“For the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”
There is no greater contrast than between the atrocities committed by radical Islamic terrorists, it seems, in Paris this weekend and the readings before us this morning; a contrast between death and destruction, on the one hand, and healing and wholeness, on the other hand. Troubling times that confront us with such contrasts.
Jesus spoke and arose. Jesus turned and saw her and said, “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Jesus came and said, “Give place; for the maid is not dead but sleepeth.” Jesus “went in and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” A double healing.
The year runs out in the strength and the gentleness of healing in contrast to death and destruction. The year runs out with Jesus turning and taking us by the hand. Such is the truth and the power of the Word spoken and felt. At issue is whether we are dead or only asleep. The whole pattern of the Church year in the ordered readings of the Scripture is really about two things: God turning to us and our being turned to God. This simple yet powerful Gospel story captures the whole point of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In a way, it is simply about the purpose and meaning of God’s turning to us in the intimate humanity of Jesus Christ.
In relation to that turning of God to us in Jesus Christ the question is whether we are affected and changed, whether there has been any turning from sin to grace, from death to life, in us; in short, whether we are dead or merely asleep. If the latter, then there is the hope of our being awakened; if the former, then there is the hope of being raised up, so that, in either case, we “might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” and that we “might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God,” as Paul exhorts us in his Letter to the Colossians. Powerful words, perhaps, even stirring words; words that can turn us about and change us. That is the whole point.
The whole point of our gathering here Sunday after Sunday is about “giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Our faith in Christ Jesus means as well “the love [we] have to all the saints” – referring here to one another in our common Christian calling – and “the hope which is laid up for [us] in heaven”. It means patience and long-suffering but with joyfulness. Not just surprised by joy but sustained by joy. That joy arises from Jesus turning to us and looking at us face-to-face; from Jesus taking us by the hand so that we may walk in the ways which he has prepared for us. We are not solitary hikers in an indifferent universe. Because of this turning of God to us in Jesus Christ, we are at once turned to God and to one another.
This Gospel is a kind of a drama presenting us with a scene within a scene, the healing of the woman diseased with an issue of blood twelve years who thinks that “if I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole,” as Jesus passes on his way to a certain ruler’s house to heal the ruler’s daughter. In both cases there is a kind of faith at work both in the ruler who came to Jesus and in the woman who reaches out to “touch the hem of his garment” and yet, there is as well a deepening of our understanding of what faith in Jesus really means. It means more than healing; it is about being made whole and being raised up. It happens because of Jesus turning to us and taking us by the hand. It happens by virtue of our being in the company of Jesus and in the company of all “those who have gone before us with the mind of Christ,” to use a phrase from John Wycliffe (c. 1320-1384), an early translator of the Scriptures into English. We are reminded again of the Communion of Saints as being that greater company of which we are a part.
In Christ’s turning to the woman who surreptitiously and, perhaps, not a little superstitiously sought to steal a cure from him– no doubt she didn’t want to bother him, a common and mistaken view of God’s knowledge, love and power – we learn that God wants us to enter into his knowing love for us. “No one has ever seen God,” it is truly said, but “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known”, as John puts it. This is exactly what we are allowed to see ever so dramatically in this scene within a scene in today’s Gospel.
Then he comes into the ruler’s house and displaces the mourners saying, “the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.” “And they laughed him to scorn.” Such a reaction is a kind of death in us, a refusal to be open to the creative and redemptive power of God’s Word. Jesus’ response here is not merely his looking and speaking but his word in action. “He took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” Scorn and mockery turn to awe and amazement, even to a kind of joyfulness. It is not only the maid who is raised up; we are too. There is more here than even the wonder of a double healing; there is an awakening to faith and joy, to our wholeness in Christ Jesus and with all those who are in his company.
This year, Advent comes fast upon the heels of All Saints’. The gathering of all things to God brings us to the beginning again of that pageant of grace and glory, the pageant of God’s turning to us in the Word proclaimed and celebrated, the Word Incarnate in Jesus Christ. Next Sunday is The Sunday Next Before Advent. Perhaps we have sleep-walked our way through this past year of grace or have been as the walking dead. But Christ turns to us and takes us by the hand, putting to silence our ignorance and awakening us to knowledge. There is the hope of a new beginning. The healing and the wholeness of our humanity are found in our being with him in his turning to us and turning us to him. Therein is our joy and our salvation and our hope for us all.
“For the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 24, 2015