is fervent, urgent, incessant: “Come and lay your hand on my little girl and she will live!”
On His way to the twelve-year old girl, Jesus passes the woman with the flow of blood. She could not go to the Temple, but the Temple had come to her. God had not abandoned her! She was not alone. No physician could help, but the Divine Physician had come. Not daring to speak, her prayer is her outstretched hand, reaching out for the tassel hanging from Jesus’ garment. The tassel was a reminder to the Jewish man that he must remember the commandments and do them. The Pharisees made their tassels large, flaunting their so-called obedience to the Law.
But only Jesus was truly obedient. Only Jesus fulfilled the Law in its completeness. The tassel which reminded the Hebrew man to obey the Law - that tassel on Jesus signified the perfect obedience which God demanded. And the First Commandment of the Law began with the promise: I am the Lord Your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Ex 20:2). He wants to be your God. He wants to help and rescue you from death.
And so when that woman - that tearful, bloody, shamed, miserable, alone woman - reaches for the tassel on Jesus’ garment, she reaches for the God who helps in time of need, reaching His perfect righteousness, His perfect holiness, His sheer grace and mercy, which is the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Her empty hand is the picture of faith reaching for that which she does not have. It is not a faith that things will get better. That hope vanished lone ago. It is not a sunny disposition, a be-happy attitude that reaches out to Jesus. It is despair, grief, shame, pain that reaches out, knowing their is nothing in her that can make her well. In a sermon on tis text CFW Walther preached, “From today’s Gospel reading we see what faith can do, what wonderful workings it produces, and what incomparable power it demonstrates” (God Grant It, p867). This is precisely because faith must and always have an an external object, and there was faith’s object walking by - Jesus - and faith lays hold of its object, never letting go, and says, Lord, have mercy on me!
He does. And the fountain of blood stops instantly, for she encounters He who is the Fountain and Source of all mercy. Jesus draws her out of the crowd, not because He does not know who has touched Him or why, but because He wants us to know. He wants you to have faith like this woman. In other words, by holding up this woman as an example, He is inviting you to do the same thing: to fix your eyes and ears of faith only and completely on Him, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He wants you to know that He wishes to help. He promises to help. To help where the physician cannot. To say to you, “Take heart, dear child, your faith which clings alone to Me has saved you.”
But the help Jesus gives this woman delays Him from reaching the home of Jairus. Some messengers come: “Don’t bother Jesus any more. The girl is dead.”
Is she? Some people that seem alive are really dead. Some people that seem dead are alive. She is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at Him. Not the kind of laughs that comes from a good joke. The kind of laugh that mocks, ridicules. The kind of laugh the world still laughs at you and the Christian Church for your wrong-side of history beliefs regarding marriage and sex, life and death. They jeered at Him.
After all the dead stay dead. Look - the funeral has already begun! The girl lies on the bier, the pallbearers are ready to take her to the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So it has been for a very long time. No one has been able to undo the greatest enemy of man. No one has been able to stop death or to reverse it. The flute player plays and the women wail for all it lost, who can untangle death’s deadly grip?
But Jesus is right. She is sleeping. Oh she was dead all right. Dead as the world counts dead. Dead as far as we can determine death. But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God is still her God. And so nothing is dead that God declares alive. And so Jesus silences the dirge of death. He will pipe His own tune. He will pipe a victory tune over death, for to Him she is sleeping.
And that is all the death of the body is for the child of God - sleep. After my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, said the prophet Job (19:26). The Lord will swallow up death forever said the prophet Isaiah (25:8). And now the Living Redeemer whom Job saw by faith had come, standing at that little girl’s coffin. The Lord of Hosts whom Isaiah saw had come to remove the veil of death hanging over all mankind. Talitha cumi, He says to her in Aramaic. Little girl, I say to you, arise.
And she did. Not all that is dead is dead to God. Not all that seems alive is alive to God. Why do you walk in the things of death when God has already spoken His Word of life to you in Holy Baptism? And again and again in the Holy Absolution? Why keep on staring at lewd images like a spiritually dead man? Why keep on harboring grudges as though you were unforgiven? If God has made you truly rich, why keep worrying about the riches that moths eat up and rust destroys? If God has promised you eternal life, why be in so much anxiety over this short life which must end? Be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
For you were once dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved you, even when you were dead in your trespasses, made you alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised you up with Him and seated you with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:1, 4-8).
You are not dead, but alive. The Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die. You already died with Christ in Holy Baptism. Your life is hidden with God in Christ Jesus in whom you live. When you breathe your last in this mortal life, it shall be but a sleep. Going to sleep, then, each night is a drill for death - confessing sins, commending yourselves and all you love into God’s gracious keeping. And at the last the Lord will come to your grave as He came to this little girl’s, and with a word He will raise you up. And so you shall ever be with the Lord, free from sin, free from sorrow, free from death.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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