Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Heals: To be Free to be Able to Choose - AtaDc (step18), session 3

Two healings in one session, and so much to consider in them. Lk 8, 40-56

First, Jairus is one of the few among the religious establishment whom we are told is willing to accept that Jesus might have come from God. We are given no indication that he puts his standing at risk by coming to Jesus to beg for a healing for his only daughter, but we can imagine it might be the case, but it's still fairly early in Jesus' ministry so perhaps the opposition to him among the religious leaders had not developed as of yet. Plus, this event appears to have happened in Galilee, and Jesus' chief enemies seem to have developed around Jerusalem.

Before we get very far into that story, Jesus, progress to Jairus' home is interrupted by the woman with the hemorrhage. I think there is a lesson for us even in the interruption: God is not so single-minded as we are. He can be working in multiple ways at the same time. (God, I pray that you are working in both my daughter and my son-in-law, both of whom desperately need to be made whole.) Just because we might have undertaken a specific Lenten project, we should not expect God to limit himself to working in us on just that one thing.

The desperate faith of both the woman and Jairus are on display in this reading. Sometimes when we are desperate we, too, gain a faith far greater than we have otherwise. At other times, we resign ourselves to just muddling through whatever may come. Still, such faith is itself a gift of God, and I am convinced he works in the ways that best serve to glorify his name, sometimes in miraculous ways, at others through the gift of perseverance.

A final observation concerns the skeptical scorn with which the crowd greets Jesus as he arrives to raise Jairus' daughter. It reminds me much of the spirit of the present age, as we polish our intelligent rationalism. Yet Jesus continues to work in marvelous ways in the lives of those who trust in him. I can't help but wonder if those who scoffed at him before he raised her then afterward gave him credit only for realizing that she was "not dead, but sleeping." We give up our doubts begrudgingly.